Junior League of Boca Raton past presidents and other members
gather around a sand castle on the beach.
Photos courtesy of the Junior League of Boca Raton

Junior League Today: Photos

By Ron Hayes

In 1971, a group of 26 young women declared themselves The Junior Service League of Boca Raton and decided the 46-year-old city had been around long enough to deserve a historical society.

Today, that historical society is only the first in countless community projects the organization has nurtured, and the 700 women of the Junior League of Boca Raton are celebrating their own four decades of history.

Jeanne Baur was a charter member and the league’s third president.

“We were all Junior League members from all over the country,” she recalled recently, “and when we moved down here we saw a need. We were a growing town in 1971. IBM was here and we saw the need for all kinds of volunteer projects.”

Next came the challenge of restoring the 1912 Singing Pines house, now the Boca Raton Children’s Museum.

In those early days, the Junior Service League supported puppet shows and consignment shops, the Morikami Museum and Planned Parenthood, the Children’s Home Society  — and on and on.

“Our biggest problem was finding 100 women under 35,” Baur says with a laugh. “We had so many restrictions in those days.”

In 1984 the group was formally accepted to membership in the national body, and the Junior Service League became the Junior League of Boca Raton. The name had changed, but the commitment to service remains.

In 1984, the Boca Raton Junior League 

dropped ‘Service’ from its name, but not

from its core mission. Above: a 1975 clipping
of club news from The Boca Raton News. 

Mayor Susan Whelchel had just moved to Boca Raton from Central Florida in the late 1970s. The mother of four children and a former schoolteacher who couldn’t find a job, she looked for an organization where she could meet new friends and make a contribution to the community. She found the Junior Service League.

“I think without question it was one of the better things I was able to do,” she says today. “It was fulfilling from almost every angle, with opportunities to do things exciting and helpful in the community and at same time to make new friends and have families that got together.”

Katharine Dickenson (left) and Jeanne Baur prepare for an event in the 1980s or ’90s.

When Whelchel sought to start a community garden, the city partnered with the Junior League, and on Oct. 11, “Pave The Way” debuted, a 1½-acre community garden on Northwest Fourth Street. To date, 48 plots have been sold, with each gardener agreeing to donate 10 percent of the growth to the city’s Helping Hands food pantry.

“I believe in partnerships,” Whelchel says. “What I always like best about the league is that, even many years ago, it’s been a strong believer in partnering with other organizations, and therefore having twice the effort to make something good happen.”

In that spirit, its Newman-Craske Grant Library provides help to other nonprofit service organizations in search of grants.

In 2001, the league’s cookbook, Savoring The Moment: Entertaining Without Reservations became the first nonprofit publication to win the prestigious James Beard Award. Since then, it has sold 46,000 copies.

“I’m a member because it’s so organized,” says Kristin Calder, a past president and chair of the league’s 40th anniversary task force. “You become aware of the outreach to our community, and you have a powerful group of women with wonderful resources.”

The Boca league supports In The Pines, helping provide low-income housing for migrant workers.

On Nov. 9, a trailer truck delivered 200,000 diapers to the league’s headquarters, the Vesgo Community Resource Center on Northwest 13th Street, a donation from Huggies to South Florida’s first “diaper bank,” founded by the Junior League.

But despite four decades of service, the Junior League still battles a comically simplistic stereotype. Junior Leaguers, so goes the rap, are pampered young white women who wear white gloves while they “do lunch.”

And The Help hasn’t helped.

In the hit movie version of that blockbuster novel, Bryce Dallas Howard plays Hilly Holbrook, president of the Jackson, Miss., Junior League in 1963, and the most unctuous racist in American literature since Simon Legree.

Andrea and Ed Kornblue and Joan and Ken Robertson
attend a 1985 Junior League Sock Hop.
Images courtesy of the Junior League of Boca Raton

But stay to the end, and you’ll find a credit thanking Jackson’s Junior League for its help in filming The Help.

Today, the Junior League of Boca Raton’s mission statement notes that the group “reaches out to women of all races, religions and national origins who demonstrate an interest in and commitment to voluntarism.”

Today, members must be at least 23, but remain active as long as they like.

“The biggest misconception is that we’re exclusive, only for younger women and ladies of leisure,” says Nancy Dockerty, the current president. “But I’m a member because it’s immensely rewarding to see what Junior League has accomplished.”

Forty years ago, the League’s publication, The Bridge, was an amateur effort, mimeographed and stapled. Today, The Bridge  is a glossy, professionally produced quarterly that devotes most of its space to volunteer efforts. 

When The Boca Raton News reported on the league in 1975, the president was referred to as “Mrs. Dan Burns.”

Today, many of the league’s members are working or professional women, including charter member Jeanne Baur, who still sells real estate in town. Dockerty is a director in a commercial mortgage company, and Calder is the public relations director for the Bethesda Hospital Foundation.

Rather than shy away from the stereotypes, Junior Leaguers are exploiting them with clever slogan.

“We’ve traded our white gloves for work gloves,” one ad proclaims. And “Let’s Do Lunch ... And Make a Difference” touts the League’s work feeding needy children.

Today’s Junior League isn’t even uniquely American anymore.    

Founded in 1901 by social activist Mary Harriman, the Association of Junior Leagues International boasts 155,000 members in 292 Junior Leagues in the U.S., Canada, Mexico and the United Kingdom.

And the Junior League of Boca Raton serves an area from Lake Worth south to Deerfield Beach, including the island communities. President Dockerty lives in Delray Beach and former president Calder in Boynton Beach.

Baur looks back on it all with pride — and amazement.

“The projects are bigger and more expensive,” she says, “and the money we raised through different fundraisers — it’s mindboggling. It’s just been a very meaningful part of my life, knowing that you’re helping people and the accomplishment of seeing this grow into what it’s become. We early girls are just amazed at what has happened to the Junior League of Boca Raton.

“We are amazed.”                  

In addition to the natural areas, Elisabeth Hoffman
is proud of the community gardens in Pearl City.

 Photo by Jerry Lower

By Steve Plunkett

Elisabeth Hoffman is a Florida master naturalist, drives a Honda Civic hybrid, volunteers in Gumbo Limbo Nature Center’s butterfly garden and is one of the prime movers in a plan to restore Rutherford Park’s mangroves and canoe trails.

The longtime city resident also labors in the Pearl City Community Garden and attends numerous meetings of the City Council and the Greater Boca Raton Beach and Park District to voice her approval, or lack of it, on plans for the future.

“It’s a passion for me. I’m really all about community and building community,” Hoffman says.

But her calendar is slightly less packed this fall following her recent resignation as chairman of the city’s Environmental Advisory Board after 22 near-continuous years on the panel.

“Only credit me with 14 years,’’ she says of the certificate she received, explaining that she neglected to apply for reappointment after seven years, then was returned to the board when her replacement was a no-show for three months.

“I am just leaving the board, not my areas of caring concern, my foothold in the city or any of my other volunteer service,” she wrote in her resignation letter.

Hoffman said she’s proudest of her Environmental Advisory Board efforts to fine a builder for unauthorized construction near the Yamato Scrub, which the county and city purchased in 1994 and 1997, as well as guarding the beaches through the board’s review of projects on or near the coastal construction control line.

She worked to persuade voters to approve referendums in 1990 and 1999 to buy environmentally sensitive properties. And she helped craft ordinances to further protect the purchases.

Hoffman also spent nine years as a citizen member of the county’s Natural Areas Management Advisory Committee. 

She left college early to care for an ailing mother, and then worked a succession of college library jobs at the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia and Princeton, where she met her future husband. 

The library work had a lasting effect. ‘’I don’t use a Kindle because I want to read books and turn pages,’’ Hoffman says.

In 1969, the newlyweds moved to Boca Raton, where they would have three daughters and a son. Later she and her husband, a mathematics professor at Florida Atlantic University, divorced with her keeping their house on Northwest Fifth Avenue.

“One of the first things I did when I got here was get involved in buying [land for] Spanish River Park,” Hoffman recalls.

She has three gardens at her home, one “sort of a U-pick” for neighbors in the front yard and one for butterflies at the side.

Hoffman traces her affinity for the outdoors to a childhood in New Jersey woodlands near the Delaware Water Gap. 

“Our house was like right at the edge of the glacier front rim,” she says. “My dad worked in New York City and knocked himself out weekends gardening and being out in the woods. And that’s what took for me.”

She held a variety of office manager and newspaper jobs over the years, as well as positions at the Nature Conservancy and with Otto Bettmann of Bettmann Archives fame. In 1988 she earned a degree in English at FAU.

Last month she completed a special master naturalist course on biodiversity at Rookery Bay in Collier County, complete with field trips to a panther preserve, Estero and the Pepper Ranch Preserve in Immokalee.

Even more recently she rescued a capsized canoe at Gumbo Limbo to turn into a planter at the Pearl City garden. 

“It’s down there in all its orange glory,” she says.          Ú

The Ritz-Carlton Palm Beach

By Mary Thurwachter

When Forbes Travel Guide (formerly Mobil Travel Guide) revealed its 54th listing of five-star hotels last month, Florida had two winners and both are here on A1A.

One is the Ritz-Carlton, Palm Beach, which is actually in Manalapan. The other is the Four Seasons Resort in Palm Beach. Each won five stars last year. 

“The Ritz-Carlton, Palm Beach along with our Eau Spa represents a unique philosophy of barefoot elegance, which provides guests with a glamorous and memorable vacation experience,” said Michael King, general manager of the Ritz-Carlton, Palm Beach. “The hotel continues to thrive as the benchmark hotel for the brand and is elevating the Palm Beach vacation experience. 

“This accomplishment is a true testament to the hard work and dedication of our world-class ladies and gentlemen, who take a tremendous amount of pride in being the best in the industry, consequently creating Ritz-Carlton guests for life.”

Colin Clark, general manager of Four Seasons, said it was “an incredible honor for the resort to again receive both the Forbes Five Star Award and the Five Diamond Award from AAA. Both awards honor our team members for the work they do daily to create an exceptionally personalized and memorable experience for each and every guest.”

The Four Seasons Palm Beach

Forbes put The Breakers on the four-star list this year. But top honors keep coming for this Italian Renaissance-style beauty. Last month, Fodor’s gave The Breakers one of its first-ever worldwide Top Hotel Awards.

“It’s more than an opulent hotel,” Fodor’s editors wrote. “It’s a modern resort packed with amenities. … It cossets guests in the Palm Beach mystique.”

“We are delighted to be recognized by Fodor’s as one of the world’s legendary hotels, said Ann Margo Peart, public relations manager for The Breakers. “With the extraordinary commitment of our owners, who are descendants of Henry Flagler, we’re fortunate to be able to continually invest $20 million into the resort every year.”

The Breakers was founded in 1896 by Flagler, who set the standard for modern American resorts of his day. Today, this completely renewed resort offers a variety of modern amenities, and has earned numerous accolades for its commitment to the environment, community and its employees.

Forbes named two Palm Beach restaurants to its four-star list: Café Boulud and the Restaurant (at the Four Seasons). 

Spas at The Breakers and The Boca Raton Resort & Club received four-star ratings from Forbes.                               Ú

Refurbishing Red Reef Park’s three-decade-old boardwalk wound up costing $129,600 more for additional support beams and other timber, plus $23,758 to make a beach ramp accessible to the disabled.

Engineers examining the dune crossovers to prepare the bid could not see the covered support timber, Buddy Parks, the city’s deputy recreation services director, said in a letter to the Greater Boca Raton Beach and Park District.

“As the old boardwalk was demolished, extensive wear and rot were discovered,” Parks said.

The new ramp for the disabled is on the crossover east of Red Reef’s entry gatehouse, with the access point just north of the “rock pile,” Parks said.

He noted that even with the changes, the project came in $388,000 under budget. 

Boca Raton operates and maintains Red Reef Park; the Beach and Park District reimburses the city.

 — Steve Plunkett

Construction for a $62 million, 384-unit rental apartment and townhouse complex called Broadstone at North Boca Village has begun next to the Caldwell Theatre in the old Levitz Plaza.

Permits and plans for the 17-acre site at 7801 N. Federal Highway were approved by the Boca Raton City Council during the summer, and a  groundbreaking ceremony was held early in November.

Alliance Residential is in charge of construction and will build one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments and 30 townhouses. Rents are anticipated to range from $1,100 to $2,400, depending on size.

Broadstone at North Boca Village will be a gated community with a clubhouse, gym, business center, cyber café, putting green, gazebo, children’s play area and a wine cellar.

Construction is expected to be complete in March 2013.

As part of the project, Caldwell Theatre, just north of the complex, will gain 100 parking places. 

— Staff report

The new Boca Raton Garden Club ornament highlights the 

The Boca Raton Garden Club released its 18th annual holiday ornament, a commemoration of the Pearl City section of the city.

The Garden Club’s 24-karat-gold-plated 2011 ornament depicts the Tree of Knowledge, a huge banyan on Northeast 12th Street that was a gathering place in the black community started in 1915.

The Boca Raton subdivision, designated a historic district in 2002, is along the Florida East Coast Railway tracks north of downtown.

The ornament, which sells for $16, was presented to City Council Nov. 22 and sales started at the tree-lighting ceremony Nov. 25. 

See www.bocaratongardenclub.org for more information.

— Margie Plunkett

Chris Evert (top) taunts Burn Notice star Jeffrey Donovan (above) after lobbing a ball at him during last month’s Chris Evert/Raymond James Pro-Celebrity Tennis Classic at the Delray Beach Tennis Center.  Photos by Jerry Lower

By Thom Smith

With a lot of community support and a little help from tennis and show-biz friends, Chris Evert raised another $800,000 with her Chris Evert/Raymond James Pro-Celebrity Tennis Classic at the Delray Beach Tennis Center and the Boca Raton Resort and Club. Since its inaugural in 1988, the event has raised $20 million, all of which has gone to charities in South Florida.

Tennis stars John and Peter McEnroe and Murphy Jensen and film/TV stars Christian Slater (Breaking In), the recently slimmed comedian Jon Lovitz, Burn Notice’s Jeffrey Donovan and Today’s Hoda Kotb added luster to the weekend. Proceeds go to Ounce of Prevention, which assists pregnant and parenting women who are trying to overcome substance-abuse problems.

Andy Mill (above) has won two gold medals from The Franklin Awards for his book, A Passion for Tarpon. Photos provided

Evert’s ex-, champion fisherman and former Olympic skier Andy Mill, can now add another line to his shingle: award-winning author. Mill received two gold medals from The Benjamin Franklin Awards, one of the more prestigious accolades in independent publishing. His book, A Passion for Tarpon, was named best recreation/sports title and best regional title, the first book about fishing ever to be so honored. 

“This important new book, besides being visually stunning and a fascinating read, is an excellent resource to educate anglers and policymakers on a global scale; we hope helping to guide legislation and sound management supporting their conservation for future generations,” said Dr. Jerry Ault, University of Miami marine biology and fisheries professor and founding member/scientific advisor of the Bonefish and Tarpon Trust.

Mill, on the other hand, is amazed that he was able to bring it off. “It’s insane; I’m not an author, I’m a skier,” he said, noting that helping to write scripts for the fishing show he hosted on the Outdoor Life Network was nothing like writing a book.

“I needed something to pull me out of the hole I was in after my divorce and this publisher asked me to do this book,” said Mill, just back in Boca home after summering in Aspen. “It took me five years. Debra and this book pulled me out of that hole.”

Debra is the former Debra Harvick, whom he met two years ago in Aspen, asked her to marry on their third date and finally tied the knot a year ago in Aspen. 

“She’s my best friend,” Mill said. “We ride our bikes on A1A and when we go bow-hunting for elk in Colorado, she’s right there alongside me.”  

Once again, the great pigout, officially known as Best of Boca & Beyond  was a huge success. Guests didn’t seem to mind the wait as they lined up at stations in the courtyard at Boca Center for tantalizing tidbits from several dozen local restaurants. Proceeds from the 12th annual event, sponsored by Boca Raton magazine, went to Hospice of Palm Beach County. 

One of the highlights was provided by a restaurant that wouldn’t open for another week. Servers for Brio, which commands a sprawling 8,400-square-foot space formerly occupied by two restaurants, were hard-pressed to meet demand for the Milk Chocolate Caramel Cake dolchino. You’ll find it in the dictionary under “decadent” — chocolate cake, layered with milk chocolate ganache, caramel, rich chocolate frosting and vanilla whipped cream. At a decadent $2.95, I’ll just order three and skip dinner.

TV news. It ain’t what it used to be. This is the age of gushy recitation, gratuitous cleavage, breathy and fawning interviews; reporters who don’t know the difference between a crash and a forced landing; weather girls who don’t know a typhoon from a hurricane; sanctimonious sportscasters given to pontificating instead of reporting. 

Jim Sackett did know the difference. At 66, he also knew it was time to go. Sackett signed off his last newscast at WPTV-Channel 5, at 6:30 p.m. Nov. 23, and no doubt the managements at the area’s other two network stations gave thanks. For 33 years, he helped WPTV-Channel 5 dominate the market like no other station in the nation. For those who follow, we hope they learned a few things: his sense of place, his knowledge of the community and, most importantly, that ultimately, it’s about the story, not the storyteller. 

For love or …? One-time Delray Beach businessman and two-time failed political candidate Nick Loeb says he won’t run for the U.S. Senate. Loeb had been interested in the seat held by Democrat Bill Nelson.

The son of a Reagan-appointed ambassador, Loeb lost a Delray Beach commission race in 2007 and abandoned a Florida Senate race in 2009 after his wife filed for divorce. He then popped up in California, where he became friends with Modern Family star Sofia Vergara, who offered aid and comfort after he was banged up in a car crash. 

Loeb had said last summer that he would decide about another campaign after the Emmy awards in September. On Nov. 17, shortly after Fox News reported Loeb would run — with the blessing of Vergara — he held a brief news conference in Miami Beach. With Vergara at his side, he announced he would not run. “I’m still very hurt from last year’s accident,” he explained. 

Maybe the pain is caused by bad odds. Republican hopefuls include local Adam Hasner, the former state House majority leader, former U.S. Senate appointee George LeMieux and most recently U.S. Rep. Connie Mack from Cape Coral. Mack has name recognition: Old-timers think he’s his father (the former senator) and old-old-timers think he had something to do with baseball. 

South County residents who remember Prezzo, rejoice! 

“It’s like the son of Prezzo,” restaurant mogul Dennis Max said of his next project. He plans to open Assaggio del Forno — that’s Italian for “Taste of the Oven” — in early January in the space once occupied by Bistro Zenith in Regency Court at the corner of Jog and Yamato. 

Prezzo was a popular Italian bistro that Max and then partner Burt Rapoport opened nearly two decades ago on Glades Road just east of the turnpike. Assaggio del Forno expands some of its concepts and introduces some new ones.

“We’ll have an Italian wood-burning oven to make artisanal pizzas,” Max said. “But the menu will cover all of Italy, not just the south, and it will be mainly small plates and smaller plates. You can sort of graze through. We encourage people to get a few things and share them.”

In Mizner Park, Max’s Grille is enjoying its best year ever, and Max’s Harvest, which opened in Delray’s Pineapple Grove in June, has exceeded expectations, said Max, who has added live music with “Jazz off the Avenue” every Friday featuring saxophonist  Will Bridges. 

In mid-December, Max plans to open another Italian restaurant in Deerfield Beach.  In the South Federal Highway space formerly occupied by Marcello’s, Frank & Dino’s will offer a culinary salute to Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. 

“It’s where the Rat Pack eats,” Max says. “We’re paying homage to that whole era — drinking, partying, a convivial atmosphere and good food. Italian-American classics — we’ll serve those dishes in their glory, surrounded by pictures of all those stars, with live music on the weekend.”

A movie extra with extra motive. Jamie Telchin, president of development for LXR Luxury Resorts & Hotels, which owns the Boca Raton Resort & Club, The Beach Club, would love nothing more than to sell the remaining 12 units in the adjacent One Thousand Ocean, just north of the Boca Inlet. So why not put it in a movie?

After a few phone calls and faster than a hopped-up BMW, the deal was cut to use the complex as the high-rise star of Parker, starring Jennifer Lopez and Jason Statham and directed by Taylor Hackford (An Officer and a Gentleman, Ray).

Filming occurred in late September, but only recently were details about the secret location revealed. The story is set in Palm Beach, and some exterior shots were filmed on South Ocean Boulevard, Worth and Peruvian avenues and the bridges across Lake Worth. But Hackford’s request to shoot at Mar-a-Lago was nixed because Palm Beach doesn’t allow commercial filming in residential areas. So instead of Donald Trump’s grand old lady, moviegoers will see Telchin’s baby when the film opens next fall.

Lopez plays a real estate agent who becomes involved with Statham, a thief planning a heist at a Palm Beach auction. (It has elements of several Palm Beach capers. A $4 million safe-deposit box robbery at the Palm Beach Towers condo in 1976 was never solved.)

Telchin’s wife, Jessica, and sales associates Maria Scarola and Kimberly Gambino also served as “extras.” During a break, Telchin gave Statham  a tour of the 8,770-square-foot penthouse.

Price: about $15 million. Who knows? Everyone’s a prospect!

Thom Smith is a freelance writer. Contact him at thomsmith@ymail.com.

Tiger sharks and hammerheads can swim a little easier beginning Jan. 1. That’s when the harvest of three species of hammerhead sharks and tiger sharks becomes illegal in Florida waters. The hammerhead species protected include great, scalloped and smooth.

Also prohibited will be the possession, sale and exchange of these top predators — although catch and release in state waters will be allowed and the new law does not limit catching the sharks in adjacent federal waters.

In 2010, concerned citizens, shark researchers and shark anglers sparked this regulation change by expressing to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission a desire to see increased protections of sharks. 

Florida waters offer essential habitat for young sharks, which is important for species such as the slow-to-reproduce tiger shark, which takes about 15 years to reach maturity, according to the FWC.

— Staff report

Visitors will have to drive to Fairchild Tropical Botanical
Garden to see orchids like this paphiopedilum. Photo by Jerry Lower

By Mary Jane Fine

For Pamela Salomone, the visit was probably a last opportunity, and soon to be a lost opportunity: seeking yet another orchid in the gift shop of the American Orchid Society. It was a mid-November morning, two weeks prior to shutdown, after which the AOS — based in Florida since 1984, in Delray Beach since 2001 — moves lock, stock and orchids to Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden in Coral Gables. 

“I’m gonna miss this location,” said Salomone, of Boynton Beach, bending to read the price tag on a deep purple Phalaenopsis with broad, shiny leaves: $67.50, a bit steeper than she had in mind. “It’s been a treasure. I come here every couple of months and pick out an orchid. I usually spend about $20. I have about 100 or so.”

Spending has been a concern for the AOS, too — a major one — and it prompted the uprooting. Declining membership (16,000 in July 2009; 14,000 less than a year later) and dwindling donations foretold a gloomy future. 

“The challenges that we have seen so far this fiscal year have been unprecedented as the society finds itself having to operate without reserves or moneys to borrow against,” read the minutes of a trustee meeting from April 2010.

Reactions to the move have been both bitter and sweet.

“I usually smile,” said a rueful Arlen Lavitt, a gift shop volunteer, making her mouth turn down. “It’s a tough time.”

“What’s great about this [AOS and Fairchild] partnership is that 350,000 people will be able to enjoy these beautiful new plants,” said an exuberant Nannette Zapata, Fairchild’s chief operating officer, referring to the number of annual visitors to the garden, “and we’re expecting attendance to double in the next 10 years.”

Plans for transferring the society’s 3,500 plants from its 3.5-acre site to its new 83-acre home remained somewhat in flux, Zapata said: maybe multiple back-and-forths by van, maybe one big truck outfitted with hooks for the hanging plants, floor space for those in vessels. 

Plans for the society’s employees were less certain; no one could, or would, speculate on who might be invited south. 

Enid Torgersen, volunteer coordinator for the society in Delray, said she will miss the orchids terribly and will certainly go to Fairchild — “To visit? Sure. And a lot of people have said they’ll go down there.” But Torgersen isn’t planning on working there, which would require a daily three-hour roundtrip drive. She has 500 orchids of her own and runs an orchid business, Home Health Care for Your Orchids. 

Like Torgersen, orchid-o-philes who want to visit their favorite blooms can motor down to the Gables. Fans of the society’s spectacular botanical garden, though, will have to find another venue. The Visitors Center building and botanical garden and greenhouse were sold to the Sandra C. Slomin Foundation and Family Center for Autism and Related Disabilities, which will use the grounds for its clients “as healing gardens, for stimulating the senses,” Zapata said.

The society’s staff and volunteers will miss those surroundings, too. 

Development manager Susan Wayman called the garden “everybody’s favorite lunch spot.” But she and Zapata prefer looking ahead. By December of next year, Fairchild Garden’s new 12,500-square-foot conservatory will open, to welcome a kaleidoscope of hummingbirds and butterflies and orchids, the ones not already clinging to Garden trees. 

“They’re such incredible plants,” said Zapata, who learned to love orchids because, “I could get them to bloom. People think that when they stop blooming, they’ve died. But they come back the next year. ”

Peggy Rosenthal, an Orchid Society volunteer for the past three years, harbors mixed feelings about it all. She understands the need for the transfer, but can’t help feeling a bit melancholy. 

On that recent November morning, seated behind the Visitors Center front desk, she smiled warmly, then told a departing visitor, “I’d say come back and see us, but …”          Ú

Isable Gelb, wearing her husband David’s cap, is offered well wishes by other veterans. 

Photo by Jerry Lower

Hundreds of people ranging from WWII, Korean, Viet Nam and Gulf Coast vets to students from Boca Raton Community High School band and the Jr ROTC,  and marching and choral groups took part in a Veterans Day Commemorative Ceremony on Nov. 11th at the Boca Raton Cemetary.  

Spacious interior views of the planned 42,000-square-foot library at the old Causeway Lumber property showed off an area with 25-foot ceilings, circulation desk and even a self-checkout desk.

Ian Nestler of architect PGAL presented some of the newer views in an update at the ninth public workshop on the proposal. 

The interior renderings, not yet complete, showed a theme replicated from Gumbo Limbo featuring symbols of bubbles and turtles. 

Before the library presentation at the Nov. 8 meeting, Friends of the Library presented its $250,000 donation to the project. The money will help expand the size of the on-site bookstore.

 — Margie Plunkett

By Steve Plunkett

The consultant designing a park at Ocean Strand will earn an extra $16,000 to review when other beachfront parks are open, what demands they meet and how many people use them, then compare those numbers to national standards.

The Greater Boca Raton Beach and Park District approved the additional expense at its Nov. 21 meeting. Curtis + Rogers Design Studio Inc.’s contract already guaranteed the consultant a little more than $80,000 to develop a master plan for Ocean Strand, including an inventory of what nearby parks offer but not the specific days and hours.

“There may be things we don’t want to do,” District Chairman Dennis Frisch said. “We’re trying not to duplicate services.”

Curtis + Rogers will compare the numbers it gathers to National Recreation and Parks Association standards for acres of parkland per unit of population and specific recreational activities and/or facilities per unit of population.

The menu of park amenities in Boca Raton keeps changing. Since Curtis + Rogers started work in March, the city has received letters of interest on developing its Wildflower property next to Silver Palm Park and the county has developed a plan to restore mangroves and canoe trails at Lake Wyman.

The county won competitive grants from the Florida Inland Navigation District, which wants sea grass beds included in the project to mitigate against sea grass it might damage while dredging the Intracoastal Waterway.

“The county’s still waiting to obtain all its permits,” County Commissioner Steven Abrams said in late November.

Boca Raton asked Abrams to find another way to fund the project besides asking the city or the Beach and Park District to come up with $419,000 as a local share, but Abrams said no other money is available.

“In years past, the commission had discretionary funds and there were other fund sources that don’t exist anymore,” he said.

Meanwhile, the city has drafted an amendment to its comprehensive plan to label the 15-acre Ocean Strand site between Spanish River and Red Reef parks recreational instead of residential. 

Beach and Park District attorney Art Koski said the city will apply for the land-use change by itself rather than include the district as a partner.

The city and the beach district are also waiting for the 4th District Court of Appeal to set a date for oral arguments in a citizens’ lawsuit seeking a special election banning private clubs on public land on the barrier island. The appellate court should render a decision a month or two after the hearing, Koski said.

Ocean Strand was discussed at Beach and Park District and city meetings after a 2009 Florida-Penn Cos. proposal for a members-only cabana club there to augment a luxury hotel planned for downtown. Neighbors were shocked to learn Boca Raton’s comprehensive plan labels the parcel residential.

The beach and park district bought the Ocean Strand property in 1994 for $11.9 million, but never developed it.  Ú

By Steve Plunkett

Four lawyers — all representing other municipalities — want to be the town’s next attorney.

Highland Beach commissioners will interview the candidates Dec. 8 for the successor to Tom Sliney, who resigned effective Dec. 31 after Commissioner Dennis Sheridan said he wanted to find out how much other firms would charge to represent the town.

Sliney, who has been Highland Beach’s attorney since 1973, is given a monthly retainer of $9,000 plus costs. His firm, Buckingham, Doolittle and Burroughs LLP, did not bid to continue the contract.

The lawyers who want the job are:

• Tom Baird, town attorney for Jupiter and code enforcement prosecutor for Lake Park. 

Baird, who earned his law degree from Nova Southeastern University in Davie in 1984, represented Highland Beach in its successful lawsuit to delay the county from building Milani Park until 2020.

Baird’s colleague, John “Skip” Randolph, is town attorney for Gulf Stream, Palm Beach and Jupiter Island, which their firm’s bid notes are “much like Highland Beach, in that each of these communities enjoy both oceanfront and Intracoastal waterway properties with high real estate values.”

Baird wants $195 an hour to represent the town.

• Brad Biggs, town attorney for South Palm Beach, Golf and Royal Palm Beach and assistant town attorney for Lantana. 

Biggs’ firm notes it successfully defended South Palm Beach against an appeal by a bicyclist who was cited for riding more than two abreast. “The regulation of bicycle riders along State Road A1A continues to be an issue of utmost importance to many seaside communities,” the firm’s bid notes.

Biggs, with a degree from Nova’s law school in 1998, seeks $165 an hour for general representation of Highland Beach. 

Among his firm’s colleagues: Manalapan Town Attorney Trela White and Lantana Town Attorney Max Lohman.

• Ken Spillias, town attorney for Ocean Ridge and onetime Palm Beach County commissioner.

Spillias, who has a degree from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, also represented the Ballantrae condominium in its successful quest to be annexed into Gulf Stream.

He would charge $260 an hour or set up a retainer system like the one he has with Ocean Ridge, which pays him $6,000 a month.

• Glen Torcivia, town attorney for Sewall’s Point in Martin County, Palm Springs and Belle Glade. 

Torcivia, who got a law degree from Union University in Albany, N.Y., in 1979, started his law firm after a five-year stint as an assistant Palm Beach County attorney.

He wants $195 an hour if selected.

The firms seem willing to lower their fees if necessary to land Highland Beach’s business.

“The firm is eager to represent the town and would not allow the hourly rate to preclude its representation should its standard rate be of issue,” Baird’s proposal says.

Spillias says his firm knows local governments face declining tax revenues. 

“To that end, the firm expresses its willingness to freely negotiate its rates in the event the town selects us,” his bid says.

“The position of town attorney is one that demands a high level of integrity and trust and since any firm selected serves at the pleasure of the Town Commission, we believe that  a letter of engagement is sufficient,” he wrote.               Ú

Dancer, sailor, traveler and much more:
Joan Wolf is one of few female yacht
commodores in the country. Photo by Jerry Lower

Joan Wolf has always been one to put her best foot forward. 

The founder of a ballet company with 40 dancers and a ballet school with 500 students a week, she acquired a keen business sense over the years, while honing her leadership and communication skills. She already had charm and self-discipline.

Her skill set and character traits took her to many interesting places during her career. 

“The world of ballet is small,” she explains. “So when George Balanchine invited dancers to network with him in New York, I would meet with other major players in the world of classical ballet. With Mary Ellen Cabot and Joan Kennedy, Violette Verdy and I went to China as guests of the government to coach dancers. Later, I was invited to go to Russia with prominent ballet dancers to network for a month with the Bolshoi.

“I also went to Paris, Greece and Israel to network. That’s how I became titled ‘ambassador.’ ”

Dancers from New York City Ballet came to perform in her dance company and she knew Mikhail Baryshnikov even before he became a celebrity (“He was a sweet, quiet, charming young man,” she said.) And, in the men’s classes at her school, she taught ballet to hockey players and members of a football team coached by Bill Parcell.

“My life has been magical,” she said.

These days, she has exchanged her leotards and toe shoes for a navy-blue-and-white nautical look, and the title “commodore” has been added to her list of accomplishments. 

Soon after moving to the Yacht & Racquet Club of Boca Raton, husband Ken started the Yachtsmen’s Club and was one its first commodores. Now, it’s Joan’s turn. She was elected fleet captain a few years ago, and rose through the ranks to rear commodore and vice commodore to commodore. She is one of two lady commodores in Florida, she believes.

In her new position, she has already set the year’s agenda of meetings, social events and boat trips for the Yachtsmen’s Club. At her first event, an opening dinner in November, attendance was larger than expected  — a real show of support, she says —  and, this coming year, she’s committed to contributing not only her business skills, but her creative touch as well. 

— Christine Davis

Q. Where did you grow up and go to school?

A. I grew up in Richmond. I’m a fourth-generation Virginian. I attended William and Mary College.

Q. What are some highlights of your life?

A. I was a member of the Richmond Ballet Company. I started the Joan Wolf Ballet Company and the Joan Wolf Ballet School, where I was the teacher, choreographer, producer and director for 30 years. My students have become professional dancers in major dance companies all over the world. I am an ambassador from the world of ballet and I’ve coached dancers in Russia, China, Paris, Israel and Greece.  

I am married to Ken Weisberg and I have two children, Eric and Elizabeth, and one grandchild, Sarah.  I am also an entrepreneur, civic leader, writer and consultant and I am listed in the Who’s Who of American Women.

Q. How did you choose to make your home in Boca Raton?

A. Ken and I moved to Florida 22 years ago, following good friends who lived at Yacht & Racquet Club of Boca Raton.

Q. What do people not know about you that you wish they would?

A. I support the arts, which is a natural fit considering my background. My husband and I are patrons of the Boca Museum, where I take classes. We are on the boards of the former Boca Symphonic Pops Orchestra and Dance Library of Israel. We’re Keeper of the Gate patrons of the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem and we volunteer at Boca Hospital. 

Along with Ken, who is a Coast Guard auxiliary coxswain, we own a 40-foot Searay vessel, the She Wolf. We live at the Yacht & Racquet Club of Boca Raton, which has a marina of its own. I was raised on the water, so becoming involved with boating was natural for me. 

I lead 75 vessels housed at Yacht & Racquet Club on excursions to Palm Beach or South to Key West. We also do educational seminars on boating safety and engage speakers about boating in general. 

I bicycle and I continue to workout in fitness classes — Zumba, Pilates, etc.

Q. What is your favorite destination and why do you like traveling there?

A. We travel to Alaska where my grandchild lives.

Q. What is your favorite part about living in Boca Raton?

A. The weather suits our clothes.

Q. What music do you listen to when you need inspiration? When you want to relax? 

A. My life has been filled with classical music and I still enjoy it. I also like to listen to Barbra Streisand, Barry Manilow and Carol King, especially her Tapestry album.

Q. Have you had mentors in your life? Individuals who have inspired your life decisions?

A. My mother was my best inspiration and mentor.

Q. Do you have a favorite quote that inspires your decisions?

A. My mother taught me, “If you look for the good in people you will find it.” I try to live by that philosophy. I miss her terribly. She passed away 20 years ago when I was coaching dancers in Beijing. 

Q. Who or what makes you laugh?

A. My husband, Ken, has a great sense of humor. He still makes me laugh (and cry) after being together 30 years.

The Spirit of Giving Network, 

Blacktie-South Florida

FAU Living Room Theaters

Barbara Schmidt (left), Schmidt Family Foundation; Lucy Carr, PNC Bank; Boca Raton Mayor Susan Whelchel; Betsi Kassebaum, The Center for Strategic Philanthropy and Civic Engagement; Karen Krumholtz, Spirit of Giving Network; and Ginny Fujino, Blacktie-South Florida. The event was Oct. 26.

Florence Fuller Announces $1 Million 

Gift for West Center Campus

Florence Fuller Center, Boca Raton

Harold and Mary Ann Perper’s recent donation will serve as a lead gift to kick off a Capital Campaign to build a Student Activity Center for FFCDC’s west campus in Boca Raton. 

Filming of ‘Parker’

One Thousand Ocean, Boca Raton

 One Thousand Ocean was one of the sites used to film the movie Parker in October. Shown next door at the Boca Raton Resort & Club’s Beach Club are (left) Jennifer Lopez, Kim Gambino, Jessica and Jamie Telchin, Maria Scarola, and Jason Statham.

The Boca Raton Historical Society’s 

Toasts, Tastes & Trolleys

Boca Raton Resort & Club

The first Toasts, Tastes & Trolleys Oct.14 began at the Boca Raton Resort & Club with hors d’oeuvres and wine, then guests boarded trolleys bound for fun.  Pictured are event chairwomen (left) Lindy Harvey, Dawn Zook, Debbie Abrams and Liz Grace.

Boca Raton Regional Hospital’s 8th Annual 

Go Pink Luncheon

Boca Raton Resort & Club

Gulf Stream School Parent Child Golf Tournament

St. Andrew’s Club

The Fimiani Family: L to R: Joseph and Vincent with their parents Cristy and Mike

                                   Dried salt covers the floor and walls of the Salt Suite treatment room. Photo provided

By Paula Detwiller

What do the words “salt therapy” bring to mind? A handful of salty chips? An exfoliating foot scrub? A salt-rimmed margarita at the end of a trying day?

All valid interpretations. But if you follow health and fitness trends, you might also recognize salt therapy as a nonmedical treatment for easing respiratory and skin conditions — one that’s been practiced for centuries in eastern Europe and is now catching on in the U.S. 

Salt therapy, also known as halotherapy, involves breathing air infused with microscopic particles of mineral-rich salt. It’s based on early European observations that people who spent time in salt mines and natural salt caves suffered fewer respiratory problems than the general population. Today, doctors in Europe send patients to natural salt caves — or salt rooms designed to mimic the caves — for relief from asthma, bronchitis and allergies, as well as skin ailments such as eczema.

South Florida’s first salt therapy spa, the Salt Suite, opens this month at 3100 S. Federal Highway in Delray Beach. Owners Elliot and Jessica Helmer of coastal Delray were kind enough to give me a tour and a trial session. It would be a good test; I was recovering from a head cold that had plugged up my sinuses.

My first question for the Helmers: How is this different from sitting at the beach?

“Salt air at the beach has a lot of moisture, so the salt can only reach your upper airways,” Elliot says. “Our salt room is dry, so the salt penetrates deep into your lungs. Also, we use Dead Sea salt, which has healing minerals in addition to sodium chloride.”

They show me the machine that grinds the salt to the size of 1 to 5 micrometers and gently blows it into the salt room. “This makes the room three times more sterile than an operating room,” says Jessica. “The dry salt aerosol is pulled across the room and out. Never recycled. It’s a pure, anti-bacterial environment.”

She opens the door. I step into a white salt “sandbox” with salt-coated walls, white leather recliners, dim lights and meditative music. Settling into a recliner, I close my eyes and inhale deeply. The air has no smell or taste.

I sense a mild stinging in the back of my throat, like when a little ocean water gets up your nose. I decide it’s a good thing. I ponder what Elliot told me about cyclists in Canada who visit salt rooms to clear out their lungs the day before a big race. And how insurance companies in Russia cover the cost of salt therapy  — unlike U.S. health insurers.

A 45-minute session at the Salt Suite costs $45 for adults and $35 for children, who use a smaller, toy-filled salt room. The facility also has a dry-salt-aerosolized yoga room.

“We’re not doctors,” Elliot says. “We’re here to provide an alternative treatment that will give people relief from their symptoms.” Because salt therapy can boost the immune system, the couple hopes their new business will help people save money on costly prescription medications.

Driving home, I realize my sinuses are clear for the first time in a week. I can breathe easily and fully. The dry salt air seems to have nudged my cold away.

Paula Detwiller is a freelance writer and lifelong fitness junkie. Find her at www.pdwrites.com.

Rosa Santos trims up a shih tzu at her Boca Raton pet salon, Joni’s Grooming. 

Photo by Jerry Lower

By Tim Norris

Through the picture window, two faces play to the parking lot: the canine, looking straight on at passersby with wide eyes and wet nose, and the human, standing behind with attentive brows and, on eye contact, a break-of-dawn smile.

That doggy in the window, the one with the raggedy tail, is Molly, a chow mix, unfolded now across an elevated grooming table, and the one carefully trimming that tail with deft strokes of a long barber’s scissors is Rosangela Santos, known to most as “Rosa.” 

Her story, of child labor and lost love and painful illness, does not come from a happy children’s rhyme. Suffering in her life, though, she says, has been eased by angels, leavened with blessings, always countered by good work. 

She is, at the moment, singing, and Molly seems mellow with the music. The window showcases a shifting gallery of pets, their features most often enfolded by hair: poodles and Pomeranians, Yorkies, corgis and shih tzus, terriers and toys, bigger dogs, too. Their groomer provides a steady and sunny presence, and few who view Rosa have any clue what she endured to get here and stay.   

On this weekday afternoon, she is enduring the howl and whine of a blower, for after-bath fluffing, and then of a clipped-hair-scarfing shop vac, brandished by assistant Elyel Barreto.

“Imagine listening to that for 45 years,” says Rosa, who is now 58, and she shrugs and smiles.

Moments later, in a narrow room to her right that ends in a bathtub, Barreto is introducing a cockapoo named Angel to bathwater and shampoo. Known to many as “Elio” and to some former classmates at John I. Leonard in West Palm and then Boynton Beach High and then Olympic Heights in Boca as “LOL,” he was born, as Rosa was, in Brazil. He arrived at her door a few months ago — back from a senior year of high school in Kansas and needing work while he saves for college — as a happy accident, and he serves as her co-groomer, pet-holder, arbiter with technology and also her translator, when needed, from Portuguese to English. (Her other assistant, Felippe Lopes, also from Brazil, is off for the day).

The grooming itself, Rosa says, arrived as a happy accident, too. In Brazil, she trimmed eyebrows and manicured nails in a beauty shop, until a friend suggested she could make 10 times as much primping pets. When her husband left her in 1999 (“I have him 25 years,” she says, “and he change me for a young girl”), she migrated to the Boston area, taking work at one point in a New Hampshire paper mill. 

When a newfound Brazilian friend asked her just to look after a man’s poodle while he was out of town, no haircut, she gave the dog a shampoo and trim anyway, and the friend and then the owner said, “Wow! Beautiful!” She has made her living that way ever since.

Pet grooming might seem both elegant and risky. Most dogs and cats, after all, have soft hair and sharp teeth. It also can look a little tedious. The previous workday, Rosa and Elio foamed and snipped, combed and air-brushed their way through 19 dogs and cats; some days bring even more.

The spirit here, though, seems industrious and gentle. Rosa has a way, Elio says, with animals, including the human kind. Their shared exertions pull shoppers and delivery people to her window to watch.  

She is also, as of August when she made her last payment, the business’s owner. Her shop, Joni’s Grooming (still bearing the name of the original owner), stands in a triangular strip mall on Federal Highway in Boca, between the Violin Shop and Dr. Laszlo Poduszlo’s Mizner Park Veterinary Clinic. Contrary to expectation, the portion of mall that includes the veterinary practice belongs to HER. They refer customers, she says, to each other. 

When Rosa first set foot in Boca in 2006, glad to leave New England winters behind, she had almost nothing. She had answered an ad in Pet Product News International and went to work for Club Bow-Wow, not far from her present location. 

She had come one day to the Wendy’s restaurant just to the north for lunch. “I saw the cages in the shop here,” she says, “and I ask about grooming. The woman say no. Then I find a note on my door. The owner has lung cancer, her daughter look after the dogs, wash the dogs, don’t groom them. I tell her I try. She had three or four customers a day. I offer to buy, the lawyer says you can lease (to buy), I say I pay $2,000 a month.”

“She bought the place thinking of the money she could make tomorrow,” Elio says, “because she didn’t have any money at the time.” The day Rosa made the final payment, her list of clients had topped 2,000.

Molly gets a final trim under her chin, carried then to a nearby holding cage with a ready-to-go bandana around her neck, and Rosa lifts a white Persian cat, Mr. Bentley, into the tub and strokes water onto him from a plastic bottle. 

Cats notoriously hate dousing, but, even as his furry bouffant shrinks to a cringing oilskin, Mr. Bentley shows a resolute sangfroid, eyes steady amid the drip.   

Patience, Rosa suggests, is learned and also earned. At age 6 in her native Brazil, she went to work in a kitchen, then in a factory, and she did not smile there. She grew up among 13 children, and as the oldest she needed to provide for the rest. “I had to make money,” she says. 

Wrapped in a towel, then blow-dried, Mr. Bentley stands under her combing, and she goes after matting and knots with a scissors. Persians, she says, easily get tangled. She knows how to free them.  

America and its customs and language seemed a knot for her, too, at first, but she has found that sometimes speaking simply and listening more work best. 

Soon a man and then a woman in tailored dress come in from the parking lot to collect their pets, and everyone smiles and wags. Somebody is purring. Maybe, Elio says, it’s Rosa.                                          Ú

In Coasting Along, our writers stop to reflect on life along the shore.

Students of Florida Atlantic University’s choral and vocal studies
program will perform during an inaugural Madrigal Dinner at St.
Gregory’s Episcopal Church.  Photo provided

By Deborah S. Hartz-Seeley

On Dec. 10, the ladies will sashay in velvet and satin gowns as the lords swagger in black velvet waistcoats and feathered caps.

These are students of Florida Atlantic University’s choral and vocal studies program who are participating in the inaugural Madrigal Dinner to benefit their school.

The Renaissance pageantry, festive food and musical entertainment will be offered to the public at St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church hall in Boca Raton.

“When I saw the room, I knew it was the perfect place for this intimate evening,” says Patricia Fleitas, who is director of FAU’s choral and voice studies. She is co-director of this event and hopes to make it an annual festivity.

The music at the dinner will be performed by 22 students who were invited to participate. They’ll be accompanied by a brass quartet.

  Madrigal songs, usually written for four or five vocalists, are secular music that was popular in Italy during the 16th century. It was a counterpoint to the music being created for the Catholic Church.  

“It can be very sensuous,” says Fleitas, who lives in Highland Beach.

The young people, ages 18 to their late 20s, made the commitment to remain on campus after finals in order to participate. 

“They’ve been practicing and will work very hard to be at their best,” Fleitas says.

The evening will start with wine and cheese served outdoors on the church’s patio. Then the doors to the Great Hall will open, and trumpets will announce eight noble men and women in Renaissance costumes. After they take their places at the head table and all are seated, there will be a toast and “wassail song.” During the meal, minstrels and jesters with their pointed green, yellow and purple hats will entertain. 

At meal’s end, a flaming pudding carried through the hall is sure to be a highlight — even if it’s a bread pudding instead of the traditional figgy creation.

Then the singers will offer a short concert of madrigal and seasonal songs before the final fanfare.

As the jesters bid farewell, the months of planning and practicing will come to an end. Until next year, of course. 

“I am very excited. I hope this becomes a holiday tradition,” says Fleitas, who hopes next year’s attendees will wear period costumes like the students.                   Ú

By C.B. Hanif

To tweet or not to tweet was the question for this essay, following last month’s which featured reflections of gratitude, in the form of those text-based Internet posts of up to 140 characters found at Twitter.com.

Once again the response to my call for colleagues’ tweets — this time reflecting the winter holiday season — was gratifying. 

Among those I am happy to share is a message from Tom O’Brien. He is known for his stellar interfaith work, not the least of which includes his Hebrew books and New Testament Bible classes that I have taken at Bethesda-By-The-Sea Episcopal Church in Palm Beach, and written about on these pages.

“As a non-tweeter,” he said in sharing 54 characters, “here goes:

B/C JESUS WZ A BBY, U CAN’T B AFRD OF A LOVG, LIVG GD.”

I encourage readers to look at that again, remembering that with Twitter (where I confess I do not do tweet often @CBHanif ) the spontaneity is part of the fun.

The Rev. Paula Hayward, our secretary and my fellow member of the Delray Beach Interfaith Clergy

Tom O'Brien

Association, also responded to my appeal for seasonal wisdom — this time with two tweetable offerings. First came her beautiful reminder: 

Rev. Paula Hayward

“No one else can give the ‘gift’ that you are.”

And in another, she added: “I invite you to affirm and practice the following during this season of Holy Awareness: I intend to radiate peace from the greatness within me.”

It’s worth mentioning that the latter was three over the 140 characters-and-spaces limit when I plugged it in at Twitter.com, again underscoring the medium’s challenges. That does not diminish its value as another fine seasonal comment.

Alas, in this busy season, not enough friends had responded by my deadline to have them … er, write this column for me. So, I needed to do what writers do: Be creative.

W. Deen Mohammed

With Muslims this winter having recently celebrated the hajj, the annual pilgrimage to the holy city Mecca that I was blessed to complete in 2001, it seemed appropriate to tweet a comment from my favorite imam, W. Deen Mohammed, eulogized as “America’s imam” when he passed in 2008: 

“We are connected by faith in the same G-d and faith in the Plan for mankind that our Creator gave us when He created us. For even more variety, I next went to … First here’s the comment, then the source:

“Love’s in need of love today. Don’t delay, send yours in right away.” 

And: “Hate’s going round, breaking many many hearts. Stop it please, before it’s gone too far.”

For those who may not recognize them, those lyrics are among the classics from all-American musical icon Stevie Wonder. The first two sentences comfortably allowed room for 77 more characters. Twitter would not have allowed the rest, at 11 characters over. But for the sake of the season, I allowed it here.

Roberta Popara

The last word is from Roberta Popara, a Dominican sister and associate director of Our Lady of Florida Spiritual Center in North Palm Beach:

“Peace-Salaam-Shalom-Paz. In one word, in every language, the holy seasons of Advent-Christmas-Epiphany, for Christians, is one of peace.”

As Jesus says in the Gospel of John: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives, do I give to you.”

And: “In the midst of these seasons I call holy, will I truly believe in God’s way of peace?”

Individually those came comfortably within the Twitter limit. But ultimately, in a season such as this, who’s counting?

C.B. Hanif is a freelance writer and inter-religious affairs consultant. Find him at www.interfaith21.com.

JoJo Harder sits with her miniature Italian greyhound, Romeo.

Photo by Jerry Lower

By Arden Moore

For years, Jo Jo Harder wowed the fashion world with her signature clothing line showcased in fine stores throughout the country. Today, her fashion talents have gone to the dogs in a very diva and delightful way.

Meet Harder, the creator of America’s Top Dog Model Contest and author of the first style book for dogs, aptly called Diva Dogs: A Style Guide to Living the Fabulous Life. She is the go-to gal when it comes to dishing out advice to keep the upcoming holidays sane, safe and sensational for your canine pal.

This Boca Raton resident happily shares her home with Romeo, a fetchingly handsome miniature Italian greyhound who scores invitations to the most coveted canine soirees up and down the Palm Beach coast.

“Romeo is so mellow, eager to please and very smart,” describes Harder. “He goes everywhere with me and is very well mannered and charming. And, I must confess, he has quite a wardrobe because he has modeled in a few fashion shows.”

If you’re looking to score an invite for your dog to any of the popular canine parties this holiday season, heed Harder’s advice:

• Hone your doggy manners at home. Enroll your dog in an obedience class with a professional certified trainer who subscribes to positive training techniques. Practice those skills at home. “Proper petiquette starts at home. A true diva dog puts her best paw forward in any social situation,” says Harder.

• Shop early. Don’t procrastinate in shopping for an outfit for your dog to attend a “top dog” event. “Shop now so you won’t add stress to the holiday season by waiting until the last minute,” she says. 

• Look festive. Choose classic styles in holiday colors for outfits and accessories, but be a bit creative. “Don’t settle for red or green and look for dog-sized neckties for males and dog-sized strands of pearls for females,” she suggests. “Make sure your dog can move easily in the outfit and that he likes wearing it before you dash out to a party.”

• Clean up your act. “Party dogs should arrive groomed, bathed and with their nails trimmed,” she says. 

“They definitely should not have doggy breath. If you have time, call a few of your friends to bring their dogs and spend the day pampering them at a doggy spa.”

• Give back. True diva dogs do their best to give to those less fortunate canines. Enter a holiday dog walk event or participate in fundraising events to benefit animal shelters and rescue groups.

Whether you are bringing your dog to a holiday party or hosting one at home, let me share a few more ways you can keep the holidays safe and stress-free:

• Maintain your dog’s daily walks or play times. A tired dog is a happy dog, and the both of you can benefit from a little exercise that provides a suitable outlet for pent-up energy. If you can’t walk your dog, hire a professional dog walker during the holidays.

• Keep your cherished holiday ornaments, statutes and family heirlooms out of reach of wagging tails, nosy noses and swiping paws.

• Avoid edible decorations, such as popcorn or candy canes. These items can cause stomach upsets in dogs.

• Opt for battery-operated candles instead of lit candles that can cause burns to pets.

• Replace tinsel on the Christmas tree with nontoxic baby’s breath.

• Set up a room in your house where your pets can hang out while you host a holiday party. Provide healthy treats, water, comfortable bedding and a keep-busy toy and turn on the radio or television in that room to offset the party sounds.

Holidays can be anxiety-filled filled times for your pets. The best way to pamper them during these times of celebrations is to protect them from harm and to give them plenty of calm reassurance and TLC. 

Diva Dogs - Mark Your Calendar 

If you’re looking for great upcoming dog events, Jo Jo Harder keeps tabs of them on her America’s Top Dog Model site at www.americastopdog.com.  

She offers an eco-friendly holiday gift idea with her 2012 America’s Top Dog Model contest calendar. This year’s theme is “Go Green with Style.” The calendar, priced at $13.99, features fashionable Fidos and offers Diva Dog tips. 

Finally, sniff around the site for contest rules on how you can enter your dog in the 2012 dog model contest. Good luck!

Arden Moore, founder of FourLeggedLife.com, is an animal behavior consultant, editor, author, professional speaker and certified pet first aid instructor. She happily shares her home with two dogs, two cats and one overworked vacuum cleaner. Tune in to her Oh Behave! show on PetLifeRadio.com and learn more by visiting www.fourleggedlife.com.