Delray Beach and Boynton Beach became the center of gladiolus growing in 1939
after a deep freeze wiped out the crop in Fort Myers.
Starting in 1947, Delray Beach began having parades during the gladiola festivals.
Lavish floats were decorated with fresh blooms.
Growers sold gladiola under tents. The festival morphed into an agricultural expo after a freeze in the ’50s.
Photos provided by The Delray Beach Historical Society
By Deborah S. Hartz-Seeley
This year’s 55th anniversary celebration of the Delray Affair is expected to attract more than 100,000 visitors to about 500 vendors set up along Atlantic Avenue.
As part of the celebration from April 7-9, the Delray Beach Historical Society will be selling gladiolus bulbs as a way to remind festivalgoers of the event’s roots.
It started in 1939 when Delray Beach found itself in the gladiolus-growing business after a deep freeze wiped out the crop in Fort Myers. From then until the 1950s, the area from Boynton Beach to Delray Beach became the center of gladiolus growing in the United States.
Having survived the Depression and World War II, the industrious people of Delray Beach were ready to have some fun and show off their handiwork. Thus in 1947, they held a festival to promote the area’s crops and horticultural resources.
With their favorite flower as its symbol, they dubbed this agricultural showcase the Gladiola Festival. It was a small-town affair, with farmers parking their trucks along the streets to display what they’d grown, explained Winnie Diggans Edwards, executive director of the Historical Society.
Over the next six years, the festival grew into an entertainment extravaganza that included a parade with lavish floats, a Gladiola Queen and movie stars in attendance.
Billie Jo Swilley (nee McFee), 80, a docent for the DBHS, attended those early festivals. She marched in the parade as a majorette and later as a drum major with the high school band and recalls when movie star Vera-Ellen participated.
“Those were fun, fun times,” Swilley said, remembering the carnival rides such as the Bullet she went on with her sister. “We got strapped in and it started spinning around. My sister looked at me and I looked at her. We started praying, thinking we’d never get off.”
There also were animal exhibits such as snakes and stuffed bobcats and alligators. Live baby alligators were for sale. And if you got hungry, you could treat yourself to “the best” conch fritters made by a local church as well as a hamburger, hot dog or corn dog with a bottle of Coke, lemonade or sweet tea.
And, of course, there was the gladiolus tent, where they sold the flowers in what Swilley described as “every stage of growth.”
By the mid-’50s, a freeze as well as development in the area’s western edges and a shift to vegetable farming meant the Gladiola Festival morphed into a small agricultural expo. But it was celebrated for only a few years because by 1962, community leaders wanted to expand it into a more multifaceted event.
They called it the Delray Affair.
“Today in its 55th year, it’s a wonderful arts, crafts, family friendly outdoor festival,” said Karen Granger, president and CEO of the Delray Beach Chamber of Commerce, which organizes the event.
Although gladiola have been sold at the event over the years, it has gotten harder and harder to find suppliers, as most are overseas. But this year, the Historical Society was determined.
It discovered a family-owned company in Michigan that supplied many of the local nurseries with gladiolus bulbs back in the ’50s.
“It’s ironic but it makes sense since many of the settlers in this area were from Michigan,” said Edwards.
During this year’s Delray Affair, you’ll find the Historical Society booth selling varieties of gladiolus bred to grow well in our heat.
“If everyone who comes to the festival buys just three bulbs and plants them, we might once again have more gladiola in Delray than anywhere else in the country,” said Edwards.
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