Mack Cleveland

Who was Mack Cleveland?

Mack N. Cleveland, Jr., was an attorney from Sanford in Seminole County, Florida, who served as a Democrat in both houses of the Florida State Legislature between 1953 and 1965.

A Sanford native, Cleveland was the son of Mack Cleveland, Sr. and the late Lois Shiflet Cleveland. In 1942, he graduated from Seminole High School in Sanford and then attended the University of Florida in Gainesville until called for military duty. Cleveland fought in the United States Army Air Corps in the Pacific Theatre of World War II. During the Korean War, he began service in the United States Air Force Reserve, which extended from 1951 to 1964. As a member of the Florida House of Representatives fron 1953 to 1963, Cleveland in 1957 attained the rank of Speaker Pro Tempore. Thereafter, he was a state senator from 1963 to 1965. Cleveland left politics to devote his later years full-time to his law practice. He was the general counsel for his alma mater, Stetson University in DeLand, Florida, where he had been both an undergraduate in the Class of 1949 and recipient of the Juris Doctor degree in 1951. Cleveland spent fifty-six years as a lawyer, having retired in 2007 to Longwood, also in Seminole County. His wife, Mary Anne Cleveland, whom he married in 1984, when he was sixty, said that he was "an old-time lawyer [who] counseled people" and often did not charge for a consultation.