Coastal Star Staff
A is for the African coast. We have it to thank for the birth of our Caribbean storms. Also Alka-Seltzer. Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is when hurricane warnings get downgraded to tropical storm, or when a hurricane misses you all together like Irene did.

B is for barometric pressure. Watch the pressure drop as the storm approaches, hoping that your roof will hold up so you won’t need any blue tarps. Also for batteries, of which no post-storm home can have too many.

C is for cone of destruction or cone of terror. Some forecasters may call it the “cone of probability,” but we know better. C is also for cash. You’ll want to have some on hand when the power goes out and ATMs are rendered useless.

D is for debris — like that very large oak tree branch that falls on your house. Also for the  disaster supply kit (water, food, flashlights, batteries, first aid kit, etc.) that you should have by now!

E is for evacuate, what barrier island residents should do when a hurricane warning is issued.

F is for feeder bands like those that marched through Boca from Irene. Those bursts of wind and rain are notorious for knocking out power; and for flashlights, which you’re gonna need when the power goes out during the next big storm.

G is for generator. How we hate those smelly, noisy and expensive machines, but put up with it all just to keep the refrigerator running. Also for gas lines at the filling station.

H is for happy dance, which you’ll be doing when the power finally comes back on. Also for Home Depot, where you’ll be standing in line for plywood or shutters, if they still have them in stock. And then there’s hurricane hunters, those brave folks who fly right into storms to check them out.

I is for the Irene, that frightening Cat 3 that skirted us in late August in favor of a trip to New York. We’re glad she remained stand-offish! Also for ice. Stock up!

J is for Jim Cantore (right), the guy you hope isn’t sent by the Weather Channel to cover your storm.  It’s always devastating when he’s around.

K is for kitchen, where your fridge and freezer are just waiting to go out. (Clean ’em out now!)

L is for the love you’ll try desperately to remember you have for your family after being stuck in a shuttered-up home for 12 hours while the storm passes over.

M is for misery index. It’s bound to soar if, and after, a storm strikes.

N is for that wonderful neighbor who runs a loooonnnnnnng extension cord from his kitchen to your bedroom — and suddenly you have TV, a fan and a reading lamp. Also for next-of-kin, which the police ask for when you tell them you plan to weather the onrushing storm in your barrier-island home.

O is for overwhelmed. Hard to escape feeling this way, although a plan will help. Look under R for a remedy.

P is for power outages and prayer. If you have the first one, you’ll be using the second one to get your power back.

Q is for questioning what family heirlooms to pack in the car before evacuating the barrier island. Also, for the eerie quiet when the hurricane’s eye passes over your neighborhood.

R is for reservations. Make them as soon as you can and preferably at a fine hotel where you can ride out the storm in style.

S is for surfing safety. Rip currents abound as hurricanes loom and surfers need to excersise extra caution while hanging 10. Also for shingle, the kind that flies off the roof and is capable of decapitating delicate daisies and then boomeranging back for more. Also: shelters, where you’ll need to go if you can’t prevail on family, friends or a nice hotel.

T is for Tapcons, those pesky little concrete screw anchors often needed to secure hurricane shutters. That is, if Home Depot doesn’t run out of them.

U is for the uncertainty of waiting and wondering and watching TV as the storm approaches. Will it veer north or south? Will it fizzle out before it arrives? Or will we get hammered head-on? Who knows? Also: For “uh-oh,” which you’ll be saying every time you listen to the weather forecasters predicting, “This will be the Big One!”

V is for vodka, large swallows of which can help you endure the pelting rain and howling winds.

W is for watch and warning. Do you know the difference? A hurricane watch indicates the possibility that you could experience hurricane conditions within 48 hours. A hurricane warning indicates that sustained winds of at least 74 mph are expected within 36 hours.

X is for X-ing out the days on the calendar until hurricane season is over. The season runs from June 1 to Nov. 30.

Y is for the yelling we will all try not to do because it’s so darn hot after the storm passes and we have no electricity.

Z  is for the ZZZZZZs you’ll be missing staying up to watch the Weather Channel.

By Angie Francalancia

Boynton Beach celebrated the completion of its amphitheater at the Schoolhouse Children’s Museum and marina-entry feature with tours and music last month — a milestone in a slow progression to convert Ocean Avenue into a dining, shopping and entertainment destination.
But at the same time, other parts of the plan experienced hiccups. The Boynton Beach Community Redevelopment Agency agreed to start over in its quest to find a restaurateur to lease the Ruth Jones Cottage, which was moved in June to the corner of East Ocean and Southeast Fourth Street.
And over at the Boynton Marina, the easternmost anchor of the plan, the CRA gave Splashdown Divers until Aug. 25 to vacate its dive shop. That’s the latest salvo in an 18-month feud with business owner Lynn Simmons, who says she was promised a long-term lease.
There can be no long-term lease, CRA Executive Director Vivian Brooks says, because that building is slated to be torn down.
“They bought this property with a Palm Beach Waterways grant,” intended to keep it as a working marina and keep existing businesses viable, Simmons said. “What am I, chopped liver? Why would they give me false hope?”
Late last month, Splashdown was still operating its dive shop at the marina.
The hiccups are small, given how long the planning has taken, say downtown champions like City Council Vice Chairman Bill Orlove.
“What I’m really happy to see is that we are finally moving forward with these plans and that things are really starting to change for the better,” Orlove said. “There are several free events planned for next year in the amphitheater. We’re also going to have an open-air market there.”
By Sept. 28, the CRA will be examining a new set of potential tenants for the Ruth Jones Cottage, looking for one that can hit it out of the park, said Brooks.
She’s looking for someone who can give Boynton Beach a novel café and assure the CRA that the business can make it, assurances Brooks couldn’t get from Sandra Gagne, with whom the CRA initially contracted.
Gagne, who planned a café-style restaurant of comfort food, “could not produce the financial data to show they had the working capital to make it through the first year,” Brooks said. “We kind of worked with this particular business for a while because they’re local people. These are tough times, and we get it. But you at least have to have money to pay the gas, electric, water and supplies. To me, we’ve gotta try to hit a home run. We don’t want to have a failure out of the box.”
Meantime, Kaufman Lynn Construction, contracted to move the cottage from its original location three blocks away and renovate it, will shore up the structure and install the rough plumbing on the 1920s-era home before setting it on a foundation. The City Council, sitting as the CRA Board in August, approved several changes to the contract to add extra structural support as well as vault the ceiling, giving the tiny structure a more open feel.
“As with any historic restoration project, there were some unknowns,” said Bruce Cavossa, vice president of operations for Kaufman Lynn. Work was slated to begin Aug. 29, “and we’ll be cutting that ribbon in about 45 days.”

The British Colonial home, designed by noted Palm Beach architect John L. Volk, is slated for demolition as part of plans for a six-home subdivision.  Photo by Jerry Lower

By Steve Plunkett

    In its heyday on the eve of World War II, the British Colonial mansion at 1220 N. Ocean Blvd. was a high-society scene of elegant soirees. Now the estate, which donated an outbuilding for Gulf Stream’s first Town Hall, may become a six-home subdivision.
    Representatives of the late Regina Spence are selling the property to Seaside Builders, which is seeking town approval to subdivide the six-plus acres. The Architectural Review and Planning Board deferred the proposal to Sept. 22 to give Seaside time to talk with neighbors in Hidden Harbour.
“This is not something that we’ve faced before,’’ ARPB Chairman Bob Ganger said. “I’m sure it was done routinely when Gulf Stream was being put together, but this is our maiden voyage.’’
    Seward Webb Jr., the son of Lila Vanderbilt Webb, bought the land in 1937 from E.F. Hutton, his mother’s former Palm Beach neighbor, said Ganger, a past president of the Delray Beach Historical Society.
    Lila Webb had built and moved into Miradero, where Ganger now lives, but Seward Webb did not care for its Mediterranean Revival architecture.
    “He never liked the design of his mother’s house even though he had done much of it himself,’’ Ganger said.
    So Seward Webb, who founded Webb and Knapp real estate in New York City, had Palm Beach society architect John L. Volk draw up a British Colonial design. Other names on Volk’s client list included Ford, Dodge, Pulitzer and DuPont. He also designed the Royal Poinciana Plaza and Playhouse in Palm Beach.
    Gulf Stream Mayor William Koch Jr. remembered in his teen years dating one of Webb’s daughters, dressing up for a formal dinner and afterward puffing on a cigar with the men while the women had tea in another part of the mansion.
    “I’d be sitting around, listening to all these powers of the past,’’ said Koch, who will not vote on the subdivision proposal because his real estate firm listed the estate’s sale.
    Koch recalled the elder Webb, who married a daughter of New York City Mayor William J. Gaynor, built a photo lab on the grounds of his home that became the first Town Hall.
    “It was the size of a double outhouse,’’ Koch said, noting a picture of the historic structure hangs in the current Town Hall.
    Koch said the more than 9,000-square-foot house, which was bought by Edmond and Regina Spence after Webb died, is a shadow of its former self.
    “The house today is nothing like the old house,’’ he said.
    The proposed subdivision, to be called Hidden Harbour Estates — Plat II, would have two homes with driveways on State Road A1A, two with driveways on the entrance road along the south edge of the property and two with driveways on a private road on the west side. The Spence house would be demolished and the mound it sits on leveled and smoothed into a dip between the house and A1A.
    Hidden Harbour neighbors have not fully embraced the plan. Martin O’Boyle researched the 1937 deed and told the architectural board it contains a restriction limiting the parcel to three homes.
    “We’d love to see the house remain, but I guess that’s not going to happen,’’ neighbor Jim Neeves added.
    The developer’s architect, former Delray Beach City Commissioner Gary Eliopoulos, said he would help document the house’s architecture before it was demolished.
Original owner Seward Webb “in Delray was heroic. He gave the land for what became the Seacrest School,’’ Ganger said.
    Regina Spence died in December at age 92; her will has not been made public. Ganger said she made generous donations to the Delray Beach Historical Society and the Boca Raton Museum of Art.                    

More than 60 years after it was built, Wright-by-the-Sea still is owned by the same family, and welcomes back many of the same guests each year. Photo by Jerry Lower

By Mary Jane Fine

Here’s what it is: an oceanfront motel on A1A in Delray Beach, one of the last of the family-owned variety, cloud white with blue trim, two acres of landscaping around a kidney-shaped pool and a shuffleboard court and a croquet area and a Seminole-woven octagonal chickee hut for picnics and parties, a destination whose loyal clientele return year after year after year after year.
Here’s what else it is, depending on whose view you take. Patti Carlson, the self-described “front desk girl,” calls it “a laid-back tropical paradise,” and greets visitors with a big smile and the slogan “Welcome to Wright-by-the-Sea, the best place to be!”
Events coordinator Tammy Tatum sees the place as “the way [life] used to be,” which is, she adds, “probably why the employees stick around.”
Robin Hickman, the housekeeper who is one of them — 30-plus years and counting — remembers it as the locale she used to ride past, decades ago, vowing, “I’m gonna work there  … and now I am.”
But to Katherine Wright Willoughby, the motel’s meaning goes even deeper. To her, each  January, February and March, it was home.
Her father, osteopathic physician Dr. Russell M. Wright, built the motel in 1950, partly, for its first few years, as a seaside retreat for family and friends. Later, he expanded it, with a second two-story row of rooms, and Wright-by-the-Sea welcomed more of the public.

“The story is that Dr. Wright was swimming in the ocean and he saw this land,” says Tatum, who wears a marine-blue shirt and a white skirt, the motel’s signature colors. (Even her eyes are blue.)
The motel’s general manager, Jack Anastas, adds, in a phone call from his upstate vacation site, “It was the closest point to the Gulf Stream — three miles — which keeps us warm in the winter and cool in the summer. When he found the property, there wasn’t even a bridge across Linton [Boulevard].”
Willoughby, who runs the Shakespeare & Co. bookstore in Highlands, N.C., remembers her childhood winters in Delray Beach with fondness. “I used to find a lot more interesting things beachcombing than I do now,” she says, laughing, in a phone interview. “One time, I found a wonderful bowl that came from Africa, and, once, a wooden trunk.”
The Wright family lived in Detroit then, driving south to their getaway property in the throes of snow and ice. Dr. Wright, his daughter says, had a good reason to open the motel: “He felt very strongly that it was a very healthy thing for people to get out in the sun and get some exercise.”
In those days, Wright-by-the-Sea followed the common practice: open for guests five months of the year and closed for summers, a rhythm that held until the 1970s.
Since then, the motel’s guests have been coming year-round, from Germany and Sweden and Argentina as well as from across the U.S. So many German tourists visit — word-of-mouth being the best advertisement — that Wright-by-the-Sea’s small in-house library stocks German-language books.
After pointing that out on a recent morning, Tammy Tatum leads visitors on a brief tour: a two-bedroom, two-bath suite with pull-out love seat, its kitchen stocked with “everything you need in there but the food”; her favorite suite, a one-bedroom whose king-size bed boasts an ocean view; and then the honeymoon suite, where two walls are picture windows. It once was Dr. Wright’s own apartment.
Housekeeper Hickman is tidying the place up now, in the wake of just-departed guests. She remembers the good doctor fondly, remembers taking care of him in the months before he died, in 2002, at age 98.
“I said to him, ‘I bet when you hired me, you didn’t know what you were gettin’,” she says, grinning. “He said, ‘Yes, I did. That’s why I hired you.’”
Willoughby remembers Hickman’s caring for her dad, too — “She was wonderful,” Willoughby says. “It was very comfortable for him.”
And she remembers how maintenance man Miguel Lemus, a 22-year employee, helped Wright wrestle the veritable forest of sea grape trees, once tall as palms, that nestles below the suite, now a sea of sea grape stretching toward the ocean. And, she says, “He taught my son to speak Spanish, really well.”
The Wright family — three children, five grandchildren — still own Wright-by-the-Sea. That sense of family, of caring, still lingers. It’s there on the small blackboard, hung outside the office, where guests can learn the surf temperature (83 degrees, this day), high-and-low tide times (10:55 a.m. and 5:05 p.m.), and the day’s cautions, if any (HOT sand — wear shoes; jellyfish possible).
And it’s there in the loyalty of guests whose parents once brought them here and who choose to return with children of their own.
“They’ll come back,” Tatum says, “and they’ll ask, ‘Is my room ready?’ And it’s ‘my room,’ the one they always stay in.”                                             

Lillie Silirie (right) helps customers at the 3rd annual "garage meets estate sale" fundraiser on Bauhimia Road in coastal Delray Beach. The July 10 event, organized by Sandra Delezan Axelband, benefited local animal rescue.

Photo by Lauren Loricchio

Recreational boaters and snorkelers gather along the north side of Bird Island, where Manalapan residents say their presence can be a nuisance. Photos by Jerry Lower

By Steve Plunkett

The summer sun is hot, and so are neighbors of the Boynton Inlet.
A weekend horde of boaters has invaded their backyards, transforming the once-serene cove off Bird Island into a jumble of booze, bikinis and blaring stereos.
“If I want to take a phone call and sit outside on my back deck, I can’t talk. It’s that loud,’’ said Manalapan Town Commissioner Louis DeStefano, who lives three doors north of the inlet.
Ken Brown, who lives next to the inlet, gets the brunt of the unwelcome intrusion.

“They swim, snorkel, come under the dock,’’ Brown told town commissioners at their July 26 meeting. “They actually climb the fence that I put up and jump off the pilings and do back flips and dives.’’
Palm Beach County’s recent improvements to Ocean Beach Park’s jetties and the end of construction of a seawall on Bird Island have made the inlet “the place to go to party,’’ said Andy Klinginsmith, who represents the Ziff family property at the north end of the cove as well as the Bird Island environmental sanctuary.
“We had three or four large boats in there Sunday that just partied up,’’ Klinginsmith said. “The noise was incredible.’’
Brown said he saw a floating bar.
“It goes on sometimes until 6 o’clock in the morning across the waterway,’’ he said. “I haven’t made any real complaints or anything yet. I guess I’ve been a more sound sleeper lately.’’
Crowds are swelling on the ocean side, too.
“The beach at the front of my house right now has become quite an attractive area for a great deal of the high school, college girls, and they’re attracting the college boys,’’ Brown said. “I don’t even want to go to the beach because it’s just heavily populated.’’

Adding to concerns is graffiti spray-painted on the walls of Brown’s property. Police Chief Clay Walker said it was verified to be gang “tagging.’’
“We’re starting to see an element of people come in there to make this their turf. And some of the graffiti that’s there is actually an alternate gang,’’ Walker said.
Even before talk of gangs in Manalapan, Mayor Pro Tem Donald Brennan said the problem was the community’s, not just Brown’s, and should be resolved sooner rather than later.

 “Left un-dealt-with and kind of fiddled around the edges, this could lead to a migration of the issue that involves more work,’’ Brennan said.
Beach-goers already have come at least as far north as Dennis Hammond’s home — a recent $10 million purchase — about a half-mile from the park, and left beer bottles and cigarette butts around his teak beach chairs.
Hammond, who just moved to Manalapan, took friends across State Road A1A for a beach stroll and found the inlet area “just filled with people.’’
“The first thing we saw was three kind of rough-looking guys running their pit bulls in and out of the water,’’ Hammond said. “So my first note-to-self was, I can’t bring my dogs over here like I expected or they’ll be eaten alive. I’m just hoping my wife’s not.’’
Brown said he has not seen the beach and inlet this crowded in the 11 years he has lived in Manalapan. Klinginsmith said visitors on the Bird Island side used to be primarily families and snorkelers.
Besides noise and crowds, the issue is public access vs. private property rights.
Walker said on both the ocean and the Intracoastal sides the public is entitled to be below the mean high water mark, or the “wet sand’’ portion of the beach, but not the “dry sand’’ side.
“I don’t have a private beach anymore,’’ Brown said.

Budget cuts sank park patrol
A mutual-aid agreement with the Sheriff’s Office allows Walker’s officers to respond to trouble on the north side of the inlet, but not having a boat is a problem, he said.
“We can sit there and shake a fist … but they shake something else back,’’ Walker said.
The Sheriff’s Office used to have a park patrol and once kept up to four boats at Ocean Inlet, but budget cuts dissolved the park unit and only one boat is still stationed there, Walker said.
Town commissioners encouraged Brown to post no-trespassing notices on his fence, dock and walls. Brown said he had hoped Manalapan would install official-looking signs, “maybe make it not so convenient to walk up and down the beach,’’ but Town Attorney Trela White said she would have to investigate what could be done. Town Manager Linda Stumpf said she would contact the county Parks Department to have it enforce closing inlet parking at sunset.

Cooperative effort needed
Ocean Ridge Mayor Ken Kaleel, in the audience to lobby for a client on beach house dimensions, said his town had also noticed the increase in beach traffic and might help control it.
“Unless we have a beach patrol, unless we have a marine patrol, it’s not going to go away,’’ Kaleel said.
The solution could be a combination of a citizen patrol and police patrol, he said, and funded by both towns, Homeland Security grants, county grants and maybe a contribution from Gulf Stream.
 “Since the county has kind of pulled back, we need to fill that gap,’’ Kaleel said.
Stumpf thanked him for the offer.
“Dealing with it jointly with another community will help us with the cost of it,’’ she said. “We looked into a marine patrol also. It was cost-prohibitive for us to do it.’’
Meanwhile the forecast for the weekend was more crowds, more trash and more noise.
“They’re actually coming up on top of the dock. It’s even gotten to the point where they’re aggressive enough to clean their fish on my fish platform,’’ Brown said.
Added Hammond: “We can hear these guys from where I am, and I’m way the heck up the beach. We always think, ‘Gosh, I feel sorry for that poor guy down there at the end.’ Now I know who he is.’’         

Special Report: Public water treatments can be a matter of taste

By Jan Norris

Terms like “undertones,” “balance” and “finish” are typical of wine tastings — but they also apply to any beverage. Last month, three tasters used them to help describe … water.
Not just any water, but water drawn from taps at various city and town halls along the coast. Spurred by a Manalapan commissioner who raised questions about the drinkability of his town’s water, The Coastal Star conducted a blind taste-test to determine whether he was all wet.
Waters were judged on appearance, aroma and taste.
The testers’ consensus? Manalapan’s water is pretty bad, but not the worst around. Gulf Stream, which gets its water from the Delray Beach water supply, took that prize. Boca Raton’s won by only a few drops.
Asher White and Jay Simpson, co-owners of Dolce Vita wine shop in Lake Worth, and Anne Marie Jeffrey, a Boynton Beach environmental science student specializing in water, judged the water.
Eight samples — one a “control” sample entered twice — were collected from each town hall in glass jars, labeled with a random three-digit code, and poured for the tasters into identical plastic cups.
Tasters sniffed, swirled, held the glasses up to the light and then tasted — swishing the water in their mouths before swallowing.
The results?
Boca Raton’s water was deemed most “easy to drink” with the highest score of 83 on a 100-point scale.
Deemed the worst, Delray Beach’s water scored only 46. Our water-collector was told to “let the water run” from the tap at Gulf Stream Town Hall, because it could be stale in the pipes. No one at Town Hall drinks the stuff; bottled water is their preference.
Taster Simpson said it had a “rusty flavor” and smelled “musty” as well.  White found the flavor “almost muddy,” but with a “nice minerality.” The aroma had “dirty undertones” that were off-putting, he said. Compared to all the others, Jeffrey called this water “horrible.” A “lot of chlorine” is used in it, she thought. “You can smell the chlorine,” too, she said.
Ocean Ridge’s water (which is purchased from Boynton Beach) “tastes of chlorine and plastic,” Simpson said. Scoring it only 57, tasters also noted the “cloudy” appearance. “It tastes like filtered water on a boat,” White said. Jeffrey guessed the city maybe used a “chemical” filtering process.
Manalapan’s water, given a 63 by the group, also was “not perfectly clear,” Simpson said, and it had a “mineral back finish.” White didn’t like it, and described it as “tastes like sand, but not dirty.” It had “more of a earthy smell — almost iron-like.” Jeffrey called it a “hard minerals smell.”
Lantana landed in the middle, with 69. All the judges detected a high chlorine smell in this water, and an “aftertaste of chlorine,” according to Simpson. White also noted a “little salty” taste. Jeffrey deemed it had “the worst smell” of all the waters.
The northernmost town, South Palm Beach, gets its water from West Palm Beach. It scored a 73, with the appearance weighing in heavy. Tasters liked the crystal clarity — White called it “nice, in the light.” The flavor, however had a “disinfected” taste, Jeffrey said. White called it “metallic,” and Simpson found it had “a hint of plastic on the back end.”
Highland Beach, with a score of 82, was only one point away from tying with the winner. It was Simpson’s favorite; he said it had a “very clear appearance, with no smell. Maybe a tiny bit of plastic taste at the end. All in all, quite good.” White noted some “sediment, but clarity” in the glass. He found this sample’s taste “very salty” with a “kind of manufactured aroma.” Jeffrey thought the clarity “good,” but the taste “mediocre.”
Boca Raton’s water, at 83, was Simpson’s favorite, though he noted “some particles” in the sample. “It has a bit of salt and savory flavor, and some minerality” and he found that pleasant. White noted the clarity, but also the “dull” finish, “no sparkle,” he said. This one is “easy to drink,” and “fresh” tasting, he said. He sniffed and said the nose had some “limestone; mild minerals” in it. He called it the “most balanced of all the waters.” Jeffrey called the clarity “pretty good,” with a “disinfected, acidic smell — almost like reverse osmosis.” She noted a slight “aftertaste.”
While the test was purely subjective, the tasters took their jobs seriously, giving time and thought to the samples before scoring. All commented on the differences that were, to them, easily discernable.
“You can definitely taste differences,” Simpson said. He was a student of cooking teacher Peter Kump at the James Beard Cooking School and co-owns Dolce Vita. White, a wine aficionado, frequently conducts wine tastings at Dolce Vita, following the same format as the water test.
 Jeffrey has tasted hundreds of waters and continues to learn about it as part of her studies of the environment.
All said they drink filtered or bottled water — nothing directly from a municipal
tap.                                          
Whose water
tastes best?
A Coastal Star tasting ranked tap water of area towns, from best to worst:
1. Boca Raton                  
2. Highland Beach
3. South Palm Beach/West Palm Beach
4. Lantana
5. Manalapan
6. Ocean Ridge/
Boynton Beach
7. Gulf Stream/Delray Beach

 

How we tested
the waters
Samples were collected four hours before the tasting in clean glass jars from unfiltered taps at each town or city hall. Eight samples were collected. With the exception of Boca Raton Town Hall, all water was collected on the barrier island.
The first water tasted was entered again under a different number, poured from a different jar. Tasters were given identical cups and were not permitted to discuss their scores.
The sampled towns were not revealed until the tasting was concluded.
— Jan Norris

Where did I put my keys?    

In a busy world it’s easy to be overwhelmed with the minutiae of life. But once you’ve been exposed to the stages of dementia, fear that this instance of displacement may foreshadow future stages of memory loss hovers behind the question.
I watched both my mother and an elderly aunt struggle with fading memories and fears. In both instances I watched the disease progress until the end.
Thomas R. Collins’ chronicling of his mother’s early slide into dementia has brought pathos and humor into our understanding of how we watch a loved one fade away.  For this he was awarded the Sally Latham Memorial Award given for serious column writing at the Florida Press Association Awards last month. This is the highest honor awarded in the category for all newspapers in the Better Weekly Newspaper Contest. 
Congratulations to Tom and sincere thanks for sharing his story with Coastal Star readers.
Other Coastal Star staff winning first-place awards at the St. Petersburg ceremony, and the categories, were: Mary Thurwachter, community history; Hap Erstein, criticism (Palm Beach ArtsPaper); Ron Hayes, feature story and Scott Simmons and Jerry Lower for front-page design.
Also winning awards were:
Greg Stepanich, criticism (Palm Beach ArtsPaper); Mary Kate Leming and Jerry Lower, editorial; Emily J. Minor, feature story; Scott Simmons, Jerry Lower, Bonnie Lallky-Seibert and Margot Snyder, overall graphic design; Jerry Lower, photo series in one issue and portfolio photography.
My hope is that by bringing Coastal Star readers the work of these (and other) talented journalists, you will continue to recognize and support our efforts to create and sustain a quality local newspaper. 
Thanks to the overwhelmingly positive feedback we’ve received over the past three years, I believe that we have found a welcome place in the community.
That is our true award.

— Mary Kate Leming, Editor