Travel trailers and the simple sedans that towed them used to line Ruth Mary Drive in Briny Breezes.
From left, Susan Atlee, Ann Carmody, Donna Clarke and Sandy Dietzel work to rescue fading photos.
In 1976, Bob and Mary Susdoft donned formal wear for a portrait.
Fay Jordan’s lawn mower landed on a power pole after 1964’s Hurricane Isbell.
1941 family portrait.
Jerry Lower /The Coastal Star and Briny Historic Archives
By Ron Hayes
In January 2014, when Lu McInnes retired after 22 years as Briny Breezes’ unpaid, untiring librarian, Donna Clarke took on the job brimming with enthusiasm.
She would be a new broom. Winnow out the unused books. Build up the DVD collection. She would clean. She would paint. She did.
“Everything looked pretty,” she says.
“And then we looked down at those scrapbooks on the bottom shelf and thought, those are really ugly.”
Thirty-five dime-store scrapbooks with cardboard covers. Faded scrapbooks filled with fading photos.
“When I pulled them off the shelf, some bugs came out.”
And nearly a century of memories, precious but poorly preserved.
The “Briny Breezes Photo Album Restoration Project” was born.
“We want to tell the story of Briny Breezes so somebody could sit down and say, ‘Oh, so this is how it happened,’ ” Clarke says.
Joan Nichols, president of the town’s History Club, became a consultant. Janet DeVries of the Boynton Beach Historical Society dropped by to offer advice about preservation.
In February, the annual bazaar committee donated $1,000 from this year’s earnings.
Clarke bought a stack of expensive, archive-quality binders, and now, every Friday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. the project’s nine unpaid, untiring volunteers meet to preserve, protect and defend the long history of the little trailer park that became a town.
They call themselves the Library Ladies.
On a recent afternoon, they worked quietly — Kathy Gross and Susan Atlee, Brenda Dooley and Sandy Dietzel — carefully peeling old snapshots from fuzzy black pages and transferring them to new binders.
“Here we’ve got something about putting in a disposal system in 1969,” Dooley said, pondering a faded color snapshot. “I have no idea what that is, but it’s kind of interesting.”
“Our Disposal System,” the caption reads. “December 1969.”
A photo to be saved, not disposed of, and Dooley transferred it to the new binder, attached without glue.
“We’re putting everything in so it can be taken out without destroying the photographs,” Clarke explained.
Everything begins with a 1926 photograph of “the mansion,” the Mediterranean Revival home Ward B. Miller built shortly after he bought 43 acres of oceanfront property back in 1919.
“And the most recent entry will probably be photographs from David David’s wedding,” Clarke predicted.
On May 23, 2015, David David, the son of Hugh David, Briny’s mayor for 36 years, married his longtime partner, Edith Behm, in the Briny clubhouse, just north of the spot where Miller’s mansion once stood.
In between, the Library Ladies are archiving hundreds of snapshots, newspaper clippings and Briny minutiae.
Here’s a 1937 photograph of the future town, back when it was still Ward Miller’s strawberry farm.
Here’s a 1958 article from The Miami Herald detailing an offer for Briny’s 500 families to buy the park from Miller’s son, Paul. Selling price, $1.5 million.
And here’s a joyous “Proclamation” inviting all residents to attend a ceremonial burning of the $350,000 mortgage on March 21, 1961.
“I enjoy this so much,” said Dietzel. “I’m not into tracking my own family through the ages, but I think it’s nice we’re doing this for future generations.”
Some of what they find is mundane. Fading snapshots of long-gone Brinyites smiling for a Kodak at social events back in the 1950s and ’60s. The men sport garish jackets, the women in white gloves and fur stoles.
And some of what they find is momentous.
An entire binder will house photos and memories from the 1964 hurricane season, when two storms and a freak tornado tore the park apart.
First came Cleo, on Aug. 27, and then Isbell.
Residents were battening down for that second storm about 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 14, when a tornado roared through the park, leaving trailers toppled and rubble behind.
In October, Phyllis Boykin recounted the drama in The Briny Bugle:
“Les and Fay Jordan were hauling down their awning. All of a sudden without warning Fay was picked up by the impetuous, rampant wind and dropped several feet away. Les grabbed her, threw her to the ground and fell on top of her, holding her immovable.
“Les looked up while holding Fay and saw huge pieces of trailer flying over his head.”
The Library Ladies are cataloging the photos that capture that destruction, including one of the Jordans’ lawn mower hanging atop a power pole.
“I’ve never been through a hurricane,” said Gross, pondering that lawn mower, “so these are kind of scary.”
Nearby, Atlee spoke up.
“My grandparents bought here in 1958,” she said, “so my mother visited here when she was pregnant with me. I was coming to Briny before I was born. It’s important to preserve this.”
And so, for four or five hours every Friday afternoon, the Library Ladies gather to do that.
So far, they’ve gone through 11 of those 35 fading and bug-infested scrapbooks from the days of colorful sports coats, white gloves and furs.
“We’ve made peace with the fact that we may not be done this summer,” Clarke said.”
Comments