News

By Ron Hayes

    BOYNTON BEACH — For more than half a century, Busch’s Seafood on North Ocean Boulevard was a showplace, the only restaurant along A1A between Palm Beach and Delray Beach.
    And Lucy Bergman, who died on April 11 at 82, was its star.
    For 16 years, beginning in 1960, she was the owner and shining spirit behind the popular seaside restaurant.
    “I had no desire to be in the restaurant business,” she told The Coastal Star in 2009. “My husband at the time talked me into buying it. We were just an old wooden building. I called it a saloon.”
    Under her guidance, that old wooden saloon became a landmark where both locals and celebrities gathered for lobsters flown in from Maine and Key lime pies from the lime trees in her back yard just across A1A on Harbour Drive.
    “She was a loving, caring, compassionate, loyal, wonderful friend to people,” said her son, Michael Bergman, of Wellington. “A great mom and a great businesswoman.”
    During her time at Busch’s, Ms. Bergman earned a living, made lifelong friends, and collected stories she could laugh at decades later.
    “I was attacked once by a woman in a wheelchair who came at me swinging her cane,” she remembered. “She’d found one of our matchbooks in her husband’s jacket and thought he was having an affair with me.”
    She laughed. “Well, he was having an affair, but it wasn’t with me.”
    Lucy Ann Theis was born on Feb. 4, 1934, in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. By 16, she had lost both her parents and two brothers and was raised by two older cousins.
    After attending Brown University, she met her husband, Lars Bergman, while working for a doctor in New York City and moved with him to Sweden, where their son was born.
    The family came to Ocean Ridge in 1959. The Bergmans divorced in 1963.
    Ms. Bergman sold the restaurant in 1976, moved to Lake Tahoe briefly, then returned to Boynton Beach and worked as an administrative assistant at U.S. Trust Co. in Palm Beach for 13 years until her retirement in 2002.
    In her later years, she indulged her love of gin rummy, the Miami Dolphins and travel.
    “She loved cruises,” Michael Bergman said. “River cruises. My mom must have gone on 80 cruises.”
    In her final days, he said, his mother made him promise there would be no funeral service.
    Instead, her close friend, Myra Elmore, will arrange for a lunch at the Hurricane Grill, where Ms. Bergman and her friends often met.
    “That sums up my mom,” he said. “She was all about living life, not mourning death.”
    In addition to her son, she is survived by her daughter-in-law, Donna, of Wellington, and grandchildren, Lauren and Tyler of Orlando.
    Donations may be made to Hospice of Palm Beach County Foundation, 5300 East Ave., West Palm Beach, FL 33407.