By Mary Thurwachter

The Lantana Town Council, at its Feb. 26 meeting, approved a collective bargaining agreement between the town and the Palm Beach County Police Benevolent Association. The agreement, which reflects an overall 5 percent salary increase for sworn officers, is good from Oct.1, 2018 through Sept. 30, 2020.
Some of the differences from previous contracts, said Mayor Dave Stewart, include giving officers promoted to detective 10 percent increases to their hourly rate, giving officers promoted to sergeant 15 percent increases, and giving detectives who are promoted to sergeant 5 percent increases.
Any officer selected as Employee of the Quarter receives a bonus day off equal to his scheduled shift hours.
Lantana has 32 sworn officers; another will be added in April.
Stewart said that for this coming fiscal year, the increases reflected in the new contract will cost the town $162,000, and $167,000 the year after.
Dave Arm, Chamber of Commerce president, supported the contract.
“One of the nice things about living in a small seaside town is the fact that we have our own Police Department,” he said. “In my 10 years here, I’ve found them to be incredibly responsive. They take care of problems efficiently.
“You need to retain good officers like this and a 5 percent increase doesn’t sound like a whole lot to me. A 10 percent increase for someone who gets a promotion sounds pretty standard.”
In other action, the town:
• Approved spending $96,000 for enhancements at the sports complex on Eighth Street. Among the improvements will be the construction of a basketball court.
• Recognized Cmdr. Robert Hagerty as Police Department employee of the fourth quarter of 2017. For the past six months, he has coordinated the move to and renovation of the new police headquarters next to the sports complex.

By Mary Thurwachter

Lantana Mayor Dave Stewart faces sexual harassment allegations after a resident accused him of asking for sex in exchange for speed bumps on her street.
The mayor denies the woman’s claims.
Catherine Padilla, 54, filed the complaint in January with the Florida Commission on Ethics. She told The Coastal Star she and Stewart had become friends when both attended meetings of the Hypoluxo-Lantana Kiwanis Club.
Their relationship took an objectionable turn in 2015, according to Padilla, when, after a morning Kiwanis meeting, the two had lunch after which he drove her to a motel and propositioned her for sex. Padilla said she “wasn’t interested” and that Stewart drove her back to her car.
She said Stewart called her a week or two later and said he would guarantee her street would get speed tables, a safety measure for which she had lobbied, if she would have sex with him at the motel.
“I said absolutely not,” Padilla told The Coastal Star. “I said I’m not interested. I made it perfectly clear.”
Stewart, who has been mayor for 18 years, said he has never asked for, or accepted, anything in exchange for a vote.
“These accusations are totally and completely false,” the mayor said. “I will not dignify them by making a statement. I continue to focus on doing what’s best for the residents of Lantana.”
In August 2015, the Town Council voted in favor of the traffic-calming speed humps for Padilla’s street. But Padilla said the harassment continued with calls to her from the mayor the day before and after the 4-0 vote (council member Lynn Moorhouse was absent).
“The day after that meeting, the mayor called me and he said, ‘Well, aren’t you going to thank me?’ and I said for what?” Padilla said. “And he said ‘for the speed bumps.’ But I did that myself. There was no reason to thank him. He didn’t do anything. He just went along with it because it was unanimous. And he got really belligerent and he said, ‘Fine, then I’m going to yank those speed humps right out of there.’ ”
The speed humps on her street have not been removed.
Padilla said she waited so long to file the complaint because she was afraid — and because her focus was elsewhere.
“I have a son that’s in the military and we had a death in the family and also I contracted a really bad illness that could have killed me,” she said. “I was in and out of the hospital for a whole year.”
Her ex-husband, Herminio Padilla Jr., died while working at the East Central Regional Sewage Plant in West Palm Beach in January 2015. He fell through a metal floor grating, dropped into sewage and was lodged in a 42-inch pipe.
Catherine Padilla said she finally felt strong enough to file the complaint against the mayor this year, on Jan. 4. She filed an amendment to that complaint on Jan 11, when the mayor came to her house to talk to her about the complaint and she called police.
Stewart, according to the police report, told officers he had learned of the ethics complaint filed with the state and had gone to Padilla’s house to talk with her about it.
Padilla, according to the police report, said that when she opened the door and saw Stewart, she shut it, locked it and took a photo of Stewart in his car before he left. The two never spoke during the incident, both told police.
Stewart’s term expires this year, but because he had no opposition he will continue as mayor for the next three years.
Padilla said all she wants from Stewart is admission of guilt and an apology.
Complaints filed with Florida Commission on Ethics are not public record until the investigation has concluded. A spokesperson for the state would not say how long it would take for that to happen.

Some of the early residents to be honored at Briny Breezes’ 60th anniversary parade: (l-r) Dorothy McNeice, Dan Harkness, sisters Betty Lewis and Judy Munson, David Bayless, Violet Schoeni, Betty and Chuck Foland, Curt and Beverly Mosher and Don Gross. Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star

By Dan Moffett

After 63 years of marriage, Chuck and Betty Foland pretty much know everything there is to know about each other.
Except maybe for one thing.
“I still don’t know where he got the money from,” Betty says.
That would be the $2,500 Chuck gave to retiring strawberry farmer Ward Miller in 1958 to buy a prime lot in what is now Briny Breezes.
It seemed a bit of a risky extravagance at the time. In today’s dollars, that was close to $22,000, after all. Back then, the Folands had year-and-a-half-old twin daughters in their 28-foot Airstream camper and the expenses of a young family waiting back home in Syracuse, N.Y. But Chuck didn’t waver. In fact, he decided to buy a second lot for $2,000.
“I realize now it was a pretty smart move to make,” Betty says with a smile. “But at the time I thought he was crazy.”
It turned out to be the investment of a lifetime — and an important part of Briny Breezes’ beginning as an independent community. The Folands and their children and their children’s children and their children’s children’s children have been regular winter visitors to Briny ever since.
The shareholders of the cooperative that owns Briny Breezes plan to celebrate its 60th anniversary on March 24 with a golf cart parade led by the Folands and other Briny pioneers, the early investors who took a chance and helped shape the improbable history of the seaside mobile home park.
What did the pioneers have in common? Most were from the Midwest and middle-class families, most liked each other and all of them just liked being in Briny.
Curt and Beverly Mosher, from Damascus, Ohio, spent their honeymoon here 67 years ago and have been returning ever since. Her father was an original stockholder.
“Maybe people pay $8 million for a house down the road here,” Beverly says with a laugh. “But they aren’t having the fun we’re having in our clubhouse.”
Violet Schoeni’s first visit was in 1925, when she was only a year old and strawberries really were growing on the land. Sisters Betty Lewis and Judy Munson came with their parents in the 1950s from Courtland, N.Y., just south of Syracuse. Dan Harkness came with his family from Elkhorn, Wis., in 1953, and joined the first group of investors.
Don Gross started coming down from Chicago in 1949 and then bought a lot nine years later. He put the property in his mother’s name and lives in Briny full-time now. His children and grandchildren have followed.
Dorothy McNeice, one of the town’s historians, arrived in Briny from Port Huron, Mich., during the fall of 1938 in an 18-foot travel trailer. She was 11 years old. Ward Miller charged her family $7 a week to rent a space. Her father ran a grocery store for the community. Then World War II came to Briny’s doorstep.
“It was very hectic here during the war years,” she recalls. “The German submarines were sinking our ships. We’d get up in the morning to go to school and see ships burning just off the coast.”
Civil defense wardens came around to make sure the campers maintained a blackout at night. Many families chose to stay up North until after the war.
David Bayless, Beverly Mosher’s brother, was playing football at Muskingum College in Ohio in 1958 when his father, Paul, bought a lot from his friend Miller. When Fidel Castro overthrew Fulgencio Batista in 1959, Cuban refugees made their way to Briny. The Bayless family and other Brinyites took the Cubans in and helped them resettle.
In the late 1950s, amenities were minimal in the young community.
There was one telephone, in the office, and residents were summoned by loudspeaker to come take their calls. The main water hookups were little more than garden hoses. Toilets and showers were in bathhouses. Those who had TVs used rabbit-ear antennas to capture black-and-white images. Electric service could be unreliable. And there was no air conditioning.
But the Briny pioneers kept things informal and trusted each other. The trailer doors weren’t locked at night.
“There was supposed to be a town marshal. But I never saw him,” Chuck Foland says.
Business transactions moved quickly from hand to hand.
“Briny was always a cash place,” Bayless recalls. “We called it cigar boxes. The park would keep a box of cash and put it on the table when the time came to pay its bills. That was the culture here.”
Beverly Mosher remembers how happy hour traveled door-to-door: “They used to carry Manhattans in a big jug on their backs and shoulders and go from one house to another having drinks.”
To Betty Foland, the absence of a feeling of status or class makes Briny extraordinary.
“I like that we have every standard of life here — every income,” she says. “There are very wealthy people here and you’d never know they’re wealthy. There’s also low-income people. That’s a community to me.”
There’s also a quiet miracle that has evolved over the 60 years that makes Briny rather extraordinary. Despite its vulnerable location pressed tightly between the Atlantic and Intracoastal, Briny has avoided significant damage from the dozens of tropical storms and hurricanes that have passed by.
Hurricanes Wilma and Irma did blow off some shutters. And a tornado turned over a couple of trailers in the early ’60s. But Briny abides.
“I know why,” says Beverly Mosher. “It’s because so many people here are praying for us.”

By Dan Moffett

Briny Breezes Town Council members, following the recommendation of new Town Manager Dale Sugerman, unanimously approved hiring their fifth deputy clerk in as many years on Feb. 22. About 12 people expressed interest in the part-time position, Sugerman said, and he invited three candidates to come for interviews. The clear choice for the job was Maya Coffield, he said.
Coffield has served as a town clerk before, in the village of Marvin, N.C., and has worked the last eight years as a paralegal in Charlotte, N.C., and Cooper City.
“I have checked with all her references and they all give her glowing references,” Sugerman said. “Maya should match up very nicely with what our needs are here in Briny Breezes.”
Coffield earned a bachelor of science degree in business management from Boston University and a master’s from the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University.
Since 2013, Briny has had trouble keeping a deputy clerk for much more than a year. In January, Jackie Ermola announced she was leaving to do more work at her church.
Coffield is to start a 20-hour-a-week schedule on March 20. She will earn $20 an hour for the first 90 days, with raises to $22 and $25 an hour by next year.
In other business, Sugerman said he met with Boynton Beach Police Chief Kelly Harris and Capt. Chris Yannuzzi to discuss patrol procedures and parking citation issues.
Police Maj. Michael Johnson, who oversees the patrols, said the department “is just trying to tighten up the way that we’re operating” and improve performance.
Johnson reported two auto burglaries between Feb. 17-19. Thieves stole a set of golf clubs from an unlocked car and smashed a side window to steal a handgun from a car parked on Cordova Avenue. Johnson says residents should keep their cars locked and secure weapons inside their homes.

By Janis Fontaine

The kids competing in the Palm Beach Philanthropy Tank aren’t the only youngsters making a big splash in the “help your neighbor” pool.
Colin Wanless, 14, of Boca Raton, is an eighth-grader at Pine Crest Middle School. He started volunteering with Joshua’s Heart Foundation, a charity that fights childhood hunger, in 2009.
With Colin’s hard work, the Miami-based charity expanded to the Boca Raton area in 2015. Colin has helped raise more than $10,000 and feed more than 13,000 people. He also recruited two dozen local kids to join the board that leads the chapter.
In an interview with CBS local news anchor Michele Wright, Colin said, “If we want to make this world a stronger, healthier, happier and better place, we really ought to be helping one another.”
Now Colin’s work has been honored by The Prudential Spirit of Community Awards, which named Colin as an outstanding youth volunteer of 2018. The awards, in their 23rd year, are produced by Prudential Financial in partnership with the National Association of Secondary School Principals.

Zoe Deitelbaum (left), Naven Parthasathy (standing) and Brianna Detamore started Hurricane Helping Hands, one of eight finalists for Palm Beach Philanthropy Tank funding. It aims to equip low-income older adults with survival kits. Photo provided

Related story: Boca teen honored for fighting hunger

By Janis Fontaine

Songwriter Linda Creed is hardly alone in believing “the children are our future.”
In 2016, a group of local philanthropists led by Bill Meyer, chairman of Meyer Jabara Hotels, a hotel and restaurant management company with an office in West Palm Beach, started the Palm Beach Philanthropy Tank, a project of Advisors for Philanthropic Impact.
API, formed in 2011, brought together local real estate and trust attorneys, financial advisers, CPAs, insurance professionals and nonprofit executives in a “network of good.” One of its tenets is to “inspire a new generation of philanthropic leaders,” and the Philanthropy Tank takes that idea from intent to action.
Meyer started the Philanthropy Tank with an idea stolen from television and $25,000 he was willing to risk. “No one is giving young people the opportunity to take on community projects,” Meyer said, and he believed kids’ outside-the-box thinking might have an advantage over adult thinking. It did.
In 2016 and 2017, the PBPT funded projects that fought hunger in Delray Beach, taught life-saving CPR to high school students, screened the eyesight of Head Start kids, and built boundary-less play areas and gardens for kids in wheelchairs. Gifts ranged from $7,500 to $18,000 per project.
Every finalist gets something.
In 2016, the first year, nine groups split a total of $109,000 in gifts. The awards ranged from $7,500 to $18,000. In 2017, nine winning groups split a total of $100,000, with awards from $8,500 to $15,000.
This year, PBPT chose seven finalists among 47 submissions and got the community involved in picking another by asking people to vote for their favorite from a list of 10. The community voted for Hurricane Helping Hands, developed by Zoe Deitelbaum of South Palm Beach, Brianna Detamore of Boca Raton, Kiah Kimpton of Delray Beach and Naven Parthasathy of Boynton Beach, all students at American Heritage School in Delray Beach. Their project plans to provide hurricane emergency kits to low-income older adults to keep them safe during a hurricane.

Everyone pitches in
The group is an eclectic democracy, with each person holding a role. Brianna is the project manager. She sees the big picture. Zoe calls her “the delegator.” Kiah is the artistic one: “She did our logo, and she prepared our slide show.” Naven is the math guy, so “he handles the budget, and he’s also our presenter.”
Zoe, whose mother, Lisa Deitelbaum, lives in coastal Boca Raton, is the detail person. “I do a lot of different things, whatever is necessary. I do the research. I have some artistic skills,” Zoe said. She keeps things from falling through the cracks. Whenever teammates need help, it’s Zoe they call.
Being part of the community contest “was thrilling,” Zoe said. “We were up against kids from bigger schools and we worked really hard to get people to vote.”
The impetus for the survival kit idea came from experience, Zoe said. She and her teammates all suffered, to varying degrees, after Hurricane Irma last September.
“Everybody in the group saw it firsthand,” Zoe said. Friends were without power for days, the school was shut for more than a week, and it took more than a month for Zoe’s internet to be fixed. But what really stuck with Zoe and her friends? How older adults suffered.
“Seniors are forgotten people,” Zoe said. During the hurricane, Zoe’s beloved grandfather, Lee Goldstein, already fighting cancer, got sick and couldn’t get immediate access to treatment or the medication he needed. Well known in Palm Beach, Goldstein died in October, but not without teaching Zoe a few things about life.
“I was really close to him,” Zoe said.

Zoe drew inspiration from her grandfather Lee Goldstein, who died after Hurricane Irma. Photo provided

An inspiring role model
Goldstein, 80, actually taught many people a few things. As the founder and president of Virginia Design Packaging Corp. and a member of the Society of the Plastic Industry, Goldstein helped create and implement the recycling symbols used on the bottoms of plastic containers around the world.
He was a conservationist who served as a commissioner on the town’s Shore Protection Board, and he was former chairman of the Citizens’ Association of Palm Beach, which united co-op and condo owners to work together for the good of the community. He supported science through the South Florida Science Center and Aquarium and fought crime with Palm Beach Crime Watch.
Goldstein’s death, combined with the news of the deaths of elderly residents at nursing homes after Irma hit, illustrated the special vulnerability of older adults during a crisis.
Zoe and her team knew they could help.
Hurricane Helping Hands plans to deliver safety kits at the beginning of each hurricane season to low-income seniors in Palm Beach County. Each kit will include a flashlight, a crank radio, a three-day supply of nonperishable food, a can opener, water, a first aid/hygiene kit and a survival guide with emergency information on shelter locations, packaged in a waterproof container.
Zoe said the group researched what people buy for supplies, what experts recommend and the cost of putting together a kit, which reinforced the need for it. The students knew that lots of older adults just don’t have the extra money, no matter how badly they need the supplies.
Working with the United Way, the group identified a pocket of about 800 people living within walking distance of the school as the target recipients. Zoe’s team wants to recruit student volunteers to do the heavy lifting and deliver the kits in time for the 2018 hurricane season, which begins June 1. The group members plan to ask for about $14,000 when they make their final pitch on March 11.

Presentation prep
For about a month before the final presentation, groups chosen for the Tank attend weekend workshops in preparation for their presentations. Public speaking, Bill Meyer says, isn’t easy, but it’s an important skill, so much of the coaching focuses on it.
The group chose Naven as its spokesperson, so he’ll do the presentation. The free ceremony at the Dreyfoos School of the Arts in West Palm Beach is open to the public.
Zoe said working with her teammates, who are all active in the Future Business Leaders of America, was fun. All have strong leadership skills but they’re also willing to defer to each other as needed. Not only do they understand the concept of emotional intelligence, they possess emotional intelligence.
Zoe had already distinguished herself in a variety of forums before competing in the PBPT. In 2013, she earned a fourth-place medal for her project in the biochemistry category at the Palm Beach Regional Science and Engineering Fair.
For another project, Zoe created a website for The Imagination Emporium, coding the site herself using HTML5, CSS and Javascript, and although she enjoyed the challenge, coding is a hobby, not a career goal. But it certainly doesn’t hurt to have the knowledge and skills, and that’s what Zoe is doing: acquiring skills and gaining experiences.
The finalists’ ideas were evaluated for community impact, feasibility, solution creativity, sustainability and team strengths.
The PBPT wanted forward- thinking, novel solutions, so indirect or passive solutions like fundraisers for charitable gifts, or money for operating funds and capital campaigns were given less weight.
“The kids have done a terrific job taking this from idea to execution,” Meyer said. “We coach these kids in how to make their presentations, and that mentoring is invaluable to them. If they’re selected, they get 12 months of mentoring to help them solve difficulties along the route, and there are always difficulties.”
The students learn leadership skills, negotiating and sometimes just cold hard facts. In fact, the hardest part might be keeping the kids grounded, but the mentors have to do it without discouraging them.
“You want them to be successful, but sometimes what they’ve suggested seems impossible. But you don’t want to discourage them. Kids don’t see the world the way adults do,” Meyer said. “They don’t come in with negative perceptions.”
Meyer and the mentors call the students Positively Disruptive Change-makers.
Meyer has a rule he uses when he’s talking to them: “If it’s hard to choose what to say, you go with the truth.”
Another good lesson for tomorrow’s leaders.

Palm Beach Philanthropy Tank final presentations
When: 4-6 p.m. March 11
Where: A.W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts, 501 S. Sapodilla Ave., West Palm Beach
Reservations: www.eventbrite.com
Info: www.philanthropytank.org

The other seven finalists:
• Aquaponics Educational Enrichment for PBC Schools, Tess Flemma and John Schuttler of Boca Raton High School.
• Surface 71 — Ocean, Plastics & Marine Health, Emily Briceno, Jemma Currie and Angeli Romero from Suncoast High School.
• Find the Keys Music Program, Sophia Zheng and Hayley Huber, Dreyfoos School of the Arts.
• canCode, Noah Rubin of Rosenblatt High School.
• Read With Me, Nestor Flores and Shane Herman, The Weiss School.
• Helping Hands, Guadalupe Alcala-Garcia, Mya Rodriguez and Yalissa Baltazar, Glades Central High School.
• Shoes2You, Joseph Rubsamen of Oxbridge Academy.

By Lona O’Connor

The way that Lynn Migdal has chosen to grieve is very particular to her. She is the first to point that out, in the introduction to her 2017 book, Eternal Love Connections.
Her unorthodox approach adds a dash of magic and maybe even whimsy to the practice of grieving. While others may not follow exactly the path she chose, they can use it as a model to find their own ways, she hopes. 
Migdal, a chiropractor, practiced for years in Delray Beach before July 12, 2012, when her two daughters, her ex-husband and their home were buried in a mudslide in Johnson’s Landing, British Columbia.
As crews searched for their bodies, Migdal went to British Columbia to wait for news. 
Even in the midst of her own misery en route to the scene, Migdal couldn’t shake her habit of ministering to others.
“I was being helicoptered in with the fire chief of Vancouver, and I’m teaching him about his neck,” she recalled while eating lunch in a Delray Beach café. 
The place where her house used to be — only the roof was visible — was a grisly sight. 
“I was praying for the [search] dogs, but dogs are useless once the mud turns to cement, 32 feet of cement,” Migdal said.
The family members “were suffocated instantly, though it took a long time to get that information.”
Searchers found the bodies of Diana, 22, and Valentine Webber, and it took another week to find Rachel, 17. Their neighbor up the hill was never found. 
For the next two years, Migdal’s first stage of grieving was to work. 
“I wrote two books, started a nonprofit foundation and somehow directed and ran a natural healing center.”
She describes Wind Kissed as a “self-empowerment fantasy novel for children and adults.”
The second, Women’s Natural Guidebook, combines practical information with affirmations.
To liberate her emotions, Migdal spent time outside, in nature. She practiced deep, full breathing.
She took time every day to experience her grief head on. During that time, she bumped into something she came to call “eternal love connections,” which gave her the pleasure of feeling the presence of her departed loved ones.
In 2014, Migdal had a lightbulb moment. 
As she watched, a 2-year-old boy took his mother’s cellphone and assumed the usual position, bent over and mesmerized by the screen. What she saw was a child in one of the worst possible positions for his spine and breathing.
“I realized I had to go into education. I can’t put my hands on everybody,” she said.
Thus was born what Migdal calls the Looking Up movement.
The Mayo Clinic in 2000 had already identified what is called the “forward neck posture,” worsened by hours spent bent over computers and, more recently, by constant scanning of cellphones. It is also known as “text neck” and can lead to arthritis, pinched nerves and other long-term negative effects.
One easy way to counteract text neck is to raise the cellphone to eye level rather than hunching over it. As part of teaching better posture, Migdal tries to entertain her audiences. Her nonprofit foundation, Looking Up, has sponsored events that included belly dancers and people dressed in skeleton T-shirts or cellphone costumes.
Foot-tapping rap and reggae versions of the song Look Up, can be done cha-cha-cha style or with a hula hoop.
Looking up is the simplest way to a healthier respiratory and nervous system in the cellphone age, and Migdal and her associates — other chiropractors, healers and therapists — have made it fun.
“We want to be an educational foundation that entertains,” said Migdal.
Sometime in the nearly six years since she lost her family, Migdal’s curly hair went from brown to silver. A small woman with a fashionable flair, she demonstrates, with a slightly self-mocking air, how she can adjust the wired Elvis-style collar of her short, spangled black jacket. She gives off a frisson of intense energy.
“Back in the ’70s, I was a hustle queen in New York City,” she said. “I Spanish-hustled my way through chiropractic school.”
Later, dancing came to her aid again.
One day, when she realized how much she missed dancing with her daughters, “I put their pictures on sticks and danced with them. If you’re missing, you’re not listening. I cry a lot, but I breathe and dance and connect with love. If you can connect with what you’re missing, you’re blissing. There is no lack. You can’t hug the body, but the energy never dies.”
She has held dances for parents who lost children and for divorced parents.
“Dancing can work for anger as well,” she said. “Parents feel so guilty that they don’t allow themselves pleasure.”
She now offers her services as a “wellness nanny,” helping families avoid mental and physical illness.
“I’ve done this work for over 40 years, I’ve gone through sudden death. I’m taking the show on the road,” she said.
Last year Migdal wrote this message in the newsletter of Bereaved Parents of the USA, whose national convention she also addressed: “Although Mother Nature caused my grief, she is also responsible for my healing and my return to gratitude. I am reminded by her daily that I have a mission of helping her to heal the rest of her children.” 
To learn more, visit lookingupthemovement.com

Lona O’Connor has a lifelong interest in health and healthy living. Send column ideas to Lona13@bellsouth.net.

By Christine Davis

Florida Atlantic University’s Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine has received initial accreditation from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education for its first university-sponsored fellowship. Launching this summer and to be based at the Delray Medical Center, the FAU Cardiovascular Disease Fellowship will be a member of the FAU College of Medicine Graduate Medical Education Consortium. A subspecialty of internal medicine, it will complement the existing residency programs at the university.
Dr. Brijeshwar S. Maini, the regional medical director of interventional cardiology and transcatheter therapy at the medical center and a professor at the university’s Department of Integrated Medical Science, is the new fellowship program director. Dr. Sachin S. Sule, the university’s internal medicine residency program director and an associate professor of integrated medical science, will supervise and guide to ensure compliance with accreditation standards.
Cardiology fellows will have the opportunity to train alongside top physicians and other clinicians in the field. 

Delray Medical Center announced in January that it had received the 2018 Distinguished Hospital Award for Clinical Excellence from Healthgrades. It is one out of four hospitals in the country that have achieved the award for 16 straight years, placing it in the top 5 percent for clinical performance among nearly 4,500 hospitals nationwide. Healthgrades is an online resource for information about physicians and hospitals.

Optimistic Medicine Studio Boca, formerly WOW Health, celebrated its one-year anniversary and its 1,000 clients and monthly members with a grand reopening in February, showcasing Optimistic Medicine Studio Boca’s new facilities and services.

To combat the opioid crisis in Palm Beach County, Palm Healthcare Foundation in partnership with Southeast Florida Behavioral Health Network, Hanley Foundation and the Town of Palm Beach United Way brought in the Rapid Results Institute, an international nonprofit organization that pioneered the use of 100-day challenges.
Thirty Palm Beach County nonprofits, health organizations, law enforcement agencies, businesses and governments joined the effort to provide a system that connects anyone with an opioid use disorder to appropriate services. The 100 days of the challenge started Feb. 12.
Components of this effort include scholarship beds and treatment for indigent people in certified recovery residences, peer specialists at four hospitals to work with people brought in after overdoses, and recovery navigators paired with people leaving treatment centers to prevent relapse and support their continued recovery at certified residences.

Send health news to Christine Davis at cdavis9797@gmail.com.

A diver uses a clear plastic bag to carry several lionfish. Careful handling of lionfish, which have venomous spines, is essential to the process of bringing them up. The lionfish flesh is white, delicate and tasty. Photo provided by REEF

By Willie Howard

The Reef Environmental Education Foundation and partner Whole Foods Market have scheduled a series of lionfish derbies around Florida beginning in late March.
In derbies, divers compete to harvest as many of the invasive, nonnative lionfish as possible, reducing their impacts on Florida’s native fish.
Native to the Indian and Pacific oceans, lionfish eat Florida natives such as juvenile snappers and groupers. Lionfish eat more than 120 species of fish and marine invertebrates and can swallow fish more than half their own length.
With no predators capable of controlling lionfish numbers in the Atlantic, diver harvesting is one of the few methods that work.
During the past six years, 21,092 lionfish have been removed from the water by divers competing for prizes in lionfish derbies, according to REEF.
This year’s first REEF-sanctioned lionfish derby is scheduled for March 31 at Sharkey’s Pub & Galley Restaurant in Key Largo. The event begins with a captains meeting at 5:30 p.m. March 30 at REEF headquarters in Key Largo.
Other lionfish derbies scheduled for this year include the July 13-14 derby at 15th Street Fisheries in Fort Lauderdale and the Aug. 3-5 derby at the Loggerhead Marinelife Center in Juno Beach.
Lionfish cooking demonstrations, samples of cooked lionfish and chef’s cooking competitions are planned for the Palm Beach County Lionfish Derby in Juno Beach.
Although the lionfish’s spines are venomous, the flesh is white, delicate and tasty. Whole Foods Market has been selling lionfish at its Florida stores since April 2016.
To compete in a REEF lionfish derby, teams of two to four divers pay a $120 entry fee. Teams have a chance to win cash prizes for the most lionfish as well as the largest and smallest lionfish.
Team captains must attend meetings before each derby, and other team members are encouraged to attend to review proper methods for harvesting and handling lionfish.
For a schedule of lionfish derbies, visit www.reef.org/lionfish/derbies or call REEF at 305-852-0030.

Non-derby incentives: For divers who would rather remove lionfish from Florida waters without competing in an organized lionfish derby, the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission provides incentives and opportunities to win prizes.
In April and May, the FWC will tag lionfish at 50 randomly selected artificial reef sites in depths of 80 to 120 feet. (Locations will be posted at www.ReefRangers.com.)
Divers who harvest a tagged lionfish and document their catch by submitting its location (coordinates), tag number and photograph will be eligible for prizes, including money and merchandise.
Divers can win tagged-lionfish prizes from May 19 through Sept. 3.
Participants in the FWC’s lionfish removal program are encouraged to register at www.myfwc.com/lionfish.

John Jolley Jr. in the 1970s

Sailfish researcher wins lifetime achievement award
John Jolley Jr. of Boynton Beach, a pioneer in Atlantic sailfish research, was recently awarded the West Palm Beach Fishing Club’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
Jolley, 73, grew up fishing and diving in southern Palm Beach County and graduated from Suncoast High School. He was the fifth person to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award from the fishing club, established in 1934.
Jolley said he was surprised when club president Tom Twyford presented the award to him Jan. 13 during the Silver Sailfish Derby awards banquet at the Sailfish Club of Florida in Palm Beach.
Working as a marine biologist for the Florida Department of Natural Resources in the 1970s, Jolley established a sailfish research lab inside the West Palm Beach Fishing Club. He collaborated with anglers and taxidermists to gather data on sailfish age, growth, abundance and reproduction.
He developed the method of analyzing growth rings in fin spines to determine the age of sailfish and other billfish.
Jolley is a lifelong angler and past president of the fishing club. He still enjoys fishing on his 30-foot boat, Seaclusion.
“John has dedicated most of his life toward improving and protecting marine resources,” club chairman Pete Schulz said. “His fingerprints are on many of the fishing club’s conservation successes and community initiatives.”
Other recipients of the fishing club’s Lifetime Achievement Award are boat builder and conservationist John Rybovich Jr., fish-tagging pioneer Frank Mather III, longtime former West Palm Beach Fishing Club director Frances Doucet, and former Palm Beach County environmental director Jim Barry.

Palm Beach boat show opens March 22
The 33rd annual Palm Beach International Boat Show will be held March 22-25 along Flagler Drive in downtown West Palm Beach.
In addition to a wide selection of boats and accessories, the boat show offers educational opportunities such as youth fishing clinics by Hook the Future and IGFA School of Sportfishing seminars for adults.
The West Palm Beach Fishing Club will hold an open house March 22-23 during the boat show highlighting the club’s history.
Located at Fifth Street and North Flagler Drive (just north of the boat show site), the fishing club was founded in 1934. The clubhouse was recently awarded a state historic marker, which will be displayed during the open house.
Hours for the fishing club’s open house are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more details, call the club at 832-6780.
Boat show attendees can sign up for on-the-water boat handling classes or learn about long-range cruising from experts.
Show hours are noon to 7 p.m. March 22; 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. March 23-24, and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. March 25.
Tickets are $24 for adults and $14 for ages 6-15. Children younger than 6 admitted free.
For details, go to www.pbboatshow.com.

Full moon wahoo

Jake Eakins shows the 15-pound wahoo he caught just after the full moon while trolling a bonito strip off Boynton Beach on Feb. 2. Willie Howard/The Coastal Star

Coming events
March 6: Boynton Beach Fishing Club meets 7 p.m. in the clubhouse next to the boat ramps, Harvey E. Oyer Jr. Park, 2010 N. Federal Highway, Boynton Beach. Free. Call 707-5660 or go to www.bifc.org.
March 10: Basic boating safety class offered by Coast Guard Auxiliary, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the headquarters building at Spanish River Park, 3939 N. Ocean Blvd., Boca Raton. Fee $35. Register at the door. Bring lunch. Call 391-3600 or email fso-pe@cgauxboca.org.
March 24: Basic boating safety class offered by Coast Guard Auxiliary, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the classroom next to the boat ramps, Harvey E. Oyer Jr. Park, 2010 N. Federal Highway, Boynton Beach. Fee $25. Register at the door. Call 704-7440.

Tip of the month
Cellphones can distract boat operators, warns the BoatUS Foundation for Boating Safety & Clean Water. Boats can approach from all directions and can be moving at various speeds in many types of weather. So a few seconds of looking down to read or send a text while operating a boat can be dangerous.
“We have to know how to use them wisely,” said Ted Sensenbrenner, a boating safety expert with BoatUS. “If you’re texting from the helm, you’re not helming the boat.”

Willie Howard is a freelance writer and licensed boat captain. Reach him at tiowillie@bellsouth.net.

Dedicated estate sale volunteers worked tirelessly to pull off another successful fundraising event Feb. 17 in the Ocean Ridge Town Hall. Many club members offered their time on multiple days and donated money and sale items to the annual sale. As a result of their efforts, the sale raised $3,540. Of that amount, $147 was from the sale of baked goods and bottled water and $189 from costume jewelry sales. ABOVE: Estate sale chairperson Lisa Ritota (third from right) with her team of volunteers. Photo provided

ABOVE: Peter Lasman harvests a ripe eggplant. BELOW: Robin Silverman shows off chives and a strawberry she picked. 2017 photos by Deborah S. Hartz-Seeley/The Coastal Star

By Deborah S. Hartz-Seeley

Peter Lasman, 62, has watched the garden more than double in size since he started working here a decade ago.
Robin Silverman, 67, has just harvested the first strawberry of the season, and she’s happy to show it to you.
Rachael Arbelo, 24, has made friends working in the garden and loves it here.
And Terry Davis, 63, brings pineapple tops from the group home where she lives to plant in the garden. “We work very, very hard,” she said.
These are a few of the more than a dozen regulars who bring life to the Ability Garden associated with the Jewish Association for Residential Care in Boca Raton. This facility provides independent and assisted living as well as educational programs and services to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
The garden is the handiwork of Kimberli Swann, who started it in 2007.
“No matter what your abilities, you are welcome here,” said Swann, the association’s community garden coordinator and supported living coach.
When she began working at JARC, her job included spending time with resident clients doing meaningful activities. “But taking them bowling and to movies and restaurants wasn’t my thing,” she said. She also had clients in a day program that didn’t keep them busy.
Building on her passion for plants, she decided to create a garden as a way to give all her clients something meaningful to do that would teach them new skills and get them outdoors.
“There was real method to my madness of starting this project,” she said, smiling.
Today the garden encompasses over 800 square feet and soon will almost double in size. “Every year it gets bigger and bigger as I develop new relationships, find new volunteers and get donations to buy fencing to enclose more land,” she said.
She and her clients are proud of the newly installed winding brick pathway among the user-friendly raised beds. “Anyone who is not comfortable bending over can just reach in and garden,” she said, mentioning that the elevated boxes are also wheelchair accessible.
The garden also has new in-ground beds created with the help of volunteers from the Pride Recovery Center in Delray Beach. They’ve been coming here every other week for two years. Ranging in age from 20 to 40, they do the heavy lifting.
On the other weeks, older adults from the Polo Club in Boca Raton work one-on-one with clients, introducing newcomers to the planting of crops and working in the soil.
These crops include eggplants, broccoli, kale, bananas, tomatoes, onions, scallions and even luffas. It amazes just about everyone who sees them that these sponge-like objects come from a vine, not the sea.
When the garden has enough ripe vegetables, the harvest is given to those who work there and to an onsite café, where kale is a favorite to use in soups.
Today, Swann plans to let staff and clients sample some fresh tomatoes and basil harvested from the garden with fresh mozzarella she got from a cheesemaker who lives near her home.
She and a co-worker also have used the harvest to make eggplant Parmigiana. Banana bread is another culinary project the clients enjoy when a hand of bananas ripens.
And if someone is having a bad day, he or she might visit the garden to harvest a pocket full of fragrant lavender leaves, which are touted to have a calming effect.
Swann wants nothing more than to grow her garden so it can become a bigger focal point in her clients’ lives. She raises funds and works with local stores to get donations. This year she hopes to add a seating area and barbecue grill so the clients will have a place to gather for social and educational events.
“We change it out here every year. You never know what you are going to find,” said Swann.

You can reach Deborah S. Hartz-Seeley at debhartz@att.net.

Gardening tip
“If you are going to plant a garden, you need to have good soil. Soil is your foundation. Here in Florida, the soil tends to be rocky and sandy. So we prefer raised beds that you can fill with good soil, and they are so much more comfortable anyway.”
— JARC community garden coordinator Kimberli Swann

If You Go
Where: JARC Community Ability Garden, 21160 95th Ave. S., Boca Raton
What: A garden designed for and tended by the intellectually and developmentally disabled clients of the Jewish Association for Residential Care in Boca Raton.
When: The garden is open to JARC clients 9 a.m. to noon on Fridays from September through May and by appointment for all others.
What’s needed: Volunteers and donations, whether it’s money, seeds, tools, and so on.
For more information: Contact community garden coordinator Kimberli Swann at 558-2569 (office), 756-0144 (cell), or Garden@jarcfl.org

A kitty watches a two-legged friend during Cora Ciaffone’s kitten yoga class. The cats are available for adoption. Photo provided

By Arden Moore

Now here’s a first: performing a downward-facing dog pose in a yoga class with a kitten. Ah, namaste and please stay, kitty.
Yoga has been practiced for more than 5,000 years. For centuries, the focus has been providing healthy stretches and poses for people. Typically, students quietly shuttle into an enclosed room, unroll their yoga mats, remove their shoes and do their best for the next hour or so to focus on mindful breathing, purposeful stretches and being in the present moment.
In recent years, yoga has expanded to include dogs and even goats in some classes across the country. Now, the hottest trend is to pair up with flexible felines that produce acrobatic moves and comical antics. These classes unleash a surprising twist: All of these adorable kittens are up for adoption.
“This is by far the funniest class I’ve ever taught and each time, the antics of the kittens bring smiles to everyone,” says Cora Ciaffone, a certified yoga teacher and certified dog trainer who has teamed up with the Peggy Adams Animal Rescue League to conduct kitten yoga classes at its satellite location inside CityPlace in West Palm Beach. She also conducts yoga classes that welcome people and their well-mannered dogs throughout the county.
During the kitten classes, a curious feline has crawled into a T-shirt of a student concentrating on a bridge pose. And Ciaffone often spots a person who will briefly stop a pose to pick up and cuddle a kitten who wanders onto his mat or a student stop to toss a toy mouse across the room for a kitten to pursue. Some ever-curious and eager-to-explore kittens have been known to crawl up the backs and perch on the shoulders of students during poses.
Conventional yoga it is not, but the benefits are many.
For the kittens, it is the chance to be adopted. Take the case of Shadow, a shy, beautiful kitten who won over student Jeannine Salus.
“She’s so docile and she kind of hid in the back, which is where I would go in class,” says Salus. “This cat is very close to my soul.”
Rich Anderson, executive director and CEO of the Peggy Adams league, is grateful that CityPlace developer Related Cos. reached out to his animal shelter with the idea of staging kitten yoga places within the complex. The satellite center showcases shelter dogs and cats, leading to 47 being adopted.
“Since day one, it has been a huge success,” says Anderson. “Once everyone is set up with their mats, we release the kittens. We are very driven to bring awareness to homeless pets. With goat yoga becoming popular, we decided why not kitten yoga?”
Dogs and cats are natural yogis. They are limber and live in the moment. They move and stretch with purpose and grace. They can teach us a lot in terms of fending off stress and easing muscular aches, says Ciaffone.
“Our dogs and cats are definitely our health advocates,” she says. “There is no doubt in my mind that they heal. They show us how to be present, give unconditional love and compassion.”
Ciaffone credits her two cats, Luna Stardust and Jackson Galaxy, a pair of shelter rescues, with helping her heal from a divorce and heart surgery.
“I am so convinced that they have helped heal me emotionally, physically and spiritually,” she says. “I now feel so happy and so healthy.”
Whether you plan to take a yoga class with a kitten or dog or simply spend one-on-one time with your pet inside your home, Ciaffone encourages you to study and mimic the movements they make.
“Instead of jumping out of bed when the alarm rings, be like a dog or a cat and take a few moments to do a full body stretch,” suggests Ciaffone. “Lie on your back and gently rotate your head one way and your body the other way. Then sit up and live in the moment. Take a deep breath in and let it out slowly.”
In her dog/people yoga classes, Ciaffone uses lavender oil, which acts as a natural calmer for the two- and four-legged students. She conducts dog yoga classes inside and outside, weather permitting.
So when it comes to being natural yoga instructors, which species is better, cats or dogs?
“I would have to say dogs simply because when I put their people in the last pose of class — a pose of stillness called savasana ­— their dogs often lie down next to them and be calm or even fall asleep,” says Ciaffone. “The kittens will roam around and even walk on people. After all, they are young, active kittens.”
Ah, namaste and good stay, kitty and doggy.

Arden Moore is a pet health and safety coach, animal behavior consultant, editor, author, professional speaker and master certified pet first aid instructor. Each week she hosts the popular “Oh Behave!” show on PetLifeRadio.com. Learn more at www.ardenmoore.com.

Learn more
If you would like to try kitten yoga, the Peggy Adams Animal Rescue League will offer classes on March 17 and March 31 at its pop-up shop at CityPlace, 700 S. Rosemary Ave., No. 141, West Palm Beach. For more information and to sign up, visit www.peggyadams.org or email KittenYoga@peggyadams.org.
To learn more about yoga and dog training classes offered by Cora Ciaffone, visit www.bodymindsoul.net and www.dogslove2train.com.

Author and contemporary Christian scholar Brian McLaren spends between 90 and 100 nights on the road each year traveling to public speaking engagements. This month he plans to be in Boynton Beach. Photo provided

By Janis Fontaine

They are age-old questions: Who treats the doctor? Who cuts the barber’s hair?
And who pastors the pastor?
People like Brian McLaren do.
McLaren is the best-selling author of 15 books on faith and Christianity, and these days, the contemporary Christian scholar is an in-demand public speaker who spends between 90 and 100 nights on the road every year.
One of those nights will be spent in Palm Beach County when a speaking engagement brings McLaren to St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church in Boynton Beach on March 14.
McLaren is calling from the road after speaking in Atlanta and Nashville. He’s heading to his home base in Marco Island.
“Christianity is changing,” McLaren says.
Not that it was ever static.
There are more than 300 religions and at least three dozen Christian denominations in the United States, including people who believe in one God and people who believe in many. Some even believe in something the rest of us wouldn’t call God at all. Statistically, according to a 2016 Gallup poll, 89 percent of adults say they believe in God.
But most of those believers never make it to church. Theologians like McLaren are trying to smooth out the road so more people will want to take a walk there.
But he also cautions us: “It’s not about the church meeting your needs; it’s about joining the mission of God’s people to meet the world’s needs.” 
McLaren believes in “aliveness.” Some people, he says, aren’t really living. “Aliveness is saying, ‘I have come to live life to the fullest, a life abundant, with freedom from fear, fatigue and anger,’” McLaren says.
Religion is about connecting people with God, says Wendy Tobias, a priest at St. Joe’s. She says religion means to “re-ligament yourself” to the Lord.
Scholars such as Tom Harpur and Joseph Campbell support her conclusion. They say religion is rooted in the Latin word ligare, which means to bind or connect, plus “re,” meaning again. People do want to connect, but religion has become so complicated, with so many opinions, people aren’t sure what to believe.
For people who think Christianity’s brand is tarnished and old — an outdated, antiquated mythology — McLaren says to look deeper. Is love outdated? Is forgiveness a myth?
Tobias has been teaching a course for Lent following a lesson plan developed by McLaren to go with his most recent book, The Great Spiritual Migration: How the World’s Largest Religion Is Seeking a Better Way to Be Christian. The four-week course, called A Way of Life, has been the subject of small group meetings at the church and is designed to help people find God in their everyday lives.
Lots of people are searching for answers, but most don’t even know what they really want from life, McLaren says. They catch their desires like the flu from the people they spend time with. Instead of religion and the church becoming the source of their moral codes or life goals, people are looking to their neighbors and peers.
“Religion should help people have healthy desires, help people think about and choose desires that are good,” McLaren says. It’s not about a newer car, or a bigger house. Those things may impress humans, but they don’t impress God.
McLaren says whatever we choose to focus on in life will grow the more attention we give it. If you focus on the negative — what your kid is doing wrong or how incompetent your boss is — those things will grow, eating up larger and larger parts of your time and your assets.
“The job of the church is to teach love,” McLaren says, specifically “the skills to differ gracefully. We must teach the skills of civility, and say no to negativity.” If solutions begin with defining the problem, we have to be able to communicate to do that.
McLaren says, “It comes down to this: Ask yourself, ‘What kind of world do I want to live in?’ In the New Testament, Paul said, ‘Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatever a man sows, that shall he also reap.’ ”
What are we sowing?

Janis Fontaine writes about people of faith, their congregations, causes and community events. Contact her at janisfontaine@outlook.com.

If You Go
Brian McLaren will speak to the congregation about his book The Great Spiritual Migration at 6 p.m. March 14 at St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church, 3300 S. Seacrest Blvd., Boynton Beach. Call 732-3060.

Paul Cienniwa will play Bach’s Art of the Fugue on the harpsichord at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. Photo provided

By Janis Fontaine

Music at St. Paul’s will celebrate its 30th season with a performance of J.S. Bach’s Art of the Fugue and an anniversary gala reception at 3 p.m. March 18 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 188 S. Swinton Ave., Delray Beach.
Paul Cienniwa and Michael Bahmann will perform with harpsichords. A reception will follow.
“Music is an outreach,” Cienniwa said. “It’s a gateway drug to bring people to church. Music can touch people who aren’t religious. It’s a spiritual experience.”
Tickets are $20 (suggested donation) at the door. Admission is free for ages 18 and younger. For more information, call 276-4541 or visit www.stpaulsdelray.org.

Run or walk to fight hunger
St. Mark Catholic Church of Boynton Beach will be among the congregations to sponsor teams when the Community Caring Center of Greater Boynton Beach hosts its annual Hunger Walk/5K on March 10 at Ocean Avenue Amphitheater, 129 E. Ocean Ave., Boynton Beach.
The walk starts at 10:30 a.m. and travels about a mile and a half to the beach and back. Last-minute registration for the walk is free, but a suggested donation of $20 or nonperishable canned food items is suggested at registration, which begins 9:30 a.m. Teams and runners should register at www.cccgbb.org.

Scholarship program
St. Mark Catholic Church’s Council of Catholic Women will hold a bake sale on March 10 and 11 and an Easter plant sale on March 17 and 18 to raise money for its scholarship program.
Female students planning to attend Catholic high schools can apply for a scholarship by April 1. Applications are available in the church office. Call 734-9330.

A conversation about race
On Feb. 21, the Church of the Palms began a five-week series of “dinner and a conversation” nights to open a dialogue about ways to heal the divisions in society, specifically “understanding overt racism and more subtle examples, both personal and systemic, that infuse our language, attitudes and culture.”
The leaders use a board game called “Breaking It Down: Towards E Pluribus Unum,” developed by the National Center for Race Amity and released by WHS Media Productions. The game is designed to create a safe space to learn about and discuss issues of race and race amity.
The game isn’t a competition. Instead, it encourages and assists people in talking in a nontoxic manner, and to have safe and sage conversations. Sometimes the smartest answer is “I don’t know,” and the game provides a non-judgmental place to say it. The game is appropriate for preteens through senior citizens, although there is a separate kids’ version.
Dinner is a light potluck supper at 6 p.m. followed by conversation at 6:30 at the church at 1960 N. Swinton Ave., Delray Beach. Call 276-6347 to sign up.
Candidate introduction
The nominating committee at First Presbyterian Church of Delray Beach will present its candidate for associate pastor to the congregation at 11 a.m. March 11 at the church, at 33 Gleason St., Delray Beach. A special congregational meeting will follow. For more information, call 276-6338 or visit www.firstdelray.com.

Lower your car insurance
St. Mark Catholic Church will host a course for older adults, Coaching the Mature Driver, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. March 21. The class, which can help drivers reduce insurance costs, will be in the St. Clare Room at the church, 643 St. Mark Place, Boynton Beach. The cost is $15. Bring a check payable to DOTS, lunch and a beverage. To register, call Barbara at 732-1416 or 512-6407.

Ongoing programs
Beer, Conversation & God: Pub Theology meets at 7 p.m. March 6 (and the first Tuesday of each month) at the Biergarten, 309 Via De Palmas, No. 90, Boca Raton, and at 7 p.m. March 15 (and the third Thursday of each month) at Barrel of Monks, 1141 S. Rogers Circle, No. 5, Boca Raton, for conversation, fellowship and open discussion of mostly theological topics. For more information, contact Pastor Marcus Zillman at mzillman@fumcbocaraton.org or call 395-1244; www.fumcbocaraton.org.

The Interfaith Café: Join the theological discussion from 7 to 9 p.m. March 15 at South County Civic Center, 16700 Jog Road, Delray Beach. Light refreshments will be served. The meeting is free, but donations are appreciated. The Interfaith Café meets the third Thursday of the month, and volunteers are needed to assist with a variety of duties to keep this program going. For information or to volunteer, email Jane@Aurorasvoice.org.

Contact Janis Fontaine at janisfontaine@outlook.com.

Gulf Stream School eighth-grader Dakota Konrad hugs her father, Rob, a former Miami Dolphin, after giving a speech about how he survived a boating accident. Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star

By Willie Howard

Dakota Konrad, an eighth-grade student at Gulf Stream School, said her father —former Miami Dolphins fullback Rob Konrad — has always been a determined person.
In her eighth-grade speech, delivered with accompanying photos in a school chapel filled with her classmates and teachers, Dakota also said her father is tough and tenacious.
He recovered from knee injuries and trained hard enough to become a pro football player. Konrad was drafted by the Dolphins in 1999 and played fullback for them until 2004.
In her speech, titled “Just Keep Swimming,” Dakota said her father has always taught her and her sister never to give up if they want to achieve something.
Circumstances forced Konrad to prove just how determined he was on Jan. 7, 2015 — the day he decided to do some fishing by himself while running his 31-foot Grady-White boat along the coast of Palm Beach County for a routine trip to the shop.
The ocean was rough that day. He had the boat steering on autopilot when a fish hit and Konrad moved to the stern to fight the fish.
As he was reeling the fish in, a wave rocked the boat and Konrad fell overboard, still holding the rod with the fish attached.
He was about 9 miles off the coast and not wearing a life jacket. His boat kept going, headed east on autopilot.
Konrad, then 38, tried to chase the boat at first, then decided to swim west toward land. With sea surface temperatures in the low 70s, ocean water was sapping his body heat and energy.
“My dad started swimming toward the setting sun,” said Dakota, dressed in a No. 44 football jersey, the number her father wore for the Dolphins. “Since my dad kept swimming, each stroke was heating up his body.”
At home, nobody suspected anything was wrong until Konrad didn’t return that evening. The Coast Guard initiated a search. Dakota said she and her sister remember seeing their mother crying on the phone.
Meanwhile, Konrad was swimming in the dark. Jellyfish stung him. A shark circled him. He saw lights from a Coast Guard helicopter, but they didn’t see him in the waves, Dakota said.
Konrad just kept swimming, alternating between breaststroke and backstroke, headed toward lights along the coast.
Dressed only in his underwear, Konrad pulled himself onto the beach in Palm Beach and rang the doorbell at the nearest home he could find. It was 4:40 a.m. and he had been swimming for 16 hours, a feat so impressive that skeptics didn’t believe his story at first.
A security guard was patrolling the oceanfront home where Konrad finally came ashore. The guard saw Konrad approaching the house and called police. Police knew Konrad was missing because the Coast Guard had been searching for him. They wrapped him in a blanket and drove him to Good Samaritan Medical Center in West Palm Beach.
His boat was found near Deadman’s Reef, a snorkeling spot near Freeport on Grand Bahama Island.
Dakota said her father told them he focused on her and her younger sister, Brooke, who were 10 and 8 at the time, to give him the strength to reach land.
“He told us we were the reasons he made it home,” Dakota said.
Konrad’s ocean experience drove home a key message in his daughter’s speech: “You can absolutely do anything if you put your mind to it,” she said. “I will live by this motto for the rest of my life.”
Dakota’s speech was immediately followed by hugs from her classmates, teachers and her parents.
“Dakota’s speech resonated with every student, parent and teacher in the chapel that day,” said Mari Bianco, Dakota’s English teacher. “Students couldn’t imagine losing their parents. Parents couldn’t imagine not fighting to reunite with their children.”
Konrad, who grew up fishing and boating off the coast of Massachusetts and lives in Boynton Beach, still takes his family boating, both in Florida and in Cape Cod during the summer. As a precaution, Konrad said, he wears an electronic kill switch that would shut off the boat’s engines if he were to fall out again.

     The trial of former Ocean Ridge Vice Mayor Richard Lucibella, accused of felony battery on a law enforcement officer and other charges, will begin now April 30, Circuit Judge Meenu Sasser ordered Feb. 20.
     The case of an accused burglar who sought a speedy trial knocked Lucibella's date off the judge's calendar.
     Lucibella's new trial date is a year and three weeks past the original schedule, which called for the proceedings to begin April 10, 2017.

     Lucibella, who also faces charges of resisting arrest with violence, another felony, and firing a weapon while under the influence of alcohol, a misdemeanor, waived his right to a speedy trial when the lawyers needed more time to question witnesses.
     He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
     Lucibella was arrested Oct. 22, 2016, after Ocean Ridge police went to his oceanfront home answering neighbors' reports of hearing gunfire. They confiscated a .40-caliber handgun and found five spent shell casings on the backyard patio.
     He and one of the officers’ supervisors, Lt. Steven Wohlfiel, were both on the patio and “obviously intoxicated,” the police said.
     Lucibella resigned his vice mayor and town commissioner positions Dec. 7, 2016.
     His trial was postponed first to July 2017, then October, then this April.

Towns and cities holding elections March 13 will have the following forums for voters to meet the candidates:

Boca Raton

When: Feb. 8
Where: 6500 Building, 6500 Congress Ave.
Time: 6:30 p.m.
Sponsor: Federation of Boca Raton Homeowner Associations

Delray Beach

Feb. 7
Where: Arts Garage, 94 NE Second Ave.
Time: 7-9 p.m.
Sponsor: Greater Delray Beach Chamber of Commerce
Feb. 27
Where: St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 188 S. Swinton Ave.
Time: 7-9 p.m.
Sponsor: Delray Beach Green Candidate Forum

Highland Beach

The forum will take place from 6 to 8 p.m. Feb. 5 at the Highland Beach Public Library, 3618 S. Ocean Blvd.
It will be hosted by the League of Women Voters.
Voters will hear from two candidates for vice mayor and four candidates for one commission seat.
Information about the ballot question regarding setting aside money for streetscape improvements will also be presented.
For additional information, call the Town Clerk’s office, 278-4548.

Ocean Ridge
Feb. 21: Three candidates for two seats on the Town Commission will take part ­— incumbent Gail Aaskov and political newcomers Kristine de Haseth and Phil Besler.
Where: Town Hall
Time: 6-8 p.m.
Sponsor: League of Women Voters of Palm Beach County

By Dan Moffett

Manalapan town commissioners are countering a spate of stolen cars with an aggressive plan to enhance security that includes hiring four police officers and expanding the town’s already extensive use of cameras and technology.
“We live here because it’s a unique community,” Mayor Keith Waters said. “It’s unlike any other community in America. I don’t want this to be a police state, but at the same time, I want there to be absolute certainty that when you go to bed at night, everything’s going to be OK.”
Over the last six months, seven residents have reported their cars stolen. All were crimes of opportunity, police say. In each case, the owner left keys in the car.
Police were able to recover five of the vehicles and make four arrests. The suspects came from Broward and Miami-Dade counties and traveled to Manalapan in groups.
“This will not stand,” Waters said. “We’ve been lulled into a sense of complacency where our town has operated over a period of time under the assumption that everyone is as good as we were. And that’s not the case.”
Commissioners unanimously approved spending $417,000 out of the town’s $2.2 million reserve fund to pay for the security upgrades. They include:
• Filling four new police positions by summer to increase the number of sworn officers to 15.
Police Chief Carmen Mattox, who during the Jan. 23 town meeting won praise from commissioners and residents for his performance, said the new hires will allow him to have three officers on patrol at all times — one assigned exclusively to Point Manalapan, one to the ocean side and another for backup.
Also, the increased manpower will enable the department to get more use out of the marine patrol boat the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office donated to the town last year.
• Increasing pay for all officers.
Waters said higher pay would reduce turnover in the department and attract a “higher caliber officer.” He said Manalapan has one of the highest tax bases and lowest tax rates (2.795 mills) in the county and shouldn’t rank near the bottom in the county for police pay.
Starting pay for officers will go from $46,700 to $51,200 and each of the current uniformed officers will receive a $4,500 raise.
• Hiring a private armed security guard to staff the Point Manalapan gatehouse and renovating it to increase floor space.
Commissioners approved adding a stop sign at the gatehouse to force motorists to stop for the cameras. “We can’t prohibit people from going in,” Waters said, “but they’re going to have to stop at the gate.”
• Expanding the use of license plate recognition cameras throughout the town.
Manalapan already makes wide use of LPR cameras and Waters wants more of them. “We know the legal rights, what can and can’t be done,” the mayor said. “We’re going to do everything exactly by the book.”
Commissioner Monica Oberting said the most important benefit of the changes is making police more visible.
“It’s not the response time that’s the issue,” Oberting said. “I think it’s the deterrence.”
Commissioner Clark Appleby said, with the new Publix scheduled to open in June at Plaza del Mar, police will be dealing with “more transients,” so the commission’s plan is well-timed.
Mayor Pro Tem Simone Bonutti said the town needs to get more help from Ocean Ridge and the county in patrolling Manalapan’s southern border and Ocean Inlet Park.
Stewart Satter, a resident on the ocean side, commended the commission’s plan and said he was willing to pay the cost (about $50,000) of equipping the third patrol officer with a new vehicle.
Waters called Satter’s offer “a remarkably generous gesture” — which the town accepted.

Barbara Mulvey and Andy Neureuther play at the monthly jam at the Boynton Beach VFW. Photos by Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star

By Ron Hayes

On the second Friday of most months, Barbara Mulvey takes her dobro across the water from her home in Briny Breezes to VFW Post 5335 in Boynton Beach to see if anybody else shows up.
You’re welcome to come, too, but don’t be too disappointed if nobody does.
“There might be a good group,” Mulvey will warn you, “and then it might be nothing. Health is a big problem, so some people can’t come sometimes. We’re certainly quite aged.”
Mulvey, a retired art teacher and farmer from the Adirondacks, is 82, and she’s not the oldest by far.
“One of the people who sings and plays cowboy songs is in his 90s,” Mulvey says. “He always wears a cowboy shirt and hat, but he’s not in the best of health.”
Sometimes as few as three show up, but never mind. They circle their chairs back away from the pool table and bar and play for a couple of hours anyway. Nobody quits pool to come listen, but nobody is paying to listen or gets paid to play, and besides, this makeshift band doesn’t even have an official name.

ABOVE: Ray Senecal plays guitar as Jimmy and Connie Abbott watch. The Abbotts started the sessions, and the group is informally called Jimmy & the Geriatrics. BELOW: Barbara Mulvey’s dobro has lyrics from If I Could Only Win Your Love, by the Louvin Brothers.

Mulvey started joining these monthly acoustic jams with her dobro after a friend in her tai chi class at the Boynton Beach Senior Center told her about them.
Friends tell friends, who tell friends. That’s how it’s been for nearly three years now, ever since Jimmy and Connie Abbott, VFW regulars, spotted a photo of Dale Kane, another member, and her big old Gibson guitar taped to the fridge in the post kitchen. The Abbotts had a country band called Southern Moon that played around town off and on.
“Do you play?” Jimmy asked Dale, who did, and pretty soon they heard about others and asked Bill Bourke, the post commander, if they could have a venue.
The first and third Fridays are trivia nights, so they got the second.
“It gives the vets a part of their youth back,” Jimmy Abbott says. When they show up, that is.
This second Friday, Jan. 12, is a very good night, even though Wes Smith, the 93-year-old cowboy singer, isn’t here. Somebody heard he moved to Fort Pierce. But nine others are. Five women and four men. Four guitars, an accordion, mandolin, ukulele, dobro, and Connie, who mostly sings.
“Waltz Across Texas,” Mulvey calls out. “In C. And I don’t know this one very well.”
Pages flutter in the binders full of cheat sheets — just the lyrics and chord changes, minus the fancy melody lines — and the January jam begins.
“When we dance together my world’s in disguise,
It’s a fairyland tale that’s come true,
When you look at me girl with those stars in your eyes
I could waltz across Texas with you.
Oh, waltz across Texas … waltz across Texas …”
They don’t waltz across Texas as smoothly as Ernest Tubb did back in 1965, but they make a joyful noise.
Tonight, Mulvey has brought along a neighbor in Briny Breezes named Andy Neureuther, 76, who taught electrical engineering at UC Berkeley for 40 years. Neureuther has recently switched from guitar to ukulele because, he explains, he can just leave the uke in Briny when he returns to Walnut Creek, Calif.
“I’ve been playing two weeks and I know two keys,” he reports. “But I can’t sing and play at the same time.”
Next, Ray Senecal tackles Kansas City. A retired firefighter from Schenectady, N.Y., Senecal favors a bright yellow guitar strap with black letters that read “Crime Scene, Do Not Cross.”
“I come a few times a year,” he says. “It’s fun. It’s spontaneous. I appreciate that they let me play.” He laughs. “Anybody who’s 60 years old here is a kid.”
Senecal is 78, and the closest this gang has to kids are Jimmy and Connie Abbott, both 64.
Joyce Michayluk, 80, a retired critical care nurse, takes a lead break on the accordion during Kansas City.
“I’m playing since I’m a kid,” she says. “I play bass guitar, too, but there’s nobody to play with until I go to Canada and play with my two brothers.”
They play Crazy, that Patsy Cline classic, and Take Me Home, Country Roads, John Denver, of course. If anyone starts strumming I Can’t Help Falling in Love, everyone sings along without checking the cheat sheets, and for a few minutes Elvis is back in the building.
They play the songs they heard first when they were first falling in love.
“I love ’em all, but I’m partial to the old stuff,” says Dale Kane, 68, a VFW member for 45 years, former president of the Ladies Auxiliary, and player of guitars, mandolins, banjos and bass. “But I don’t have anybody to play with now. My whole family plays, but they’re not here. I’ve got one brother in Jacksonville and the other one’s in Rhode Island. And my parents have passed, so I come here. It’s so nice. It’s so nice.”
Ida Sands, 71, is a retired special education teacher from Boynton Beach who adds a slight touch of the risqué to the evening’s entertainment, strumming her guitar and singing.
“Well, I got a brand new pair of roller skates,
You got a brand new key.
I think that we should get together
And try them out, you see.”
When the folk singer Melanie debuted that tune back in the early 1970s, some perceived a hidden, hornier relationship between those skates and the key.
“Yuh think!” Sands chirps, and knowing laughter fills the circle.
“I go to different jams,” she says, “but I think of this as the fun jam. We don’t take ourselves too seriously.”
They don’t even have a name.
Well, not an official name.
“We call it Jimmy & The Geriatrics,” the bartender, Tina Black, confesses.
Most of the regulars seem to find that unofficial name cheeky and funny and true, but Mulvey doesn’t like it at all.
“No, I don’t like it,” she says. “And it might make younger people feel they’re not welcome.”
She has a point.
“Anybody’s welcome,” says Bourke, the post commander. “You can come with bongo drums or anything, you’re welcome. You don’t have to be a member of the post.”
Tonight, the honor of oldest Geriatric goes to Lauren Bates of Boynton Beach, who is 88.
“I had a country-western band back in Leominster, Mass.,” he says. “We called ourselves The Country Neighbors. Because we were all neighbors. I played guitar and my wife played bass and sang in French and English. I lost her six years ago.”
When the mic stand comes his way, Bates strums and sings an old Merle Haggard tune called Swinging Doors.
“I’ve got swinging doors, a jukebox and a bar stool,
And my new home has a flashing neon sign.
Stop by and see me any time you want to,
’Cause I’m always here at home till closing time …”
“Sometimes I play at home now,” he says when the song is done. “I put on the CDs and play to them. It just keeps you going. I’m going to karaoke in Palm Springs after I get out of here.”
Ray Senecal does Bed of Roses and Barbara Mulvey croons Have You Ever Been Lonely? and then it’s pushing toward 8 o’clock and Lauren Bates is packing up his new guitar and slipping out a little early, heading to karaoke.
Finally, they do the one everybody knows and no one can resist.
“You are my sunshine,
My only sunshine …”
They strum fast, and they sing loud, and for a circle of geriatrics, they sound almost young.
This does not surprise Connie Abbott.
“You can lose your hair,” she says. “You can lose your figure. But you don’t lose your music.”

The next acoustic jam will be 6-8 p.m. Feb. 9 at VFW Post 5335, 500 NE 21st Ave., Boynton Beach. Everyone is welcome. Post membership is not required.

Part of Ted Hoskinson’s Roots and Wings nonprofit raises funds to help Delray Beach third-graders prepare after school for the state’s standardized test. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star

By Rich Pollack

There was a time, before he became a successful business owner, when Ted Hoskinson’s world revolved around education.
Soon after he graduated from Tulane University, Hoskinson returned to St. Albans School in Washington, D.C., a prestigious private school where he had once been a classmate of future prominent figures, including former Vice President Al Gore.
Hoskinson taught fourth grade and ran the school’s summer program during his 15 years there, gaining an understanding of the challenges educators face and the lack of recognition that often comes with the territory.
So it comes as no surprise that Hoskinson, now 70, is devoting much of his retirement to making sure the educators and staff in Delray Beach’s public schools get a chance to be in the spotlight.
Through Roots and Wings, a nonprofit he founded in 2016, Hoskinson is not only focused on educators but also on helping students in public schools improve their reading skills so they can succeed.
“In this city, this town, we have a tremendous need to make sure people can go to any level they want to, and we have to give them the opportunity to do so,” he said.
Working largely under the radar, Hoskinson and Roots and Wings put time and money into three programs.
The first program — the Above and Beyond Awards — focuses on rewarding teachers and staff members selected by their principals for outstanding work. The teachers receive gift cards during small ceremonies in the classroom, with students involved.
Presentations are made three times a year in elementary schools and four times a year in middle schools and high schools.
Last year, in its first full year, Above and Beyond recognized 144 public school teachers and 27 staff members.
“Teachers at all levels need to be appreciated, and it wasn’t being done to this level,” Hoskinson said.
Under the umbrella of what has been dubbed Project Uplift, Roots and Wings last year awarded $10,000 to the Achievement Centers for Children & Families to make it possible for 25 students to attend a summer program with an academic element at Pine Grove Elementary School.
The group also funds a program at Pine Grove to help third-graders pass the Florida Standards Assessments test so they can move into fourth grade. In the pilot program Hoskinson hopes will be successful and spread to other schools, students attend a one-hour after-school class three days a week taught by Pine Grove teachers.
For Hoskinson, who along with his board raises money for the programs, a personal motivation drives Roots and Wings.
When he and his lawyer wife of 34 years, Anne, retired to Florida 12 years ago, they decided that when they died they would give their money to elementary education.
“Nobody was focusing on elementary education,” he said.
For his first 10 years in South Florida, Hoskinson took it easy, playing tennis, traveling with Anne and enjoying all that Delray Beach had to offer.
After Anne died in April 2016, Hoskinson decided he wouldn’t wait to start building their legacy and, inspired by his wife’s commitment to education, started the nonprofit organization.
“I could have ridden off into the sunset and done whatever I wanted to, but I didn’t because there’s a real need at both the teacher level and the student level,” he said, adding that he was financially secure after selling a business that included 10 card and gift stores and a wholesale balloon and accessories company.
Hoskinson, who lives in Coastal Delray Beach, says that running Roots and Wings takes a lot of time and effort, but is well worth the investment.
“For me a good day is when I wake up and say, ‘This is going to be a great day because we’re going to reward teachers,’ ” he said.