By Steve Plunkett
The Boca Raton Community Garden in Meadows Park will bear the name of one of its original guiding lights, the late Mayor Susan Whelchel.
Whelchel, who died in November, “was a wonderful steward for our great city,” said Jamie Sauer, past president of the Junior League of Boca Raton. “She loved and cared for everyone and made a huge difference in so many ways for the city of Boca Raton.”
At the City Council’s June 13 meeting, Sauer told how in 2008 in her first year as mayor, Whelchel reached out to the Junior League, which she had joined in 1984, with an idea for a partnership.
“Not only had she researched a community garden, but she knew our organization was the one to make it happen,” Sauer said.
Not only would it be the first community garden in the city, but it would also help feed the community by donating 10% of everything it grew to Boca Helping Hands, Sauer said.
The city donated the land, first beside the Downtown Library and currently at Meadows Park, and helped pay for the startup costs and upkeep. The Junior League began the garden, built and leased plots, and grew “this incredible partnership,” Sauer said.
“It’s cultivated by the Junior League of Boca Raton and we, along with volunteers throughout the city, will continue to pour love into this garden like Susan did,” she said. The proposal to rename the facility the Susan Whelchel Community Garden touched everyone on the City Council dais.
Deputy Mayor Monica Mayotte recalled how Whelchel had appointed her to the city’s Green Living Advisory Board, which had two of the first plots in the garden.
“And we, the advisory board members, took turns watering it every day; we had our assigned day. So the community garden is near and dear to my heart, too,” Mayotte said.
Council member Fran Nachlas said: “It is the only place that I’ve ever been able to grow something that keeps living.”
Council member Yvette Drucker, who belongs to the Junior League, remembered working to find grant money to get the garden built next to the library downtown.
“So it’s something that she really pushed forward to bring to the city and to get it done. And I was on a volunteer side before I was elected,” she said.
Mayor Scott Singer called it “the perfect overlap” given the unity between Whelchel’s Junior League service and city service.
Whelchel was elected to the City Council in 1995 and later served as deputy mayor and vice chairwoman of the Community Redevelopment Agency. She was elected mayor in 2008, reelected in 2011 and was named the Junior League’s Woman Volunteer of the Year in 2016. She also served two years on the Palm Beach County School Board.
“Her dedication and unselfish service to the residents of Boca Raton are greatly appreciated and worthy of recognition,” said the resolution the City Council unanimously approved.
Later this summer or in the fall, the Junior League and the city will have a ribbon-cutting to officially honor the former mayor, Sauer said.
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