“If you ever want to feel good about yourself, go help someone else.”
— John Ferber, Secret Millionaire

As season begins to wind down, so do the numerous charity events that keep our coastal area hopping through the winter months. It seems this season was exceptionally busy with galas, luncheons, home tours, comedy nights and trunk shows galore.
Beyond all of the great food donated by local restaurants and hotels, the seemingly endless bottles of wine and the fabulous raffle and auction items, there were hours and hours of hard work spent by a shrinking number of nonprofit staff members.
Over the past few seasons, our local nonprofits have been laboring to do more with less, hoping to fill the portion of their coffers depleted from cutbacks at the city and county level.
Even dependable umbrella groups like United Way have redefined where they allocate their resources, and it’s left some of our local nonprofits working harder than ever to keep private donations rolling in to meet the needs of those who benefit from their services.
And the need is there, and growing, in a still-difficult economy.
Many of the people who have contributed most to the success of the local philanthropy season will be heading north soon.
Those of us who stay here should shout out a huge “thank you” for their hard work, enthusiasm and willingness to volunteer their time and open their pockets to help local causes.
The challenge for those of us who are here year-round is to keep up the momentum. The nonprofits can’t take the summer off. The needs remain.
So, even if we don’t have millions to give in public (or in secret), we have our time and energy and skills to share. 
So take our neighbor — and television’s “secret millionaire” — John Ferber’s advice and feel good about yourself. 
Go help someone else.

Volunteer.
Donate.

— Mary Kate Leming, Editor

Iris Froham, workplace and community education coordinator for The Literacy Coalition of Palm Beach County, teaches English to employees at The Ritz-Carlton in Manalapan.  The Ritz-Carlton sponsors the program and pays its employees to attend the classes. Photo by Tim Stepien

By Ron Hayes

The Ritz-Carlton hotel has a motto.
“We are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen.”
Some of those hard-working ladies and gentlemen clean the rooms and make the beds. They drive the shuttles and tend the flowers. They work in the spa, or the kitchen.
And twice a week, some of those ladies and gentlemen gather in an ornate conference room beneath the main lobby and work just as hard to improve their English and prepare for American citizenship.
“We believe our employees are our No. 1 resource,” says Melanie Marks-Ginsburg, the hotel’s director of human resources, “so we want them to feel confident and understood. The hotel’s been open since 1991, and we’ve found many of our long-term employees had English as a second language, so I reached out to the Palm Beach County Literacy Coalition.”
That was eight months ago. Since then, the coalition’s Workplace and Community Education program has completed two 10-week sessions and begun a third.
The hotel pays its ladies and gentlemen while they attend the classes, provides the books and supplies, and for three hours a week they are students, sitting before a peppy former teacher and principal named Iris Frohman, to wrestle with the frustrating peculiarities of idiomatic English.
“Do you mind getting me another towel?” Miss Iris asks Oscar Ceballos, who works in the spa.
“Yes, I mind …” he starts.
“No, no,” Miss Iris corrects. But imagine how confusing a phrase like “Do you mind” can be to someone for whom English is a foreign language.
Or the dangerous difference between “cabbage” and “garbage.”
“I made the salad with lettuce, carrots and …”
“No, no,” Miss Iris jumps in.
“I have 18 students and 10 different languages,” Frohman says. “Spanish, Creole, Arabic — two different dialects — Portuguese, French …”
Frohman speaks only English, and yet her unfailing patience and  the students’ unfailing enthusiasm combine to make progress.   
“No, I don’t mind,” Oscar begins, and Miss Iris shouts, “Yes!”
The Literacy Coalition has been teaching English and preparing students to take their high school equivalency test since the mid-1990s.
“We started with a grant to place literacy classes in hospitals,” says Darlene Kostrub, the coalition’s CEO. Today, the program is in 10 sites, from the JFK Medical Center to Frenchman’s Creek Country Club and the YMCA.
“We try to work with both employees and employers,” Kostrub notes, “so at one site the students may need a commercial driver’s license, and we’ll teach the terms they would find on that test. At the Ritz-Carlton, it’s hospitality concepts.”
The students aren’t the only ones learning.
“I’ve learned about determination, hardship and work ethics,” their teacher says. “I have one student who takes a two-hour bus ride to get here and two hours to get home.
And she comes in with a smile on her face.”       
Sometimes, the lesson needed is small but significant. Spanish speakers may have trouble distinguishing their B’s from their V’s, for example.
“I will take the Velvedere exit home,” a student repeats.
“Bel-ve-dere,” Miss Iris corrects. She writes a B and a V on the blackboard, and then demonstrates the B and V sounds for the class.
“I will take the Bel-ve-vere....”
“It’s OK, to take your time,” she tells them.
“Bel-ve-dere.”
“Perfect! See, it’s all about repetition.”
Now they move on to a bit of American history, to prepare for the citizenship test.
“What is the supreme law of the United States?” Miss Iris asks. “I promise you they’re going to ask you this.”
“The Constitution.”
“Yes, and what are the first three words of the Constitution?”
“Pinta...?” one student guesses.
“No, it’s not a ship.” But no one laughs. No one is made to feel embarrassed.
A native of Colombia, Edgar Granados, 47, has been in the U.S. eight years, worked at the Ritz-Carlton for four years, and has taken the class since it started. And he’s also taking an English class online.
“When I first came to the hotel, my management didn’t understand me,” he says, “so I worked the night shift in housekeeping. Now I am driving the shuttle. Maybe next I will be a supervisor. This is a very important step in my
life.”                 

Roy Simon (left) and his brother Ernie (far right) — with assistance from Amanda Herrick and daughter Laura Simon — entertained the crowd at Boston’s with stories of their childhood in Delray Beach. Photo by Jerry Lower

By Paula Detwiller

A Delray Beach group has introduced an enticing way to get young residents interested in their city’s history: Invite them to belly up to the bar.
That’s the idea behind the “Happy History Hour,” aimed at young adults in their 20s, 30s and 40s. It’s a time for cocktails and conversation and casual history lessons, held at historically significant watering holes in Delray Beach each month. For a donation of $10, attendees get a free drink, complimentary hors d’oeuvres, and a memorable glimpse of Delray’s past.
Happy History Hour is the brainchild of Preservation Generation, a young networking and service group that seeks to raise awareness of Delray’s rich history and stimulate interest in preserving it. Proceeds from the happy hour events are donated to the Delray Beach Historical Society, the Delray Beach Preservation Trust and the Sandoway House Nature Center.
“I don’t think young people normally think about historic preservation,” says 34-year-old Clayton Peart. “We wanted to make it fun.” Peart joined with his sister Ann Margo and several others to create Preservation Generation last year.
You might say the Pearts have preservation in their blood; they grew up in homes built in 1928 and 1942, and their mother, JoAnn, has long been a local crusader for historic preservation.
Clayton Peart says he sees people he’s known since grade school at the Happy History Hour events. “We all went off to college and then came back,” he says, a testament to the allure of his hometown. “When I was at UF, I’d tell people where I was from and they didn’t even know where Delray was. Now it’s really popular, but the small-town character is still here,” he says.
And that’s precisely what Preservation Generation wants to uphold, according to steering committee member Amanda Herrick, 25.
“I grew up in Wellington, which doesn’t have a downtown. It’s just shopping centers,” she says. “When I would come to Delray Beach as a child to visit my grandparents, I remember how it felt so different.”
Herrick says Delray Beach has an “authentic sense of place” compared to many South Florida communities because so much of the city’s architectural history has been preserved.
“When you walk down Atlantic Avenue, you’re walking through history,” she says. “When young people go downtown, they don’t pick up on that right away, especially if they’re not from here. But that’s the cool, historical aspect that makes Delray special. It evolved organically.”
Bringing history to life is a central theme of each Happy History Hour.
The inaugural event was held Nov. 9 at the Falcon House, a 1920s-era family home that’s now a cocktail lounge. Guests perused archival photos and listened to prominent Delray businessmen Roy and Ernie Simon reminisce about going to their friend Howard Falcon’s house when they were all young bucks.
Similar happy hour events have been held at Tryst restaurant, whose 1912 building once housed a neighborhood grocery store; City Oyster restaurant, on the site of a 1930s hardware and lumber business; and Boston’s by the Beach, where Casa Las Olas (The Waves Hotel) welcomed visitors in the 1950s.
Hanging out with the Happy History Hour crowd has been rewarding, says 35-year-old steering committee member Kim Winker, who was raised in upstate New York. “Many of the others are from here, and they know a lot about the history already,” Winker says. “Their passion and love for Delray is really contagious.”
Preservation Generation is using Facebook (www.facebook.com/preservationgeneration) and other forms of social media to promote its activities. They’ve attracted an average of 40 people to each happy hour event and collected more than $1,000 in donations so far. The money is greatly appreciated by the three nonprofits receiving the proceeds.
“I think they’re wonderful and creative,” says Dorothy Patterson, archivist for the Delray Beach Historical Society. “It makes some of us who’ve been around a while
feel hopeful about the
future.”                      

By Steve Plunkett

Town commissioners used a group microphone instead of individual ones and sat at a U-shaped table in front of their usual chairs. None wore a suit, sport coat or even a tie.
Their first informal workshop generated nearly three hours of talk about Manalapan’s expensive Police Department, its expensive fire-rescue service and its very expensive water plant.
In the end, all agreed it would take many more workshops to resolve the town’s financial ills. The next one is set for April 25.
“Our having a large Police Department for a few number of people is something I think we need to look at,’’ newly appointed Vice Mayor Robert Evans said.
He said the options include making the department leaner by cutting officers; merging with Lantana, Ocean Ridge, South Palm Beach or Palm Beach; or expanding it to handle police activities in the other side of Hypoluxo Island or South Palm Beach.
“Over the next months or years we should be looking at all those strategies,’’ Evans said. “So that we again are addressing the question that we brought up at the beginning of this meeting, which was, how do we reduce our fixed costs or spread them over a larger base?’’
Evans said even with November’s workshop focused only on the water department, not much progress was made. Commissioners decided police or water would be the topic of April’s workshop. In the meantime, newly elected Commissioner David Cheifetz and residents Peter Isaac and John Murphy will examine police procedures, especially hiring practices, to see whether improvements can be made.
Isaac earlier had complained that he and his wife were not treated with respect by a younger officer during a code enforcement action and that the town needed to hire and train its personnel better.
Commissioner Howard Roder went a step further, contending Chief Clay Walker lacks the administrative, organizational and people skills needed for a well-functioning department.
Evans said commissioners should try to focus on Manalapan’s larger issues.
“It’s a reminder to all of us that we want a community that is a friendly community and a gentlemanly community and one that has respect for one another,’’ Evans said.
The day before, coats and ties lent a more formal air to the meeting room as Mayor Basil Diamond, Cheifetz and Commissioners Donald Brennan and Bill Quigley were sworn into office.     Brennan was selected mayor pro tem for the year.
Diamond said he would meet individually with other mayors along the coast.
“I intend to meet with each of our neighboring towns and see how we can be a better neighbor and see if they have suggestions for us, how they can be of assistance to us,’’ Diamond said.
Danny Brannon, the consulting engineer who is managing Gulf Stream’s conversion to underground electric lines, gave a PowerPoint presentation on the process and said Manalapan’s overhead lines, including electric, phone and cable TV, could be buried for about $18,000 a household. Just the electric portion would be roughly $3.5 million, he said.
Florida Power & Light Co. had previously given the town a $4.9 million estimate.
“It’s not in my view a nice-to-do, it’s inevitably a have-to-do,’’ Brennan said.
                                   

By Thom Smith

Seems like everywhere you turn these days, you’ll find a film festival. No sooner does the Palm Beach International Festival wrap than two others hit local silver screens.
The first Palm Beach Women’s International Festival opens April 7 for a four-day run at Muvico Parisian in West Palm Beach and the Lake Worth Playhouse. Opening film is The Whistleblower, best picture winner at the Palm Springs Festival. Hannah Free, the producer, and star Sharon Gless will be honored at the film’s screening at 7 p.m. Saturday, April 8 at the Compass Community Center in Lake Worth. A party in Gless’ honor will follow at The Cottage in Lake Worth.
The festival boasts 10 world premieres, seven U.S. premieres and films from 15 nations. Details at www.pbwiff.com.
From April 9-17, we get the Sixth Annual Downtown Boca Film Festival. Wait a minute! A festival in Boca? Well, the festival’s the same, just the name and the location have changed. For five years it was the Delray Beach Film Festival and, in fact, many of the films will be screened at the Movies of Delray.
The Boca festival opens with “Casino Night in Old Hollywood” at the Mizner Park Cultural Arts Center. Michael Stone, one of the forces behind Pineapple Groove in Delray, will host the party with sister Kelly Stone-Singer. No confirmation yet that their sister Sharon will make an appearance.
“She’s making a film right now, so we don’t know if she can get away or not,” Michael Stone said.
The event will benefit Planet Hope, founded by the Stones to help homeless children and their mothers. The black-tie-optional party will include food from local restaurants, silent and live auction, a casino and entertainment by 44th Street. Tickets are $50 in advance, $65 after April 4.
Several additional events are planned, including Reel to Runway fashion show on April 11 at Mizner Park ($35), filmmaker workshops, and parties every night. The screening schedule, however, was not available at press time. Check out  www.dbff.us for details. 

***

     A day for legends. Two of football’s greatest coaches, enjoying a little breakfast at the Boca Raton Resort & Club, then taking a few friendly jabs at each other and offering some insight. The occasion was the Boca YMCA’s annual Prayer Breakfast. The legends: Howard Schnellenberger and Bobby Bowden.
Schnellenberger helped guide the Miami Dolphins to NFL titles and led the University of Miami to a national collegiate championship. Bowden won two titles at Florida State University.
Now Schnellenberger is working his magic at Florida Atlantic University, building the program and a stadium from scratch. “It’ll be ready next fall,” he says of the stadium, its towers easily visible from I-95. “Even better, it’s ahead of schedule and under budget.”
Bowden, who retired, not exactly willingly, last year, said he’s on the road three or four days a week, but instead of recruiting, he’s making speeches. “I do get a chance to play golf a little more,” he confessed between bites, “but I’m not beating anybody.”
He turned a little more serious during his address, stressing the need for opportunity and responsibility.
“We need help for our young people; we need help for our families,” he said, asking rhetorically if young college players have changed in the half century since he started coaching.
“No, boys haven’t changed … but where the heck are their daddies? Who’s gonna raise these boys? Boys haven’t changed; parents have changed.
“Put a ball in their hands, and I don’t care if it’s a football, a baseball, a basketball or what, it’ll keep ’em occupied.”

***

        Tie down your easels, it’s going to be a bumpy month at Clay Glass Metal Stone Gallery in Lake Worth.
The madness began with an April Fool’s party, but it really gets going with the Second Annual Haitian Empty Bowl Fundraiser Saturday, April 9, from 10-4. More than 500 ceramic bowls — no two alike — that have been decorated by local artists, will be sold to supporters for $25 each or four for $80 in advance, $35 day of. Purchasers can then take their bowls to participating Lake Worth restaurants for menu morsels.
Participants this year include: La Bonne Bouche, The Cottage, Java Juice Bar, Taco Lady, TooJay’s, Rita’s Italian Ice, Havana Hideout, Kilwin’s, Nature’s Way, Paws on the Avenue (doggy treats), Rum Shack, Downtown Pizza, Dolce Vita, Dave’s Last Resort and Raw Bar, Brogue’s, Rotelli’s and Fiorentina.
Proceeds will go to the Art Creation Foundation for Children, an arts-based organization promoting personal growth, empowerment and education for children in Jacmel, Haiti. (561-588-8344)
On April 19, CGMS is hosting a “Peep Show” from 6-9 p.m. Gallery manager Joyce Brown isn’t saying much, except that the gallery “will be flooded with peeps of all kinds, shapes and colors.”
Rest easy, it’s G-rated.

***

        Hot stuff on the beach. Anthony Sanders, who for years was sous chef at the hot, hot 32 East in Delray and currently is a chef-consultant just up A1A at Café Cellini in Palm Beach, has a somewhat more earthy gig a little closer to the beach. Every Saturday during the season, he dishes up tacos from a truck at the Oceanside Farmer’s Market in Lake Worth.
At Taco Loquisimo (for gringos: Crazy Taco), he uses fresh ingredients and, unlike the usual taco trucker, his menu is always changing, depending on what’s available, including items he buys from fellow vendors that morning. Tacos are $3 a pop and they really ring a bell according to local patrons who begin lining up before Anthony’s 8 a.m. opening. Business is booming. He usually sells out.

***

        For two decades, Share Our Strength’s Taste of the Nation has been one of the most popular culinary fundraisers in Miami and Fort Lauderdale. The nationwide event, which features many of the nation’s top chefs, has raised more than $80 million to help reduce childhood hunger. Now it’s finally coming to Palm Beach County.
Café Boulud’s Zach Bell, who has hosted several smaller Share Our Strength dinners at his restaurant ,will spearhead this much larger event, set for Wednesday, April 13, at the Kravis Center.
Joining Bell will be Darryl Moiles from the Four Seasons Resort, Roy Villacrusis of Kubo, Holger Struett of Chops Lobster Bar and Dean James Max of 3800 Ocean, among many others, and including south county favorites 32 East, Casa d’Angelo, Dada, Michelle Bernstein’s at the Omphoy, Temple Orange at the Ritz-Carlton, Atlantic Ocean Club and Buddha Sky Bar, de la Terra at Sundy House, City Fish Market and Apicius.
Taste of the Nation supports Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign, which supports summer meal and after-school snack programs, an average of nearly 11,000 lunches each day.  Tickets are $80 in advance, $100 at the door; VIP tickets are $125 and $150 and include special lounge seating, specialty wines and spirits and a gift bag. Go to www.strengthflorida.org or call 561-998-2983.

Thom Smith is a freelance writer. He can be reached at thomsmith@ymail.com.

By Emily J. Minor

Former County Commissioner Mary McCarty is back in Palm Beach County, done with her federal prison time in Texas and living in a West Palm Beach Salvation Army halfway house.
“I have not seen Mary, but Mary got out of prison [March 24] and flew from College Station and then went directly to the halfway house,” said Reeve Bright, a Delray Beach lawyer who is a longtime family friend of McCarty and her husband, Kevin.
McCarty, 56, was the third county commissioner in less than three years to resign, plead to corruption and go to prison. Sentenced in federal court in June 2009 — and sent to prison that day — McCarty left the Federal Prison Camp in Bryon after having served about 21 months of her 42-month sentence.
Bright said McCarty will work in his law office while completing her federal term and living at the Salvation Army facility.
After resigning from the County Commission, McCarty admitted she used the clout of public office to draw business to her husband’s successful bond underwriting firm. Kevin McCarty served prison time for failing to report his wife’s wrongdoings.      

By Skip Sheffield

 Cloris Leachman has been here, there, and everywhere and she’s done it all. Now she will share her experiences in her funny, joyful and sometimes touching one-woman show as part of Libby Dodson’s Live at Lynn Theatre series at Lynn University. Shows are at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 2 and 4 p.m. Sunday, April 3.

Cloris is currently enjoying a new round of acclaim for her supporting role as Martha Plimpton’s mother in the dark Fox-TV situation comedy “Raising Hope,” which debuted last fall and has been renewed for next season. It’s just the latest in a career that stretches back to the dawn of television and has earned her an unprecedented nine prime-time Emmy Awards- more than any other performer in history- and one daytime Emmy. Cloris Leachman won an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress in “The Last Picture Show” (1971) and at age 82 she was the oldest contestant on ‘Dancing With the Stars” in its seventh season.

“I think they could have rated me at better than 4 or 5,” she said on a tour stop in Virginia. “But it was fun, and that’s what important.”

The first thing one notices about Cloris Leachman is her laugh, which she does often and heartily.

“I just love being on the set of “Raising Hope,” she says. “It’s hysterical. I start laughing the minute I open my mouth.”

Cloris launched her career as a beauty queen, competing as Miss Chicago in the Miss America competition of 1946. After winning a scholarship, Cloris studied acting at the famed Actors Studio with Elia Kazan in New York City. She broke into Broadway when she took over the role of Nellie Forbush in the original run of Rodger’s & Hammerstein’s “South Pacific. She co-starred with Katharine Hepburn in Shakespeare’s “As You Like It,’ and had her first film starring role in “Kiss Me Deadly” in 1955.

Cloris has been in three of Mel Brooks’ beloved comedies: “Young Frankenstein” (the fearsome Frau Blucher); “High Anxiety” (the demented Nurse Diesel) and “History of the World: Part 1.”

It would take an all-day Cloris Leachman Festival to cover the performer’s many roles and achievements, but she just touches on the best for her road show, which is managed by her third son, George Englund.

“I really looking forward to coming to Florida,” she says. “We were just in Omaha and it was terrible. It’s still cold in Virginia too. I think I’ll bring my bathing suit, but it will be one of those kinds with the long legs.”

Tickets are $45 mezzanine, $50 orchestra and $65 box. Call 561-237-9000 or visit www.lynn.edu/tickets.

               Two out of three coastal Delray Beach residents would rather switch — to curbside garbage pickup, according to results of a city survey obtained March 16 by The Coastal Star.

                  The city in late November mailed surveys to 830 coastal homeowners asking if they wanted to continue to pay $22.24 a month for back-door pickup or switch to curbside, a monthly savings of $9.52.

                  Of the nearly 540 homeowners who responded, 348, or nearly 65 percent, said they

would prefer the curbside pickup, and subsequent savings.

                  According to a memo from Lula Butler, the city's director of Community Improvement, the survey was sparked by a complaint from a resident that many coastal homeowners were bringing their garbage curbside even though they were being charged extra for back-door service.

                  “We believe that since they must bring their recycling and bulk trash to the curb, it makes it fairly convenient to do the garbage at the same time,” Butler wrote in her March 15 memo to City Manager David Harden.

                  Butler noted that the city monitored the contracted waste hauler, Waste Management, for two days in January 2009 and found that of the nearly 450 residents who did not take their garbage to the curb, Waste Management workers went to the back door to retrieve it.

                  The November survey did not solicit comments from residents, yet a few on both sides spoke up.

                  The most prevalent comment from those who voted to switch to curbside was that they did so because Waste Management had not picked up garbage they left at back doors.

                  “I have lived here for three years,” wrote a South Ocean Boulevard resident, “and have yet to have garbage picked up at the rear door.”

                  Added another South Ocean Boulevard resident who said he has carried his garbage curbside for 19 years: “I have been overcharged $9.52 a month — a total of $2,170. I should be entitled to a refund.”

                  Residents who voted in favor of keeping rear-door pickup said they did so because they either were too old to bring it curbside or snowbirds who let friends use their property and the friends didn’t know the pickup days.

                  A Melaleuca Road resident wrote that it is important to keep refuse from building up and dropping the back-door option would increase the “risk of rodent infestation."

                  Added a Mirimar Drive resident: “I am 92 years old, so please continue.”

                  Butler said she expected Harden to present the results to the City Commission sometime in April for a decision.

— Staff Report

By Mary Jane Fine

                  Flags are flying at the beach on this Tuesday morning, the yellow caution flag and the purple one that warns of dangerous marine life: Portuguese man-o-war, littering the sand like so many blue-tinted, oval balloons, crimped across the top. But the man-o-war attract little attention today. The focus is on the leopard.

                  Two young women approach.“It’s sooooo amazing,” coos one. “Can we take your picture?”

                  She’s about the umpteenth person to ask, and, of course, Lee Stoops says yes. The leopard’s not even done yet, but it won’t last long, so photos are its sole hope for preservation. Touch the ear, and it can crumble. Or kids might smash it. He doesn’t mind. Sand sculpture is his medium, so he knows how short-lived his creatures will be.

                  “The bigger the grains of sand, the more granular it is,” he says, “the faster the water evaporates, the faster it dries.” Down here, just east of the pavilion on Delray Beach, the sand isn’t too bad, not as grainy as on South Beach, where he sculpts on occasion.

                  Either location, any location, he builds his creatures facing away from the ocean; the prevailing winds tend to come from the sea, and wind has a drying effect. There’s this, too: The ocean makes a better backdrop for photos than do all those sunbathers.

                  He likes Delray Beach, moved there from Alaska four years ago to be closer to his parents; his dad had dementia and died the next year, so Stoops stayed on to help his mother, who’s now 87.

                   His sand sculpture is an accidental hobby, begun when he arrived at the beach one day, realized he’d forgotten to bring a book, saw some kids making a sand castle and decided to give it a try. Now he’s at the beach a couple times a week, usually on a Saturday, building leopards and lions, seals and mermaids, polar bears and walruses. The Alaska effect, those latter ones.

                  “I made a big investment,” he says, and smiles from under his wide-brim straw hat. “Five bucks for two buckets.”

                  He’s kneeling in the sand now, lengthening the leopard’s tail with handfuls of sand, smoothing it with the edge of a plastic card, one of those electronic room keys from a hotel where he once stayed. Credit cards also work, but the magnetic effect wears off them, too, so he doesn’t recommend using a current one.

                  He began, an hour or so ago, by mounding bucketsful of sand here, then trekking down to the water and filling both buckets with ocean, 40 pounds each when full. He poked holes in the sand so it’d take in more water, then repeated the process, then began fashioning the leopard. Re-did the head three times before it pleased him.

                  “Are you an artist?” asks a woman who has just wandered up and aimed her cell phone-camera at him.

                  “No,” he says. “Just right now.”

                  He has no artistic training, he says, insisting that, with effort and energy, anyone can do this. In Alaska, he was economic development director for the Northwest Arctic Borough, about 150 miles north of Nome.

                  He smoothes the leopard’s tail again, uses the edge of a shell to make indentations — spots — on the creature’s body. He then scoops out a shallow moat around it to create a sort-of platform for his work.

                   “Can I help?” asks Mitchell Morris, who is 14 and on vacation from Dallas. Mitchell has been watching for a half-hour, clearly itching to be a part of this. “Sure,” says Stoops, who’d love to see every school-kid in the area brought here and exposed to beach art, “to show them what’s possible.” He demonstrates how he fashions a platform ledge, with decorative edging to give it a granite-like look. Mitchell digs in.

                  A few minutes more, and it’s time for the finishing touch. Stoops strolls up the beach, plucks a few strands of beach grass, returns to insert them, one by one, in the leopard’s muzzle:  whiskers.

                  He’s done now. Ditto the leopard. If only for a while.

By Ron Hayes
   
     In March 1968, a ragtag band of local surfers rode a wave of anti-surfing sentiment all the way to Florida’s Supreme Court, and changed the history of their sport in Palm Beach County.
     They were teenagers then, high school kids with floppy blond hair who rode the waves off Atlantic Avenue in Delray Beach, or the Boynton Inlet, or Singer Island. Most are still here, still surfing, and working now to preserve the local history they helped make.
      “I began surfing in 1964, when I was a sophomore at Seacrest High School,” remembers Tom Warnke. “The same year the Beatles came out.”
     In those days, he and his friends rented their boards from Delray Bicycle & Sporting Goods — $1.75 for the day with a coupon from the Sunday paper.
     Warnke was 15 that year. He’s 62 now, still surfs, and won the southeast regional competition in his age group not long ago.
     “You don’t find the real appeal of surfing until you’ve spent about 10 hours humiliating yourself out there,” he said, “but once you get out on the open face of a wave, you’re hooked. It’s a bath for your brain.”
Ironically, one of the most important figures in local surfing history was not a surfer.
     M.E. Gruber was a mailman, and an amateur photographer. When Hurricane Betsy battered the coast on Sept. 9, 1965, a Greek banana freighter called the Amaryllis was shipwrecked off Singer Island, creating a windbreak.
     For the next three years, until the Amaryllis was towed offshore and buried, local surfers had great waves. And “Mr. Gruber,” as the kids always called him, had his subject. Between 1965 and 1972, Gruber took thousands of surfing photos from Lake Worth to Jacksonville, then organized occasional slide shows to display his work to the kids he’d photographed.
     In 2007, one of those former kids, Fred “Deadeye” Salmon, happened on an obituary in the newspaper. M.E. Gruber had died in Fort Worth, Texas, miles from the waves and surfers he chronicled.
Salmon contacted the photographer’s sister, and Gruber’s 5,000 photographs gave birth to the Palm Beach County Surfing History Project, formed in 2008 to preserve, document and exhibit the sport’s local past.
You’ll find a generous sampling of the project’s current collection on display at the Schoolhouse Children’s Museum in Boynton Beach through March 30.
“We say we’re for children ages 2 to 12,” explains Lindsey Nuzzo, the museum’s development coordinator, “but this is our 10th anniversary, and we’re trying to expand our reach and range, and we felt this exhibit could be something for all ages.”
 With Gruber’s photos recovered, other donations soon followed. David Aaron contributed a 10-foot balsa board he surfed on here in the 1940s.
Warnke’s sister, Sarah, added an original “Richie,” built by Bob Richwagen at his bicycle shop on Atlantic Avenue in 1964.
 “Dad changed with the times,” says his son, Albert, “so when that movie Gidget came out, he started making boards.” “In those days,” Richwagen says, “a board sold for about $125. Today you’d pay $700 or $800, at least.”
And those $1.25 a day coupons? Today, Richwagen runs a watersports rental concession on Delray Beach, where his boards bring $35 for an eight-hour day.
 If surfing has an official headquarters in Palm Beach County, it’s the venerable Nomad Surf Shop in the county pocket.
Ron Heavyside was only 20 when he took over a corner of the TV repair shop owned by his father, Richard Heavyside, back in 1968. His stock consisted of perhaps 10 boards he’d shaped himself, and a few pairs of surf shorts. Heavyside has retired now, but the Nomad still thrives, run by his sons, Ryan and Ronnie.
 The corner of that TV repair shop is a now a sprawling, 6,000 square foot maze of surfboards and shorts, T-shirts and sandals.
“I started surfing at 5,” says Ryan Heavyside, 26. “If my dad had golfed, I’d golf. When you’re dad builds surfboards, you surf.”
In 1996, he was ranked eleventh in the boys division of the Surfing America team, and though he no longer competes, he still surfs. And so do an increasing number of enthusiasts.
“This business is very seasonal,” Heavyside concedes, “but surfing is more popular now because it’s gone from being just a sport to a lifestyle. I’ll be in an airport in Indiana and see people wearing surf clothing. The surf industry used to be super-simple. Just your board and surf shorts. Now some of those shorts sell for $99, and a replica of a classic board can cost $2,000.”
In addition to the boards and Mr. Gruber’s striking photographs, the exhibit also features T-shirts worn by the various local surfing clubs of the 1960s.
Riviera Beach had its Possum’s Reef club by 1967. Salmon formed the Sandy Shores Surfing Club on Singer Island in 1967, and Warnke founded the Cripple Creek Surf Club at the Boynton Inlet the same year.
“By 1967, we had about 12 surfing clubs in the county,” Warnke says, “and we’d meet at the old MacArthur at Southern Boulevard and Military Trail. We called it the U.N. of surfing clubs.”
      And then there was a club called the Surf Fossils.
“Those were the older guys,” Warnke says, “35 or 40.”
But perhaps the most intriguing item on display, and the easiest to overlook, is a simple bumper sticker in the display case.
I Gave To Save Surfing, it says. PBCSA, $1.
In 1964, before it tried to ban leaf blowers, newspaper racks and topless jogging by men, the town of Palm Beach banned surfing.
Arrests were selective, and for four years the ban went unchallenged. But in 1968, when a local surfer named Bruce Carter pleaded not guilty and lost before Gus Broberg, the town’s judge, a tipping point was reached and the Palm Beach County Surfing Association was formed.
By selling bumper stickers, the surfers raised about $1,500 to hire a sympathetic young lawyer named Joel Daves, later the mayor of West Palm Beach.
In October 1968, Daves appealed the case to the county’s circuit court, and won.
The town appealed to the Fourth District Court of Appeal, and won.
Daves appealed to the Florida Supreme Court, and in July 1970, surfing won.
Palm Beach could regulate surfing, the high court ruled, but not ban it.
Surfing survived, and grew.
“There’s ten-fold more surfers out there now,” says Warnke, “and you can’t get new surf spots, so it gets more crowded and dangerous each year.” But he keeps surfing anyway.
“Surfing is an independent sport,” Ryan Heavyside explains. “It’s just you and the ocean, and the feeling of catching that one great wave is the same feeling someone else might get from shooting a hole in one, or winning a Nascar race. That same adrenalin. “And once you have your board, the waves are free.”

TOP PHOTO: Prominent members of the local surf community, Tom Warnke, Albert Richwagen and Ryan Heavyside pose with a variety of boards representing the evolution of the sport over the years. Photo by Tim Stepien

                                        
 The Schoolhouse Children’s Museum, at 129 E. Ocean Ave. in Boynton Beach, is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $3 for children 2-17 and $5 for adults. For information, call 742-6780 or visit  www.schoolhousemuseum.org.
     For information about the Palm Beach County Surfing History Project, visit www.surfhistoryproject.org.

Kristine de Haseth and Bob Ganger in the Florida Coalition for Preservation office in Delray Beach. Photo by Jerry Lower

By Thomas R. Collins

Word arrived like a weatherman’s warning that a Cat 5 was whirling his way: The residents of Briny Breezes were considering a proposal to sell their whole town for $510 million to developer Ocean Land Investments, which wanted to build more than 1,500 condos, timeshares and hotel rooms.
To Bob Ganger, it wasn’t a development, but “a huge city, really, right in the middle of what is currently the rather placid barrier island.” Within a few weeks, the Florida Coalition for Preservation was born — “at that point without even finding out whether anybody already had that name.” Ganger and co-founder Tom Evans, a former congressman from Delaware, sat at the helm.
Since then, the coalition — which represents the barrier island from the Ocean Avenue bridge in Lantana to the south end of Delray Beach — mobilized enough opposition to help stymie the Briny Breezes development, has spread the word about other development proposals, lobbied officials, monitored countless government meetings and stood up for sea turtles.
The coalition might have been created out of desperation to draw attention to the Ocean Land project, but it now appears there’s no turning back. The group, all-volunteer except for executive director Kristine de Haseth, has just entered its fifth year.
State planners now call the coalition for ear-to-the-ground info on development proposals, Ganger said.
It’s all about communication, he said.
“We really have little political clout,” Ganger said in his office off U.S. 1 in Delray Beach. “But we sure as heck get a lot of people to know what’s going on. And they cumulatively have more clout.”
The little wood-paneled office is crammed with files and poster boards. De Haseth mock-boasts that it is home to the rare office bathtub — but it turns out that the tub is just another place for storage, filled with plastic cups, toilet paper and coolers.
Ganger, a retired vice president with Kraft Foods, recruited de Haseth, an Ocean Ridge resident, for her business and activist experience. She was a licensing and merchandising executive with Sony Music, and helped persuade a California township to issue bonds to buy and preserve land in Tiburon, Calif., just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco.
Ganger and de Haseth aim for speed — since governments and developers have a head start, every second counts. So they obsessively monitor board agendas looking for any sign of something that residents ought to know about or else.
“The summer, where you would think everything would be nice and quiet, is usually our busiest time because most people try to do their kind of behind-the-scenes sneaky deals during the summer,” de Haseth says.
Other than monitoring ongoing issues — including Briny Breezes, which Ganger and Haseth expect to develop eventually — they hope to help governments create a unified master plan for their entire stretch of island. As it is, development rules are inconsistent, created by a hodgepodge of jurisdictions.
The coalition feels the master plan is an especially urgent matter, considering the deep cuts to the state Department of Community Affairs proposed by new Gov. Rick Scott.
“If we don’t do it, DCA’s not going to be around to do it for us,” de Haseth said.
Dorinda Burroughs, an Ocean Ridge resident who has worked with the group since its early days, said the coalition’s successes are undeniable.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that without the coalition we would have a much different picture going on,” she said.
Bob Victorin — a trustee with the Beach Property Owners Association, which has worked with the coalition occasionally — said it took two years to develop a master plan for the Delray Beach barrier island it represents. And that only covers one jurisdiction.
He called the coalition’s role “huge” — especially in light of the Briny Breezes proposal, which might have spawned other similar developments.
“They played a major lobbying function,” he said. “If that had gone forward, it would have been a forerunner to other parcels.”
Ganger — who insisted they don’t want to block development, just irresponsible development — said it’s hard work, and he expected it to be. That’s the only way to make things happen.
“You don’t get things done unless you really dive in,” he said. “If we didn’t do it, it wouldn’t get done.”
                                       

Jay Leno awards the “Big Dog Best of Show” to Titusville residents George and Fran Nolan for their 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham.  Photos by Tim Stepien

By Ron Hayes
    Tom Gerrard scanned the green at the Boca Raton Resort & Club and ventured a diagnosis.
    “If this were treatable, it would be a disease,” he said. And then he added the good news: “But there’s no cure.”
    Not that the hundreds of car lovers strolling among those hundreds of cars at the fifth annual Boca Raton Concours d’Elegance that sweltering Sunday afternoon were looking for a cure.
    Some were looking for prizes. Most were just looking.
    From Friday, Feb. 25, to Sunday, Feb. 27, the posh resort’s golf course was turned into a parking lot for classic cars and motorcycles to be ogled, judged, awarded and, no doubt about it, envied.
    With over 7,000 people attending, the three-day event raised nearly $3 million for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Broward County. Jay Leno performed and H. Wayne Huizenga was honored, but the real stars were the cars, from vintage Model A’s to 1965 Mustangs, a temporary automotive museum.
    “Cars these days aren’t art,” Gerrard said. “They’re computer-produced and bean-counter engineered. This is art on wheels.”

Tom Gerrard poses with his 1964 Pontiac GTO.  

    During his six years on the Manalapan Town Commission, Gerrard drove luxury cars. For everyday use, he had a 1995 Mercedes 600SL, a 2008 Cadillac XLR-V. But his classic collection grew.
    He caught the incurable automotive bug in high school, working in an Amoco station on Sunrise Boulevard in Plantation.
    “Guys came in with fancy cars, and I told my parents, ‘Someday I’m going to have a convertible.’”
    In 1992, he bought his first collectible, a 1959 Eldorado, and the car bug bit.
    Now, back in Big Sky, Montana, a five-minute walk from his second home, an underground garage protects his collection of 70 classic cars.
    “I had a hundred at one point,” he says. “If I’d taken all the money I spent on cars the past 17 years and it put it in the stock market, I’d be in the hole by now. But these don’t lose value.”
    This year, he’s entered a Grenadier red, 1964 Pontiac GTO Gran Tourismo.
    “I bought the GTO in March 2008 from the original owners in Denver,” he says proudly.
    He’s also showing a 1964 Corvair Monza Spyder, Honduras maroon with a white vinyl interior and a clear hood, to show off the rear engine.
    “This is the car Ralph Nader came after,” he says. “Remember Unsafe At Any Speed?”
    Does Gerrard drive it, at any speed?
    “Yeah, it’s fun!” he says. “But he wasn’t totally wrong, by the way.”
    Also competing in the same class as Gerrard’s GTO was Jeff Eder’s 1969 Ford Shelby GTO. The orthodontist lives in Ocean Ridge, but his GTO is listed as “Gulfstream aqua.”

Jeff Eder and his son Luke entered their 1969 Ford Shelby in the Boca Raton Concours d’ Elegance.

    “I enter for the fun of it,” he says. “Look around, every car is pristine. It’s just nice to see people have taken the time to care for them.”
    While Gerrard and Eder wait by their cars, chatting with passersby, a team of judges moves from car to car, rating each against a list of 45 points. What condition is the car in? How much of it is original?
    And at 3 p.m., the trophies are awarded.
    Tom Gerrard’s Corvair wins a third-place ribbon. His GTO takes first in its class.
    This is not Gerrard’s first triumph. At last year’s show, his 1956 DeSoto Fireflite Pacesetter took a first place in the American Collector category, and his 1953 Chevy Corvette ranked second in the American Performance rankings.
    “It’s not me that’s winning,” he says. “It’s the car. I’m
 just the caretaker.”       

Communications consultant Martel and his wife bought their Gulf Stream condominium after they saw the ocean view.  Photo by Jerry Lower

By Ron Hayes

Lucy is a very friendly poodle.
Yap! Yap! Yap!
One morning last month, as a visitor arrived at her oceanside condo, she was very friendly indeed.
Yap! Yap! Yap!
“Excuse me,” her master told his guest. “She’s a dog, so I have to speak dog.”
Bending to address her, he held up a forefinger to demand attention and said, loudly and firmly, “Yap! Yap! Yap!”
Instantly, Lucy stopped yapping.
   Myles Martel, Ph.D., knows how to communicate, and no one knew that better than Ronald Reagan.
This year, as Americans mark the centennial of the 40th president’s birth, some will praise him and some will blame, but almost all agree he was a great communicator.
Dr. Martel, a professor and communications consultant, was Reagan’s debate coach for the decisive Oct. 28, 1980, presidential debate between Reagan and President Jimmy Carter.
When that decisive debate began, a week before the voting, the incumbent president was slightly ahead in the polls.
“Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” Reagan asked, and left Cleveland that night with a comfortable lead. A week later, he won the presidency.
“Ronald Reagan was, in many ways, beyond a great communicator,” Martel said, staring out at the ocean view that brought him and his wife, Leslie, to Gulf Stream 15 years ago. “He had a remarkable ability to express his views, and he was also an exceptional listener. But being able to speak well is one thing. To debate well brings you to a higher, more complex order of communication.”
And that’s why the great communicator brought in the great debate coach.
A native of Maine, Martel began debating in high school, continued in college and found his life’s work. He has written six books, advised more than 40 U.S. senators, congressmen, ambassadors, governors, and countless corporate executives. His bookshelves are adorned with photos of the men and women he’s taught to win arguments.
“In the debate with Carter,” he recalled, “Reagan needed to put Carter down without being too shrill, so I wrote strategy. My job was to critique his responses.”
They had “many, many” mock debates at a Middleburg, Va., estate where a garage had been transformed into a TV studio. Martel monitored Reagan’s clarity, his ability to respond within the time limit, and his body language.
“When in doubt, take notes,” he told him, “and no matter what, don’t look flummoxed.”
Ronald Reagan never looked flummoxed.
“There you go again,” he quipped, with a warm, avuncular smile, and the huge television audience saw morning in America.
From 1990 to 1998, Martel advised on crisis communications for oil company executives in 43 countries. From his headquarters in Boca Raton, he now advises CEOs how to handle layoffs.
But what advice does he have for those of us who will never run for president or respond to a mammoth oil spill?
• “Be aware of your listening vs. talking ratio,” he says. Communicating is not only about what you say; it’s about hearing what the other person says.
• “When you start to make a point, be clear about your intent.” There’s a thin line, Martel says, between establishing your credibility and being self-serving, which turns people off.
• “When in doubt, leave it out.” Is that off-color joke more off than colorful? Don’t tell it.
• “Don’t forget the power of questioning.” When two people are so focused on what they’re going to say next, Martel says, it’s “dualogue,” not a dialogue. Ask questions.
And above all, be honest.
“My point of view is, treat your credibility as sacrosanct,” he emphasizes. “There’s no excuse at all for untruths, even white lies. Be truthful first and persuasive second.”
As he showed his guest to the door, Martel pointed out a framed letter.
“Dear Myles,
I want to thank you for the great help,” it reads in part.  “Your insight on debate strategy and general coaching were invaluable … I am very grateful for your support and dedication.
Sincerely, Ronald Reagan.”
“I’m 67 years old, and I love what I do,” Martel said, “and I expect to be doing it for many more years.”
Lucy the poodle did not yap her approval, which may be
the finest approval of all.    

Martel (center) and Margaret Heckler, United State Ambassador to Ireland, work with President Reagan.  Photo courtesy of Myles Martel