Historic Palm Beach - brought to you by the Palm Beach Post

Ghost tales linger, even 100 years after Flagler’s death

Palm Beach Post Staff Researchers — Thu, 16 May 2013 14:52:25 +0000

Monday is the centennial of the death of South Florida pioneer Henry Flagler. Other sections of The Post have been, or will be, doing special reports on the anniversary. We thought we’d have some fun with the story of Flagler’s ghost.

First, this: “There are no ghosts, there never have been ghosts, and there never will be ghosts at Whitehall,” said John Blades, executive director of the Flagler Museum, in the Halloween 2007 Post Time column.

In 1974, John Roth, a night watchman at Whitehall, Flagler’s former mansion, had said he saw the man “just as plain as daylight,” in a hallway.

“He was just standing there, wearing a dark suit and tie,” Roth said at the time. “I had a good look and then he vanished.”

Also, silver settings reportedly moved from a top shelf to a bottom one inside a locked cabinet. A ceiling lamp and the top to an urn crashed to the floor and plates inexplicably broke.

And another watchman, since retired, said he saw Flagler’s wife, Mary Lily, many times on an upstairs porch.

Roth later allowed as how he’d seen Flagler only once, when he awoke from a nap at about 3:30 a.m.

Finally, retired director Grant Bedford, blaming the sightings on overactive imaginations, said he’d give $1,000 to anyone who could show him a ghost. But, Roth argued , “I can’t make him appear any time I feel like it.”

Bedford said if Flagler’s spirit had made an appearance, it would not have been in the 1970s, when the estate had become a museum, but in the 1960s, when his former mansion was a hotel and Flagler’s belongings were stuffed away in attics. “It would have infuriated him,” Bedford said.

Henry and Mary Lily Flagler around 1910 (Photo courtesy the Historical Society of Palm Beach County)

Call to readers: After our April 25 column on the World War II-era Wert’s restaurant in Palm Beach, longtime resident, and sometime Post Time contributor, Wayne Miner of Belle Glade wrote to ask about two other institutions. The first, called “Terry’s,” was in Glen Ridge, the tiny community south of Palm Beach International Airport, which Miner believes permitted the place to be one of the few drinking holes in Palm Beach County to be open on Sunday mornings.

The other was “Al’s,” an oasis out at 20 Mile Bend, the spot about halfway from the coast to Belle Glade. Jeff Barwick, who grew up in Pahokee and headed Pahokee’s and Clewiston’s Chamber of Commerce and curated at the Clewiston museum, recalls Al’s being “on the east side of the ‘tee’ where U.S. 98 came into U.S. 441/State Road 80. He had beer and some food.”

Raulerson was sheriff in two Florida counties

Palm Beach Post Staff Researchers — Thu, 02 May 2013 14:32:54 +0000

Our readership area includes Okeechobee County, a place rich in history and known for agriculture, cattle, and “the big lake;” an area that still boasts of “old Florida.” We always enjoy the chance to visit.

This weekend is the fourth annual “BBQ Cook-off” to benefit the O.L. Raulerson, Jr. Scholarship Fund.

Raulerson, who died in 2007, wasn’t just a member of one of Florida’s old-line families. He also is believed to be the only person elected sheriff in two different Florida counties.

Here’s more on Raulerson from the Okeechobee Sheriff ’s Office and from a 2007 obituary by colleague Daphne Duret:

Born in 1941 in Vero Beach, Raulerson had an uncle who was Okeechobee County’s first sheriff and was related to a high school principal, a county commissioner and a clerk of circuit court.

He started his career with the Florida Highway Patrol and later moved to the Highlands County Sheriff ’s Office.

Appointed sheriff there in 1970, he was elected outright two years later.

He was voted out in 1978 and moved one county over to Okeechobee, where he was “>appointed sheriff in 1986. He was elected in 1988 and again 1992, but was voted out a second time in 1998. Undaunted, he regained the seat in a 2001 election.

He retired in 2005 and died two years later of kidney failure at age 65.

Even in retirement, “people would always still call here and ask him for advice on different things,” his widow, Judy, said in 2007.

“He had a big heart,” Okeechobee County Sheriff Paul May said at the time. “He was very well respected by law enforcement officers — not just here, but from around the state.”

The Raulerson scholarship program has raised $7,500 so far and provides for an Okeechobee High School graduating senior to receive education in law enforcement.

The fund so far has given out two $3,000 scholarships. Brent Harden graduated in 2012 and started May 1 as a civilian employee of the sheriff ’s office. And Jonathan Kemp is at South Florida State College in Avon Park and is set to graduate this spring.

Then-Okeechobee County Sheriff O.L Raulerson at the entrance to his department in 2001. (Palm Beach Post staff file photo)

Giant orchid nursery thrived in Boynton Beach

Palm Beach Post Staff Researchers — Thu, 02 May 2013 14:02:44 +0000

A recent inquiry reminded us about a giant orchid operation in Boynton Beach owned by the Merkel brothers.

Here’s more from an obituary for Jean Merkel when he died at 93 in April 2005:

Merkel and his brother Norman ran the fabled Alberts and Merkel Brothers Nursery in Boynton Beach for 65 years.

Christopher Merkel, their grandfather, had owned and operated 4 acres of greenhouses in Mentor, Ohio, near Cleveland, beginning in 1890, growing roses, carnations and African violets.

During a visit to Florida, Christopher’s son Louis founded the spread at 2210 S. Federal Highway, just south of Wool-bright Road.

The six acres between the highway and the Intracoastal Waterway were bought for $12,000.

Louis’ sons, Jean and his younger brother Nor-man, operated the long rows of greenhouses.

Jean Merkel, born in Ohio in 1911, taught celestial navigation as a World War II lieutenant commander.

He earned a bachelor of science degree in horticulture at Cornell University and became interested in orchids.

In 1936, the same year the Merkels bought the property, Jean Merkel began photographing and cataloging his plants. That led to several books and one of the first floral catalog businesses.

Jean Merkel said he was drawn to orchids because “there are so many thousands of varieties that you can’t live long enough to see them all.”

He traveled the world to bring back exotic orchids and crossed species to create 7,000 variations.

He sold orchids to celebrities and decorated the homes of U.S. presidents.

He supplied plants to the Bronx Zoo aviary and Asian animal habitat, to botany schools and to botanical gardens.

When North Florida orchid expert Bruno Alberts joined the Merkels in 1947, the business became known as Alberts and Merkel Brothers Nursery.

Alberts retired in 1958; he died in 1970. Norman Merkel died at 76 in 1990.

In 2001, a developer paid Jean Merkel $1.5 million for the land and built Tuscany on the Intracoastal, an apartment community.

He moved the business west to Hagen Ranch Road, just south of Boynton Beach Boulevard.

According to Jean Merkel’s daughter, Martha Banting, the business was hit by hurricanes Frances and Jeanne in 2004, and then was heavily damaged by Wilma in 2005 and never reopened.

Jean Merkel at his Boynton Beach orchid nursery, Alberts and Merkel Brothers, in October 1990. (Palm Beach Post file photo)

Our history in photos: The Palm Beach Post

Palm Beach Post Staff Researchers — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 17:20:19 +0000

The square building at the center of this photo is the Palm Beach Post-Times building on Datura in 1926. The view is from Dixie Highway looking East down Datura. The Harvey Building, still under construction, is in the background, and the West Palm Beach Fire Department and their equipment are in the foreground. (Courtesy of the Historical Society of Palm Beach County)

Oct. 23, 1961: Demolition nears completion on the old Post-Times building at 328 Datura in West Palm Beach. (Palm Beach Post staff file photo)

The Palm Beach Post gets a new building

July 1960: Aerial shot of the new Post-Times facility on South Dixie Highway.

Nov. 13, 1960: About 2,500 people attend the grand opening of The Palm Beach Post-Times’ new building. (Palm Beach Post staff file photo)

About 1,000 members of the public tour The Palm Beach Post-Times’ new building. The hooks hanging from the ceiling carried copy to linotype operators. (Palm Beach Post staff file photo)

In the composing room in 1960 (Palm Beach Post staff file photo)

L. Boswell works with a stereotype dry mat, part of the printing press process of the day. (Palm Beach Post staff file photo)

Journalists work in the newsroom as a maintenance man installs a sign. (Palm Beach Post staff file photo)

The copy desk the day after John F. Kennedy was elected 35th president of the United States. In those days the copy desk was also called the “U-desk” because of the shape of the desk (the boss sat in the middle to control copy flow). The term persists today. (Palm Beach Post staff file photo)

The Palm Beach Post-Times’ downtown Lake Worth bureau in the 1960s. (Palm Beach Post staff file photo)

Wert’s a popular hangout during WWII

Palm Beach Post Staff Researchers — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 14:42:02 +0000

Most of you aren’t old enough to remember that, in Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast, World War II was not a far-away event. Between February and May of 1942, U-boats sank 24 ships off Florida, 16 of them from Cape Canaveral to Boca Raton.

George Payne Marshall of Singer Island, born in 1921, wrote of that time: “I was not only in radar maintenance training but was assigned to a secret intelligence group by the Provost Marshal at Camp Murphy.”

That was the facility just over the Palm Beach-Martin County line that housed the Southern Signal Corps School. It’s now Jonathan Dickinson State Park.

“I spent New Year’s Eve in 1943 at Werts with three of my army buddies from Camp Murphy,” Marshall wrote. “I will always remember the sign over the door carved in wood that read ‘Everybody Goes from Bad to Werts.’ This was kind of a secret hang-out that I and my buddies did not tell too many GIs at Murphy about. Most always one of the rich Palm Beachers would always pick up our check, as they did on this New Year’s Eve. One time we were told it was OK to dance with their wives. The Palm Beachers were very appreciative of all their military in the area and it was a good place for service personnel to be during WWII.”

George wasn’t kidding about Wert’s. At 456 S. Ocean Blvd. in Palm Beach, it was a hot spot for decades.

But during the war, it was especially popular with local servicemen and their dates, lured by its live music and 50-cent meals. They came not just from Camp Murphy, but also from the Boca Raton Army Air Field — now the Boca Raton airport and Florida Atlantic University — and of course from nearby Morrison Field, now Palm Beach International Airport.

The place also played an indirect role in the U-boat wars. Officials quickly figured out that the establishments lining Florida’s coastline back-lit freighters, making them even easier targets. So Wert’s east-facing windows were darkened and its entrance was moved from the oceanfront to the side.

“Uncle Sam darkened my front, but my rear is a blaze of glory,” “Wert” quipped in an ad.

“Wert” was Lionel Wertheimer, a Wisconsinite who had opened a lunch stand in 1924. It came down in both the 1926 and 1928 hurricanes and was rebuilt. After the war, the place expanded and the price of a turkey dinner shot up to an outrageous $1.50.

The colorful raconteur died at age 57 in 1948 while touring through Arizona. The family sold the place in 1973 and it became Willoughby’s.

It later closed, then reopened in 1980 in its current configuration: Charley’s Crab.

Jim and Gimmy McNalley, Josephine Quinn Guenther and Frederick Guenther (left) at Wert’s. Guenther was the sister of Dick Johnson’s mother. Jim McNalley owned two bars: The Music Box and The Alibi. (Photo courtesy of Ginny Lippincott)

For decades in Palm Beach, Wert’s restaurant, once located at the oceanfront location where Charley’s Crab is today (456 S. Ocean Blvd.), was a hot spot, boasting weekly entertainment and this logo: ‘The Best You’ll Get Here is the Wert’s.’ (Photo courtesy of the Historical Society of Palm Beach County)

Carved in the pavement by the entrance to Charley’s Crab is “Wert’s.” (Palm Beach Daily News staff file photo)

During World War II, Wert’s, pictured here in the 1930s or ’40s, was particularly popular, offering live bands and 50-cent meals to local servicemen and their dates. During the war, its east-facing windows were darkened to comply with blackouts. (Photo courtesy of the Historical Society of Palm Beach County)

Schoolhouse one of area’s first for black children

Palm Beach Post Staff Researchers — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:07:50 +0000

One of the more popular landmarks in Palm Beach County is the Little Red Schoolhouse, the first in southeast Florida (1886), which was restored and sits in Phipps Ocean Park in Palm Beach.

But Martin County has its own landmark: the New Monrovia One-Room Schoolhouse, believed to be the only remaining one on the Treasure Coast.

Built around 1930, the 25-by-30 wood-frame structure was one of the first schools built in Martin County to educate black children.

On March 9, county officials, former students and historians cut the ribbon on the newly-restored structure.

The schoolhouse is in what is now Port Salerno. Plats called it Salerno Colored School, but students remembered it as Mrs. Williams’ School, for Costella Hannibal Williams, who moved to the area in 1929 and taught at the school until around 1960.

Warmed by a pot-belly stove, their way lit by kerosene lamps, black children looked to Williams as a mother figure.

Those children include retired Indian River Community College administrator David “Doc” Anderson, the first black elected to the Martin County School Board. He served 32 years on the panel, including stints as its chairman.

Anderson was a student in first through fourth grades, 1946 to 1950.

He said the four grades shared the one room, and one teacher: Williams.

“She was something else. She was quite a person. I don’t know how she did it,” Anderson said.

Williams — described as the “Matriarch of New Monrovia” in the 2000 Palm Beach Post book Our Century — retired from Martin County Schools in 1975. According to the Stuart News, she died at 97 in Palm City on April 19, 2003.

The schoolhouse eventually closed and the county used the building as a community center, then closed that in 1998 after building a civic center next door that bore Williams’ name.

The schoolhouse fell into disrepair and was damaged by hurricanes Frances and Jeanne in 2004.

Martin County spent $115,000 to restore the schoolhouse; it received a roof, floor and ceiling, windows and doors, and a fresh coat of paint.

Three of the original walls were saved.

Inside, green chalkboards hang from the original locations on the wall, and replicas of the students’ original wooden desks, built by South Fork High School carpentry students, line the room.

And there’s even a potbelly stove.

Visitors view the interior of the renovated Monrovia One-Room Schoolhouse during its re-dedication March 9. The building, believed to be Martin County’s last surviving one-room schoolhouse, was one of the first schools built in the county for black children. (Photo courtesy Martin County)

National Bookmobile Day

Palm Beach Post Staff Researchers — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 16:37:51 +0000

National Bookmobile Day has been observed on the Wednesday of National Library Week since 2010. The first bookmobile in the U.S. was the 1905 horse-drawn “Library Wagon” in Washington County, Maryland.

According to the American Library Association there are 33 bookmobiles in Florida today.

We’re not sure when the first bookmobile hit the streets in Palm Beach County (if you know, please share in the comments below, and if we find out, we’ll update this post), but we were inspired by this photo on the Florida Memory website to share these photos from the Palm Beach Post photo archive. Click on any of the images below to view a larger version.

Jerminous Brown, 4, in a Treasure Coast bookmobile in December 1977. (C.J. Walker/The Palm Beach Post)

Mr. and Mrs. Larry Owens and 5-month-old Sabrina in the bookmobile, probably in the 1970s. (Guy Ferrell/The Palm Beach Post)

The Palm Beach County Library Bookmobile in 1993. (Lannis Waters/The Palm Beach Post)

The interior of the Palm Beach County Library Bookmobile in 1993. (Lannis Waters/The Palm Beach Post)

Delray public library marks its 100th year

Palm Beach Post Staff Researchers — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 14:17:51 +0000

The 40 ladies gathered, each with a book under her arm. Henry Flagler had donated $10 to buy more items.

That was the birth of the Delray Beach Library, 100 years ago today on April 11, 1913.

The library association will mark its birthday with a gala money-raising bash and a community day with events that include a dog parade.

The complex will be transformed into a “100-year walk down memory lane” with costumes, period characters, music and entertainment, and food and drink.

The library, a nonprofit corporation, is separate from the city. Though it gets some city money, it raises a lot itself.

It started in 1913 with the “Ladies Improvement Association” meeting. “This is only a beginning and we hope and expect much from it,” the Delray Progress reported.

There were 75 books in the library when it officially opened from 2 to 5 p.m. on Jan. 31, 1914.

In 1938, the non-profit Delray Beach Library Association incorporated to manage library operations and the city council approved its first grant: $500. At the time, the library had 605 items.

After World War II, the library raised $14,000 for its new building on Southeast Fourth Avenue, just south of Atlantic Avenue. It opened in 1950. By then its collection had grown to more than 15,000 items.

A second story was added in 1968, a garden room in 1975, and a 3,100-square-foot auditorium in 1985. By that building’s 50th birthday, in 2000, the library boasted nearly 100,000 items.

But it was just too small for the burgeoning city. So today, a two-story, 48,000-square-foot building stands at 100 W. Atlantic Ave.

Opened in 2006, it cost $7.2 million to build, and $1.2 million to furnish.

It issues some 8,000 new library cards each year and is visited by more than 623,000 people annually.

It holds 184,784 items, and, in this brave new world, only half of them are ink-and-paper books.

The Delray Beach Public Library in 2013 (Photo courtesy of the library)

The old Delray Beach Public Library on Southeast 4th Avenue (Photo courtesy of library)

The young adult department in the new library (Photo courtesy of the Delray Beach Public Library)

Demonstrating the use of the card catalog at the old library (Photo courtesy of the Delray Beach Public Library)

Other photos from the library’s past (provided by the Delray Beach Public Library):

Catholic nuns turn Florida beach club into marine life lab

Palm Beach Post Staff Researchers — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 20:23:14 +0000

That was the headline on a 1941 Life magazine story about the Institutum Divi Thomae, a Cincinnati-based Catholic-sponsored scientific research organization that took over the old Oasis Club north of The Breakers in the 1940s.

Photos in the Life story showed nuns collecting marine life specimens on the beach, dissecting a shark, and dispensing chemicals from the former Oasis Club bar.

Those same photos reappeared in The Palm Beach Post’s Nov. 23, 1941 season preview edition:

This week is anniversary of famous drive-in closing

Palm Beach Post Staff Researchers — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 14:27:38 +0000

Who doesn’t remember that wonderful icon of the 1950s and beyond: the drive-in restaurant? Sonic has brought it back on a national level, but the last local, mom-and-pop drive-in — T.C. Bumper’s — closed 25 years ago this week, on April 5, 1988.

In a column from that time, now-retired Palm Beach Post editor and writer Bill McGoun recalled growing up with the Starlite, on the corner of Dixie Highway and 13th Avenue North in Lake Worth. By then it was a drug store; it’s now a convenience store.

The most famous drive-in in Palm Beach County could well have been the Hut, which stood where Phillips Point is now in downtown West Palm Beach. It was so All-American the Saturday Evening Post of June 22, 1946, featured a photograph of it.

“The Hut is where you went,” actor Burt Reynolds once recalled. “If you were lucky enough to have a friend with a car, you parked by some girls, your arm hanging out against the door so that it looked like you had a bicep.”

McGoun also recalled Fitz’s, at Dixie Highway near Good Samaritan Hospital, Pizio’s on Dixie Highway south of Southern Boulevard, and an A&W stand at Okeechobee Boulevard and Military Trail.

But a 10-minute oil change place now stands at the southwest corner of Southern Boulevard and Parker Avenue in West Palm Beach. Before that was Bumper’s. It had started 32 years earlier as an A&W Root Beer. It featured the usual unhealthy, but beloved fare: dogs, fries, onion rings, root beer, all brought to your car window by “carhops” who worked the 12 parking spaces. Or you had the option of chowing down, in no hurry, at a shaded open-air table.

Owner Thomas Fink had named it for his first and middle initials and the bumper of a car; the logo was a license plate.

Hot dogs, once five for a dollar, were up to $1.25 each at the end, although Bumper’s cut the price to 69 cents on Tuesdays.

But changing lifestyles — the most prevalent of them being the love of the air conditioner — doomed drive-ins, and while lunch traffic at Bumper’s had been steady, dinnertime business had fallen off. So one regular after another came by for one more meal before the “closed” sign went up for good.

“It was an emotional day,” Thomas Fink recalled last month. “It was an icon in the county.”

T.C. Bumper’s, West Palm Beach’s last drive-in restaurant, was originally an A&W drive-in. This location (above) was on Broadway in Riviera Beach. (Photo courtesy of Thomas Fink)

Manager Ruth Place of T.C. Bumper’s pauses during lunch hour under a sign announcing the last day
for the last drive-in root beer stand. (Palm Beach Post staff file photo)

Employees from the A&W drive-in on Broadway in Riviera Beach, which became T.C. Bumper’s, owned by Thomas Fink, of Palm Beach Gardens, and wife. Fink’s son is on the far right. (Photo courtesy of Thomas Fink)

Thomas Fink, former owner of T.C. Bumpers, West Palm Beach’s last drive-in restaurant, poses with memorabilia from the restaurant, including newspaper clippings, a visor, and photos. (Jennifer Podis/The Palm Beach Post)