There is a memorial tablet to Orville Schomberg, beside a pond at the college where he taught in Jacksonville, with a verse: "This mortal life is brief of span, let me seek the Way contemplating the pure hills and streams." He had a farm north of the city, and he farmed with calloused hands, giving his produce away. The first group Zen practice in Jacksonville that anyone remembers was Orville and John Young sitting together sometime in the '60s in an octagonal gazebo on that farm.
He was a psychology professor, and dependable legend has it that on the 2nd or 3rd day of a class he had his students down on the floor on cushions "doing" zazen. And that he bought a house with bamboo and huge pines in the yard in a quiet neighborhood, took out the wall between the large rooms, and then gave keys to all his Zen students so they could come and use the house as their Zendo whenever they wanted to.
Orville and Zenrin (Robert Lewis) saw each other outside the main entrance of DBZ, Dai Bosatsu Zendo, in New York State, but did not meet, in late August of 1978. Zenrin was there for the Kessei (3-month training period) coming in September, and Orville, who had been affiliated with the Rochester Zen Center, was exploring possibilities at DBZ. But he died back in Jacksonville in a matter of weeks on 9/11/78. And Zenrin left DBZ at the end of Fall Kessei.
But he was back at DBZ for the Fall Kessei of 1979 and trained there for the next 12 years. Meanwhile, Orville's Zen group in Jacksonville broke up. His family were so unsympathetic that they made off with some of the equipment. The rest came to DBZ. And some of the group came too, using "scholarships" funded by Orville's legacy. Zenrin, then working in the DBZ office, wondered, "Why all these people from Jacksonville Florida?"
One of them, Lisa Weinberger, after a sesshin (week-long meditation "intensive") at DBZ, invited Zenrin to stop in Jacksonville to give a "workshop" there on his way down to see his family in the Tampa Bay area. Over the years these workshops tended to become weekend (or longer) sesshins. Prof. John Maraldo was giving a course, "The Philosophy of Zen," every other year at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville. And Allen Tilley had been "anchoring" a Zen group at the Jacksonville Unitarian Church. So, naturally most of these sesshins were at the university and at the church.
There being precious few Zen monasteries in the States, DBZ sent Zenrin on a 2-year pilgrimage, 1991 and 1992, to "Buddhist Holy Lands" in Asia: India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Pakistan (Gandhara, Taxila, ...), China and Thailand. For several reasons, one being that his blood wasn't getting any thicker in India, Sri Lanka and Thailand—he wrote to friends in Jacksonville about starting a new Zen group there.
Thus the JZS, Jacksonville Zen Sangha, was born. Thanks to the foresight and kindness of Ed Brock, it was able to use space at the Unitarian Church, whose minister he then was, for several years. Now through the generosity of John Propst, the JZS has its own Zendo, Unzan Zendo, dedicated by Eido Roshi, the abbot of DBZ, on May 1, 2004. Un is cloud, and zan is mountain: In Florida, since the highest elevation is on the order of 100 feet, the mountains are in the sky. "There is no Buddha/other than This:/higher than Fuji/cloud mountains/gleaming." -- Soen Roshi, in Endless Vow, p. 106.
The Zendo house was designed and built in 1918 by H.J. Klutho in the prairie style, and the architect R.C. Broward, a student of F.L. Wright, has repeatedly given the Sangha practical advice and help. Having transformed the main room into a working Zendo modeled (given the house) on the DBZ Zendo, they planted bamboo, and now they're planting trees.