President John F. Kennedy arrived at Palm Beach International Airport for the last time on Nov. 15, 1963 for a weekend trip that included a visit to Cape Canaveral.
Click on the images to browse the Nov. 16 and Nov. 18, 1963 pages of The Palm Beach Post.
After the president’s death Mrs. Kennedy carried on the family’s tradition of visiting Palm Beach for the Christmas holidays, arriving in Palm Beach on Dec. 18 with six-year-old Caroline and three-year-old John Jr.
Tags: celebrities, Palm Beach, This Week in History
Feb. 11 is a big candle day for a local legend: Burt Reynolds turns 75. The man who might be this area’s most famous celebrity wasn’t even born in Florida. In fact, despite making his reputation in good-old-boy movies, he wasn’t even born in the South.
Burton Leon “Buddy” Reynolds Jr. was born Feb. 11, 1936, in Lansing, Mich. Some Hollywood reports place his birthplace in Waycross, Ga., where he lived as a small child before his parents moved to Palm Beach County. His father, Burton Milo Reynolds Sr., was Riviera Beach’s police chief.
Reynolds graduated from Palm Beach High School in 1954, but his football career at Florida State University (pictured below, Reynolds in Tallahassee, circa 1950) was cut short by injury and he enrolled at Palm Beach Junior College.
Bitten by the acting bug and guided by legendary theater mentor Watson B. Duncan III, he made his way to Hollywood, where he appeared in, directed or produced more than 100 films.
Reynolds opened the 400-seat Burt Reynolds Dinner Theatre in Jupiter in January 1979, then sold it 10 years later after trying to donate it to Palm Beach Community College. The theater folded in 1996.
Reynolds also operated tours and production studios on his 160-acre ranch in Jupiter Farms, poured millions of dollars and many hours of time into local events and causes, and, in the 1980s, even brought the region a television series, B.L. Stryker, and the economic impact that came with it.
He followed that with the popular Evening Shade series. After Reynolds’ marriage to Loni Anderson ended, failed investments drove him into a bankruptcy that cost him his beloved 160-acre ranch. But an Oscar nomination for Boogie Nights helped restore his career. He continues to operate the Burt Reynolds Institute for Film and Theatre at his museum in Jupiter, which opened in 2003, not far from the 35-acre Burt Reynolds County Park. And last month, he performed An Evening With Burt Reynolds at the Lyric Theatre in Stuart.
Burt Reynolds speaks about his times at Palm Beach High during an April 2010 ceremony dedicating “Burt Reynolds Road” on the campus of the Dreyfoos School of the Arts in West Palm Beach. He’s a 1954 graduate of Palm Beach High School, one of several schools to previously occupy the buildings that house the Dreyfoos School.
Tags: celebrities, place names
A half century ago this week, a former maid who’d dabbled in writing was buried in a Fort Pierce pauper’s grave.
It’s only in the past few decades that Zora Neale Hurston earned the adulation she never got in life.
Hurston wrote with passion and poetry and humor about the joys and turmoils of blacks living and dying far beyond the main roads of central and south Florida.
“Miss Zora’’ rose to prominence, was gradually ostracized by her own people and died destitute in Fort Pierce, only to be reborn only as an artist can be — through her work.
She was raised in Eatonville, north of Orlando. It was America’s first all-black town when it was founded in 1887.
Her mother once said, “You jump at de sun.”
Her mother died and her father, a tenant farmer and pastor, handed her off to relatives. She was a maid, graduated high school, and went to Howard University in Washington.
She was 30 when she wrote her first story in 1921 but lied about her age by a decade, making her an undeserving prodigy. She moved to New York in 1925 and was swept up in the Harlem Renaissance.
Her career climaxed with 1937’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, a swirling trail of a woman’s journey to independence that climaxes with the Glades’ great 1928 hurricane.
But fame didn’t always translate to fortune; she never made $1,000 on a book and once was a secretary to novelist Fanny Hurst.
Two marriages failed.
Peers accused her of Uncle Tomism after she became a political conservative, decrying integration.
Her last novel, Seraph on the Suwannee, was published in 1948.
She was a maid, a substitute teacher, and a columnist for the black weekly Fort Pierce Chronicle.
She died broke in a Fort Pierce nursing home in 1960. Friends donated for her funeral.
In 1973, Alice Walker (The Color Purple) paid for a marker for her grave.
Eatonville’s Zora Neale Hurston Center was opened in 1987, a monument to the woman who prophesied: “When the consciousness we know as life ceases, I know that I shall still be part and parcel of the world.’’
Special thanks to Post staff writer Scott Eyman.
The gravesite of Zora Neale Hurston at the Garden of Heavenly Rest Cemetery in Fort Pierce has a marker paid for by author Alice Walker. (Palm Beach Post file photo)
Tags: 1928 Hurricane, African Americans, Black history month, black icons, celebrities
By Michelle Quigley
Jimmy Buffett turns 63 on Christmas Day. That’s a pretty long way from 40, but to some of us, it seems like only yesterday that we heard Come Monday for the first time.
This 1974 Miami News story describes Buffett as “one locally based performer who has really taken off professionally of late.” There’s a photo of Buffett on stage at the August 1973 Dolphin Project benefit concert at the Coconut Grove Playhouse with folk singer Bobby Ingram, Danny Finley (lead guitarist for The Texas Jewboys), Rick Danko of The Band, folk singer Eric Anderson, and singer-songwriter Fred (“Everybody’s Talkin’”) Neil.
Above and below, August 1975 Miami News file photos from a Key West concert.
Above, Buffett opened his Coconut Telegraph tour at the Sunrise Musical Theater on February 5, 1981. Palm Beach Post file photo.
Buffett (right, in photo above, and autographing a record, below) stopped to spend a few days in Fort Pierce in 1980, sailing in the Indian River and hanging out with locals. Palm Beach Post file photos.
Above, in 1981 Buffett brought his Save the Manatee committee to West Palm Beach to plan a public-awareness campaign. Palm Beach Post file photo.
We invite you to share your Parrothead memories in the comments below, and upload your pictures to our photo gallery. (See photos that other readers have shared here.)
Tags: celebrities
Check out the dust-jacket of Palm Beach County’s official centennial scrapbook. (Click the image to see a larger version.)
Here’s a list of who’s who on the cover, and keep reading below to see a list of some of the hundreds of Palm Beach Post readers whose photos and memories are included in Palm Beach County at 100: Our History, Our Home. Click here to order your copy of the book.
Front cover, clockwise from top left:
Cornelia Anthony (her father ran the Anthony’s store) and her cousin Mary Anthony in West Palm Beach, late 1920s
The Breakers hotel
Vintage airplane, from a 1932 Palm Beach Life cover
President Kennedy, Jackie and Caroline in Palm Beach, 1963
Restored 1916 Courthouse, now home to the Richard and Pat Johnson Palm Beach County History Museum
Clematis Street, West Palm Beach, 1940s
Bathing beauties in Palm Beach, 1959: (from left) Mildred Smith Gruner, Patsy Hughes, Marsha DeSorro, Brenda Godwin, Nancy Ellis
Ethel Sterling Williams, Delray Beach pioneer
First schoolhouse for black students in West Palm Beach: Built at Tamarind Avenue and Datura Street in 1896
Kay and John Rybovich with sailfish at Inlet Dock in Palm Beach
Twins Greg (left) and John Rice fishing off Southern Boulevard, West Palm Beach, in 1960
Burt Reynolds, Palm Beach High School Class of 1954
Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse, oldest existing structure in Palm Beach County, built in 1860
Back cover, clockwise from top left:
Baby great egret in the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, west of Boynton Beach
Ramon Blackburn (left) and his twin brother Royce water-ski on Lake Osborne, in central Palm Beach County, 1950
Ella Carver of Jupiter enjoys her ice cream at the 2007 SunFest in West Palm Beach
Horses graze at Palm Beach Point in Wellington, home to some of the world’s premier equestrian facilities
Miss Roosevelt High 1963, Gloria Fretwell (center), with her attendants Ramona Jenkins and Carolyn Harrington
Sundy House in Delray Beach, painted by Brennan M. King
Bill Watson, who grew up in Juno Beach, 1950s
Lincoln C. Holmes’ sailing party, 1903: Holmes was a pioneer boat-builder in West Palm Beach
Horse show: Georgina Bloomberg rides Mila during the $100,000 National Horse Show Grand Prix at the Palm Beach Polo Equestrian Club, 2007
Flier for the West Palm Beach Fishing Club
Two women at the Boynton Inlet: Gustine and Mae Geibel, late 1920s
Mishi, Rokuo and Masa Kamiya; Yamato Colony, 1915
Miss West Palm Beach, Carolyn Stroupe Stambaugh, 1955
Mar-a-Lago, now owned by Donald J. Trump
Majorette Billie Jo McFee Swilley of Delray Beach, 1950s
1927 issue of Palm Beach Life magazine, founded in 1906
Jackie Kennedy waves goodbye at Palm Beach International Airport on her way to Washington for her husband’s inauguration, 1961
Did you make history? Palm Beach County at 100: Our History, Our Home features photos and memories from hundreds of Palm Beach Post readers. Is your name listed here?
Armando Acosta family
Sherman Adler
Anthony family
Sue Van Dyke Bailey
Pat Baldwin
Diane Benedetto
Robert Bertische
Nancy Blaschke
Dudley Blossom III
Jerry Browning
Bowman family
Sam Budnyk
Burkhardt family
Rosanne Bush family
Walt Bylciw
Jane Ann Hadley Caruso
Savana Cary
Jeannette Buss Cearley
Cory J. Ciklin
Patricia Ferner Cobb
Collie family
Robert Corbitt
Jim “Jim Bob” Crabtree
Linda Cullen
T.J. Cunningham family
Cushman family
Bob and Babe Davidoff
Gillian Wimbourne Davis
Sue Day
Thomas Delbeck
Michael Dubiner
Dubois family
Duda family
Honey Duncan
Eckler family
Edward M. Eissey
Scott Eller
Erickson family
Fanjul family
Joe Farish
Katherine Fay
Mickey Foster
Mike Geibel family
Sherri Gilbert
Frank Gillette
Bert Gilmore family
Dr. Murray Gordon
M.E. Gruber family
Gunster law firm
Lauren Hand family
Linda Juretie Hess
Raleigh Hill
Robert Hill
Lincoln Holmes family
Robert Holt
Ray Howard
Ineria Hudnell
Barbara Starkey Hubbard
Carynn Jackson
Gladys Kimbro Smith Jenkins
Jeff Johansen
William E. Johnson
Harry Johnston Jr.
Don Jorden
Roxane F. Karr
Ed and Bob Kassatly
Bill Keeton
Kennedy family
Sharon Koskoff
Mark Lee
Art Leibovit
Curtis Lewis
Florence Lindros family
Lauren Llacera
Mary Lopez
Dr. Catherine Lowe
Kenny Lyman family
Lake Lytal family
Karen Tulino Marcus
Jack McDermott
Zenetta Ward Miller
William Glenn Mize
Kitty Carr Mollenberg
Alice Moore
Jacqueline Morrison
Marvin Mounts family
Martin E. Murphy family
Penny Greenberg Murphy
Mo Mustaine
Nancy Myers family
Chris Noel
Pat Watkins North
Sandy Oakley
Mary Diana Obst
Ginger Pedersen
Karen and Ileana Pentzke
Rebecca Frazier Peterson
Ruth Pompey
James Ponce
Raborn family
John and Joyce Raymond
Colin Raynor
Greg Rice
Michael “Corky” Roche
Judge Edward Rodgers
Kay Rybovich
Fred “Deadeye” Salmon
Lorraine P. Saunders
Alexandra “Sandy” Scavnicky
Shirley and George Schneider
Robert Shalhoub
Penny and Wally Sheltz
Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
Ernest G. Simon
Mark and Robert Simpson
Carolyn Stroupe Stambaugh
Fritz Stein family
Roderick Stevens
Cynthia L. Stowe
Billie Jo McFee Swilley
Ruel P. Tafalla
Dr. Warren P. Tatoul
C. Pfeiffer Trowbridge
Tuppen family
Tami Valentine
Bill Wallace
Bill Watson
Wedgworth family
Elsie Clough Weeks
Greg and Rebecca Weiss
C. Deborah Welch
J.B. Wilson
Horace and Dorothy Wilson
Dorothy McDonald Wilson
Ted Winsberg
Eileen Dalton Wozneski
As always, we invite you to share your own stories and memories of Palm Beach County and Florida in the Your History section of historicpalmbeach.com
Tags: celebrities, schools, store
