Alton White says he is going to be all right, after another stem cell treatment scheduled soon in Puerto Rico.

He’s better, this hulk of a man once so influential and so important in this Tampa town his family have so loved and for which they have done so much, especially the late Moses White, and this fine senior son. Alton is slowed now by the awful Parkinson’s disease.

The uncontrollable tremors now are only in the hands for this one-time leader who was so important. Prior to his trip to Puerto Rico for his first treatmen for doses of stem cell serum into his veins, the tremors were more widespread, but not now.

“It’ll be fixed with another treatment, I think,’’ he said. “My hands shake worse, like when you called and said you were coming over. The shaking will lessen soon, and forever, hopefully, after another trip south. As you know, you could not, and can not yet get the treatment in our country. It was the objection to the use of the stem cells from embryos. But, now, they have found ways to get the cells from living babies, and I understand by laboratory creation, ending all this. But, when I had to be treated, I had to leave our country and will again soon to get rid of this awful thing,’’ said this terrific man of our times. There is no insurance coverage for this treatment.

“My daddy, Moses, taught me that, not to give up. I won’t. I can declare to you not a conversation passed that my daddy didn’t say something I wanted to remember. And, if he didn’t, his best friend, and my college coach at Florida A&M, Jake Gaither, did.’’ Alton and Andre, two brothers, played for the FAMU Rattlers. Moses and Alton were effective in bringing the Rattlers to play at old Tampa Stadium, once against Fran Curci’s University of Tampa team.

“Beat ’em, too,’’ Alton said of the Rattlers’ 34-28 victory in 1969. I know, I know. First college game between a predominately black college and a predominately white college team. Few, beyond the Rattlers, expected FAMU to win. Many expected trouble of some kind. Was one arrest, a drunk white guy. No one, other than the remarkable coach, Gaither, was happier than Moses White, a patriarch of the black community. If you wanted help, or counsel about a next step in that area, see Moses, first. At one time he owned four stores in the old Central Avenue days, before Major Dick Greco’s urban renewal relocated the place. But, Moses kept his Cozy Corner in West Tampa longer. He and Jake Gaither plotted there often.

“You know,’’ Alton said, “I don’t know if you knew Jake Gaither started the split-T formation. Well, his friend, Woody Hayes, told Jake he knew how to stop it, if it went inside or outside the end, until he saw the Rattlers play it. He told Jake, ‘I didn’t know you had nine players who could run the 100 nine seconds and something.”

Alton, remember, was a top civic official for years. He was vice mayor and ran for the top office once, in a race Bill Poe won in a runoff. Alton was big politics and business until Parkinson’s struck. He was big in Model Homes, and all related affairs. His wife, Geraldine, is supremely active in education and in brokering. They are a couple admired, one whose road this far has not been all fun and games and laughter. But, hasn’t stopped either, or both, and nothing yet has diminished their romance this place Alton calls, “Our Tampa .’’

“I’ll be out there more after this next treatment for this,’’ he said holding a tremoring hand.