50th anniversary - News - The Coastal Star2024-03-29T09:10:02Zhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/feed/tag/50th+anniversaryAlong the Coast: 50 years of servicehttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/along-the-coast-50-years-of-service2021-08-03T17:33:23.000Z2021-08-03T17:33:23.000ZThe Coastal Starhttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/TheCoastalStar<div><p style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9352154894,RESIZE_930x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9352154894,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" width="710" alt="9352154894?profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a><em>Jamie Sauer, president of the Junior League of Boca Raton (from left), Lynne Moyer, Sosy Faradyan, Mado Faradyan, Fabiola Padernacht, Irina Oyfe and Jocelyn Mijares box food at Boca Helping Hands. </em><strong>Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star</strong></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><strong><span style="font-size:12pt;">Boca’s Junior League celebrates long tradition </span><span style="font-size:12pt;">of helping, from providing diapers, meals for children </span><span style="font-size:12pt;">to keeping community garden</span></strong></p>
<p><strong>By Ron Hayes</strong></p>
<p style="text-align:left;">You’ll find them right around 6 p.m. any Thursday, eight or 10 women lining both sides of a worktable on the second floor of a warehouse on Northwest First Court in Boca Raton.<br />For the next hour or two, they will pick up individual servings of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, Pop Tarts, Pringles or mixed fruit cups and place one of each in cardboard boxes.<br /> Fruit cup after fruit cup, Pop Tart after Pop Tart, this would be awfully boring work if they were just packing boxes. But these women are at Boca Helping Hands to make sure about 700 South County elementary school students don’t go hungry every weekend.<br /> They are the Junior League of Boca Raton, and on Sept. 23 many of their 600-plus members will gather at The Addison to celebrate 50 years of service to their community.<br /> “We find a need, and we work to fill it,” says Jamie Sauer, the league’s president. “In the past 50 years, we’ve volunteered more than a million hours.”</p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9352232070,RESIZE_930x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9352232070,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" width="710" alt="9352232070?profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a><em>Members of the Junior League of Boca Raton gather at an event in the 1980s. This chapter of the league began in 1971. </em><strong>Photo provided by the Junior League of Boca Raton</strong></p>
<p>That’s a million hours of volunteerism since 1971, when 26 young women declared themselves the Junior Service League of Boca Raton and set about to gather 100 members under 35 so they could be recognized by the national organization.<br /> Mary Lavalle joined in 1973. She’ll turn 78 in December and is still active with the league.<br /> “It was a way of making new friends,” she recalls. “I had children, they had children. When I joined there were not so many women working outside the home. I’m a volunteer. I like to do things, and the league has taught me how to be a productive volunteer.”<br /> By 1984, the Junior Service League had found its 100 members, been recognized by the national body, and dropped the word “Service” from its name.<br /> They’ve never dropped the commitment to service.<br /> In the earliest days, that meant puppet shows and consignment shops, or supporting the Morikami Museum, Planned Parenthood and Children’s Home Society.<br /> Then they helped found the Boca Raton Historical Society and the Children’s Museum.</p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9352272880,RESIZE_930x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9352272880,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" width="710" alt="9352272880?profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a><em>Members of the Junior League of Boca Raton entertain underserved children at an event. Some of the league’s members say they are motivated to help children after raising kids of their own. </em><strong>Photo provided by the Junior League of Boca Raton</strong></p>
<p>In 2010, the league was entrusted with launching the Boca Raton Community Garden on 1½ acres by the railroad tracks on Northwest Fourth Street, land donated by the city.<br /> Ground was broken on Earth Day 2010, with residents who leased the 100 plots agreeing to donate 10% of their fruits and vegetables to Boca Helping Hands.<br /> A decade later, on May 10, 2021, ground was broken on a new community garden at Meadows Park on Northwest Eighth Street to accommodate the Brightline station to be built near the Downtown Library. Brightline underwrote the new garden’s construction and the city donated the land and water, but it will continue to be managed by the league.<br /> “We’ve had a volunteer shift working together with Brightline, Kaufman Lynn Construction and the city to build the 100 garden boxes,” Sauer reports. “We’re very excited to get started in August.”<br /> When league members learned that food stamps and the federal Women, Infants & Children program don't cover disposable diapers, they marked their 40th anniversary in 2011 by setting up the Junior League Diaper Bank.<br /> A decade later, they’ve given away more than 5 million diapers and are currently serving about 3,000 children through 23 local nonprofits.<br /> “On average, we distribute between 100,000 and 200,000 diapers every other month,” Sauer reports. “We’ve helped over 15,000 families in the past 10 years.”<br /> Next year, the Diaper Bank will become an independent nonprofit. “But the Junior League will continue to be supportive, with members on the board, volunteer shifts and more,” Sauer emphasizes. “We’re eager to see what we started 10 years ago grow even more as a new nonprofit.”<br /> And then there’s the Done-In-A-Day project, in which members volunteer to spend two to four hours at area nonprofits, such as Twin Palms Center for the Disabled, CROS Ministries, or parks and beach cleanups.<br /> On July 23 and 24, volunteers filled backpacks with school supplies in support of the Spirit of Giving Network’s Back to School Bash.<br /> “I was a homeroom mom,” says Jocelyn Mijares, who chairs the Done-In-A-Day committee. “Now my kids are older, so I volunteer a lot.<br /> “My whole thought is, there but for the grace of God go I,” she says, placing another fruit cup in a box at Boca Helping Hands. “One different decision and I could be on the receiving end of these boxes.”</p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:14pt;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9352266854,RESIZE_930x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9352266854,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" width="710" alt="9352266854?profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a></span><span style="font-size:10pt;"><em>Junior League of Boca Raton members attend a 1986 fundraiser. By then, the group had more than 100 members. </em><strong>Photo provided by the Junior League of Boca Raton</strong><em><br /></em></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14pt;">No more white gloves and pearls</span></p>
<p style="text-align:left;">And still there are some who think “Junior League” means pampered women in white gloves and pearls who lunch on lobster and make chitchat. But the cliché didn’t come out of nowhere.<br /> The national Junior League was already 70 years old when those 26 women in Boca Raton formed their chapter.<br /> Originally called the Junior League for the Promotion of the Settlement Movements, it was founded in 1901 by Mary Harriman Rumsey, a student at Barnard College and the sister of W. Averell Harriman, a future governor of New York, and the daughter of Edward H. Harriman, a railroad executive. She was 19.<br /> Perhaps she wore white gloves and pearls at times — along with Eleanor Roosevelt, 19 when she joined, too — but they worked to aid poor families who had arrived in the country during the influx of European immigrants in the late 19th century.<br /> Today, the Junior League of Boca Raton is one of 295 chapters with 125,000 members in the U.S., Canada, Mexico and the United Kingdom, and women can now join at 21.<br /> The helping hands at Boca Helping Hands are not wearing white gloves, and they are not lazy. When the women left on June 24, they had packed 185 boxes of food.<br /> “The Junior League has been volunteering here since 2009,” says Bill Harper, Helping Hands’ director of food and warehouse operations. “They generally pack about 200 boxes a week.”<br /> Each box contains six small meals of macaroni and cheese, spaghetti and beef, and three snacks that provide 2,400 calories to feed poor children every weekend.<br /> Before the pandemic, the meals went in backpacks. Now, they’re delivered in the cardboard boxes rather than repacking backpacks that, going from their homes to the schools to the Helping Hands warehouse, could carry the virus.</p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9352264893,RESIZE_930x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9352264893,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" width="710" alt="9352264893?profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a><em>Jamie Sauer, president of the Junior League of Boca Raton, and Mary Lavalle, a president in the early 1980s, united at Boca Helping Hands with several other volunteers to pack meals for distribution to children in need. </em><strong>Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star</strong></p>
<p>“During the school year, we feed about 700 students in six South County elementary schools,” Harper explains. “That’s 700 boxes a week in a full 38-week school year. Now we’re distributing at summer camps and Boys & Girls Clubs.”<br /> Of the 185 boxes the women of the Junior League packed on June 24, 117 alone were scheduled to go to feed students from Boca Raton Elementary School. <br /> For Lynne Moyer, a member of the league’s public affairs committee, this was her first stint packing food at Boca Helping Hands.<br /> “I joined three years ago after retiring,” she said. “I was a Latin teacher. Now I play tournament croquet, but I need to do something for people in need.”<br /> And so she found the women of the Junior League, who have done just that for 50 years.</p>
<p><br /><span style="font-size:14pt;">50th anniversary celebration</span><br />The Junior League of Boca Raton will celebrate its 50 years of service to the community with a dinner, an open bar, entertainment and a silent auction.<br />Where: The Addison of Boca Raton, 2 E. Camino Real<br />When: 7 p.m. Sept. 23<br />Tickets: Cost is $171 per person, available at <a href="http://www.jlbr.org">www.jlbr.org</a>.<br />For more information: Call 561-620-2553 or email 50anniversary@jlbr.org.</p>
<p> </p></div>Coastal Star: Boca volunteer finds ‘magic’ in love of helping young childrenhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/coastal-star-boca-volunteer-finds-magic-in-love-of-helping-young-2021-06-02T18:09:06.000Z2021-06-02T18:09:06.000ZThe Coastal Starhttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/TheCoastalStar<div><p style="text-align:center;"><strong><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9026267266,RESIZE_930x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9026267266,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" width="710" alt="9026267266?profile=RESIZE_710x" /></a></strong><em>Peg Anderson says the Fuller Center, which serves kids from economically challenged homes, is ‘my happy place. When I go there it fills me with joy.’ </em><strong>T</strong><strong>im Stepien/The Coastal Star</strong></p>
<p><strong>By Sallie James</strong></p>
<p>Longtime Boca Raton resident Peg Anderson loves peeking into the classrooms at the Florence Fuller Child Development Centers and seeing the teachers and children interact. She’s thankful the scene will continue in months to come as the agency prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary.<br /> Anderson is co-chairing this year’s Wee Dream Ball — the nonprofit’s largest fundraiser — while helping to celebrate its golden anniversary. The Dec. 3 event at the Boca West Country Club will recognize all the Fuller Center, as it’s informally known, has survived, accomplished and plans to do. Simone Spiegel, the center’s board president and chairwoman, is also a co-chair of the Wee Dream Ball. <br /> “It’s my happy place. When I go there it fills me with joy,” said Anderson, a board member for 10 years and currently a vice president. “It is just magic that happens. It is so touching to know these little kids there are having this wonderful experience. When they get finished with our program they are going to go toe-to-toe with every other kid.”<br /> The pandemic made it especially challenging this year to keep the doors open, but extra help from donors made it happen, Anderson said.<br /> People who know Anderson say her devotion to children and her dedication to the agency made her an obvious choice to co-chair the ball.<br /> “Peg is a dedicated board member who is committed and passionate about the children served by Fuller Center,” said Ellyn Okrent, chief executive officer for the nonprofit. “She wholeheartedly believes in making an early investment in children and preparing them for lifelong success.”<br /> Anderson’s enthusiasm for helping out seems endless. She recently took the lead in guiding the organization through an ambitious strategic planning process and rebranding. She is also the chair of the Fuller Center Foundation, the entity created to ensure the long-term stability of the center. <br /> Her dedication does not go unnoticed.<br /> “She is one of those people who is really involved for the right reasons,” said Mary Coleman, director of advancement for the agency. <br /> Anderson, who did not wish to share her age, is a former Midwesterner who spent her youth as a flight attendant with United Airlines. She later attended Le Cordon Bleu School in New York and opened a French restaurant on the east side of Manhattan. <br /> She subsequently served as director of non-patient dining services at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital; was director of employee dining services at Chemical Bank World Headquarters; and was vice president and general manager of the Rockefeller Center for eight years.<br /> Anderson and her husband moved to Boca Raton in 1995 and Mizner Village in 2004. She’s been involved in a range of organizations ever since.<br /> Currently she is a board member at the Boca Raton Museum of Art and president of the Cultural Arts Center in Mizner Park.<br /> “I am a community-minded citizen,” Anderson said.<br /> She got involved with the Fuller Center in 2006 after someone urged her to attend the Wee Dream Ball. Anderson was invited for a visit and the rest is history.<br /> “They said you have to come for a tour and that is kind of like when I really fell in love,” Anderson said. “It is the most compelling kind of an experience.”<br /> The children’s parents “are the essential workers in the service industries, restaurants, groceries and hospitals. It is a whole kind of holistic community where we are relying on each other for support.”<br /> She said the Wee Dream Ball will be a gala event. “It’s really all about fundraising but we do it in a kind of gift-from-the-heart kind of way. We make it very festive — it is going to be very elegant, this 50th-anniversary celebration,” Anderson said.<br /> The Fuller Center serves children ages 6 months to 12 years from economically challenged households. Programs range from infant care to early childhood education to summer camp. The agency operates two campuses in Boca Raton.<br /> “There is just something really wonderful, the karma, you feel the love,” Anderson said.</p>
<p><em>Nomintate someone to be a Coastal Star. Send a note to news@thecoastalstar.com or call 561-337-1553.</em></p></div>Delray Beach: A place to thrive for kids: As it turns 50, Achievement Centers ‘at top of its game’https://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/delray-beach-a-place-to-thrive-for-kids-as-it-turns-50-achievemen2019-12-04T18:00:00.000Z2019-12-04T18:00:00.000ZThe Coastal Starhttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/TheCoastalStar<div><p style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960909697,original{{/staticFileLink}}" target="_blank"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960909697,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" width="450" alt="7960909697?profile=original" /></a> <em>Nancy Hurd was a teacher at the start and then the CEO. She retired in 2013. <strong>Photo provided</strong></em></p>
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<p style="text-align:center;"><strong>Related Story: ‘Havana Nights’ raises <a href="https://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/boca-raton-a-charitable-windfall-havana-nights-raises-1-6-million" target="_blank">$1.6 million</a> for nonprofits</strong></p>
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<p><strong>By Charles Elmore</strong></p>
<p>In 1969, a moon landing, a raucous music festival near Woodstock, New York, and the Vietnam War dominated the news. Tucked into South Florida newspapers that fall: mention of a “pilot project” in Delray Beach to educate children of working parents who could not otherwise afford preschool.<br /> The program set out to cap parent fees at $2 a week and relied on community donations to keep the doors open, recalled Nancy Hurd. She was hired as a teacher and social worker fresh out of Michigan State University in that founding year for $100 a week. <br /> “I remember watching Neil Armstrong come down the ladder to the surface of the moon and thinking, ‘What a time to be alive,’ ” Hurd said. <br /> While it was exciting to help launch a project, she didn’t quite imagine she would become its CEO and work there until she retired in 2013, she said.<br /> But what would eventually become known as the Achievement Centers for Children and Families had a way of grabbing people. It pulled them into its orbit. <br /> It celebrates a 50th anniversary in 2019 with a legacy built on thousands of individual stories. Teachers. Donors. Volunteers. Parents. And students like Wendy Fleuridor, now 33.<br /> “It’s really the reason I am who I am and do what I do,” Fleuridor said.<br /> By her own account, she went from being a kid at risk of falling behind right out of the educational starting gate to a track standout and cheerleader and honor student. She graduated from Florida State University and then took an advanced degree in physical therapy, the field that employs her now.<br /> At her house, “there were times when the lights were cut off. The water was cut off.”<br /> Her parents came from Haiti. They spoke Creole and “couldn’t really help me with homework,” she said.<br /> Both parents worked, sometimes more than one job at a time in hotel maintenance, restaurants or botanical nurseries.<br /> At 3 years old, she entered a place that offered not just an introduction to subjects such as reading, writing and math but, as she saw it, fun. She wanted to go. The kids got meals. They played music and games. Gifts materialized on occasions like birthdays and Christmas.<br /> “It’s where I learned English,” Fleuridor said.</p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960909872,original{{/staticFileLink}}" target="_blank"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960909872,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" width="500" alt="7960909872?profile=original" /></a><em>Wendy Fleuridor was a student at age 3 and now belongs to the parents board. <strong>Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star</strong></em></p>
<p><br /> Like those of many other people associated with the Achievement Centers, hers is a multigenerational story. She serves on the parents board, and her son Diyari, 5, recently graduated from the preschool program. He even gave a talk about Benjamin Banneker, the African-American author, surveyor and naturalist, she said.<br /> “He gave a speech and shockingly, he knew it,” Fleuridor said. “He really blossomed by coming here.”<br /> Today Achievement Centers serves about 900 children annually at three Delray Beach locations: the main Nancy K. Hurd Campus at 555 NW Fourth St., plus programs at Village Academy and Pine Grove Elementary.<br /> The nonprofit organization runs toddler, preschool and after-school programs, teen and summer camps, and initiatives that help families connect with resources to help them manage budgets and build stability. <br /> It regularly draws top-tier accreditation scores, and its foundation maintains a four-star or highest rating from Charity Navigator.<br /> It serves 243,000 free meals a year.<br /> CEO Stephanie Seibel credits “the entire Achievement Centers community — from the people that work here, to the children that play here, the people that make this place run behind the scenes, the boards that govern, the parents and families that entrust us, the teens that keep things lively, our donors that support us, our volunteers — all of them. It’s truly a special place.”<br /> One of those volunteers is Michael Katz, 64. He said he retired from a career in the retail business among other ventures and wanted to do something meaningful. <br /> He said he realized he was no trained educator when he started, and tried to take his cues from the teachers and the students themselves.<br /> When learning letters of the alphabet, for example, some kids responded well when working in pairs and competing to see who could get the right answer first, Katz discovered. They made it a game.<br /> “For these kids it means the world,” he said. “It gives them a foundation. It gives them confidence. When they go to kindergarten they feel like ‘I can do this.’ I’m proud to be volunteering and have a connection to it.”<br /> Tanise Cox, the senior director of out-of-school operations, said, “It’s a good feeling to have parents and students come back to share stories and tell us how they appreciate what we did.”<br /> Ninety-eight percent of Achievement Centers’ early-learning graduates who attended at least 70% of the time meet or exceed kindergarten readiness as measured by the Bracken School Readiness Assessment, officials say. Nearly a quarter are rated advanced or very advanced.<br /> That kind of performance helped win trust and accreditation at a host of agencies. These days, about half of the group’s $4.5 million annual budget comes from government grants and programs such as Head Start, Seibel said. The rest comes from parent fees and private fundraising. Achievement Centers is the lead beneficiary of a charity poker tournament at the Boca Raton Resort & Club that raised $1.6 million in November, for example.</p>
<p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Modest beginnings</strong></span><br /> But before Achievement Centers became “a homegrown program at the top of its game,” Hurd said, its future was anything but obvious.<br /> “There was no road map when we started,” Hurd said, with no mandatory kindergarten in Florida and few regulations for preschool education. “This was a cottage industry run largely in churches and people’s homes. We started out very modest, very small.”</p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960909895,original{{/staticFileLink}}" target="_blank"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960909895,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" width="500" alt="7960909895?profile=original" /></a><em><strong>ABOVE</strong>: Children danced at a holiday party in 1974 at one of the churches that hosted programs in the early years. <strong>BELOW</strong>: Groundbreaking at the current Achievement Centers site in 1985. <strong>Photos provided</strong></em></p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960910259,original{{/staticFileLink}}" target="_blank"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960910259,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" width="450" alt="7960910259?profile=original" /></a><br /> Founded as Community Child Care Center of Delray Beach, it welcomed an initial batch of 20 students in donated Sunday school classrooms, soon to be followed by another group at a second church.<br /> Over time, the scope expanded to older children in after-school programs, which included computer education, music, dance, art, homework assistance, hands-on science experiments and learning African drums.<br /> “We formed our own drum line and the older children got really good,” Hurd said. “They livened up many a parade and fundraiser.”<br /> Another activity gave instruction in meditation and calming skills.<br /> “We really tried to stay on the cutting edge with everything that made learning a joy,” Hurd said.<br /> By 1974, host churches were rebuilding and reorganizing and could no longer house the enterprise. Some residents expressed concerns about a proposed move to a house at 215 SE First Ave. on the grounds the center would bring too much traffic and noise. Initially the plan was denied by a city planning and zoning board. A sympathetic City Commission finally approved the project.<br /> Eventually, the support of key members of the business community and elected leaders paved the way for the construction of a complex on Northwest Fourth Street.<br /> “It’s a legacy for this city,” Hurd said. “It’s certainly to their credit they supported us when we didn’t have two nickels to rub together.”<br /> One goal that has not changed is keeping parent fees affordable.<br /> Achievement Centers officials say they provide a scholarship rate for toddlers and preschoolers at $70 per week and $30 per week for after-school.<br /> Families that qualify for what are termed government scholarships may pay as little as $5 per week. Head Start families pay nothing, officials said.<br /> That’s a far cry from what commercial providers charge, making it possible for mothers in particular to adapt to big changes in the American economy.<br /> In 1969, women made up 37.8% of the workforce, according the U.S. Department of Labor. Five decades later, it is just under 48%.<br /> Unemployment levels have been running below 4% in Palm Beach County, well within what economists typically consider “full employment.” That suggests the economy is not only absorbing those workers in its stride but in fact relying on them to function at full steam.<br /> “As people began to see how successful it was, I would tell potential donors the parents now are taxpayers and not tax-drainers,” Hurd said. “They’re working one and sometimes two jobs. Our children are now going into school ahead of the curve instead of behind. And we keep them there.”<br /> Sometimes moon shots work out. Fleuridor, the former student and now a working mother, needs little convincing that Achievement Centers proved to be a success story and a source of pride in her hometown.<br /> “I’m very grateful,” she said. </p></div>South Palm Beach: Roadworthy, readworthy: 50 years of bookmobilehttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/south-palm-beach-roadworthy-readworthy-50-years-of-bookmobile2019-10-02T17:00:00.000Z2019-10-02T17:00:00.000ZThe Coastal Starhttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/TheCoastalStar<div><p style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960903287,original{{/staticFileLink}}" target="_blank"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960903287,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" alt="7960903287?profile=original" /></a><em>Mike Cavanaugh enters the bookmobile in South Palm Beach, where it stops on Fridays. <strong>Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star</strong></em></p>
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<p style="text-align:center;"><strong>Related Story: First <a href="https://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/south-palm-beach-first-mobile-library-was-horse-drawn" target="_blank">mobile library</a> was horse-drawn</strong></p>
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<p><strong>By Ron Hayes</strong></p>
<p>On April 15, 1969, the Palm Beach County Commission met to buy a bookmobile.<br /> If the commission approved the contract, this bookmobile would be built by the Gerstenslager Co. of Wooster, Ohio, would arrive within 90 days and would cost the taxpayers $30,500.90.<br /> Four of the five commissioners were on board. Commissioner Robert F. Culpepper of Jupiter wasn’t. <br /> “I’m not voting against the bookmobile,” he announced. “I’m voting against the expensive bookmobile.”<br /> “There’s no such thing as an inexpensive bookmobile,” Commissioner E.W. Weaver told him after the vote.<br /> “Well,” Culpepper said, “I just hope it will be used.”<br /> The Palm Beach County Library System’s first bookmobile hit the road 50 years ago this month, in October 1969. Commissioner Culpepper could visit the South Palm Beach Town Hall any Friday morning to see how much it’s being used today.<br /> The bookmobile stops at 40 locations throughout Palm Beach County, and little South Palm Beach is one of only two stops that’s so busy it visits every week instead of twice a month. The other is Palm Beach Shores.<br /> From October 2018 to July 2019, bookmobile visitors checked out 50,000 items at those 40 stops. But the South Palm Beach stop alone accounted for just over 5,000 items checked out, or 10 percent of the bookmobile’s total circulation during that 10-month period.<br /> “It’s still our busiest stop,” says Ron Glass, the county’s outreach librarian.<br /> South Palm Beach and the bookmobile are such good friends that on Feb. 8 Town Clerk Yude Alvarez organized a small celebration at Town Hall to mark the 50th anniversary.<br /> Tables were set up in the fire bay, and the bookmobile’s staff and local book lovers enjoyed iced tea and juices, cookies, cupcakes, muffins and scones as music played. <br /> Drop by in January and the narrow space between the shelves can get so packed with book lovers browsing and condo neighbors chatting, you might have a wait to get in.<br /> Drop by on a Friday morning in August, and the crowd is smaller, but no less enthusiastic.<br /> “Without this mobile library, we wouldn’t be here,” says Daniel Colangelo, waiting to check out All The Way, Joe Namath’s latest football memoir. “We appreciate it so much. And the staff! They’re all great.”</p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960903094,original{{/staticFileLink}}" target="_blank"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960903094,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" alt="7960903094?profile=original" /></a><em><strong>ABOVE</strong>: Palm Beach resident Gladys Jacobson looks through the movie selection as Michael Barto, the bookmobile driver of 26 years, helps South Palm Beach’s Mike Cavanaugh check out books. <strong>Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star</strong></em><br /> <em><strong>BELOW</strong>: The original 1969 Palm Beach County bookmobile.</em></p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960903685,original{{/staticFileLink}}" target="_blank"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960903685,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" width="500" alt="7960903685?profile=original" /></a></p>
<p><br /> The bookmobile arrives at the Town Hall each week bearing about 2,000 items — 1,500 books and another 500 DVDs and music or talking-book CDs. The bookmobile even carries a birding kit available for checkout. That’s a backpack, adult binoculars, children’s binoculars, lens cleaner and a laminated pamphlet for identifying species.<br /> But to regular users, the bookmobile’s most valuable asset is the staff.<br /> Library Associate Jennifer Busch has been with the library for 19 years. Michael Barto has driven the bookmobile for 26. Twelve years ago, he learned American Sign Language to serve deaf patrons. And mechanic/multilinguist Francisco Navarro is along in case the great book beast breaks down and to assist Spanish speakers.<br /> Kristen Farley of South Palm Beach brings her three kids.<br /> “I always brag that I’ve never chosen a book for myself,” she says. “They know what I like, and they choose for the kids, too.”<br /> It’s common praise.<br /> “If they see something they think I’d like, they set it aside for me,” says Gladys Jacobson of Palm Beach. “I’m absolutely amazed at how they can select books for readers.”</p>
<p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Small towns were concern</strong></span><br /> The bookmobile’s arrival at those 40 stops throughout the county comes at the end of a long road that began with a book lover who saw a problem she wanted fixed.<br /> Her name was Ingrid A. Eckler, a member of the West Palm Beach League of Women Voters, and she was concerned about all those residents who weren’t being reached by the independent municipal libraries in the county’s larger cities. In 1964, Eckler and her fellow Women Voters started agitating the County Commission to create a countywide library service, and in April 1967, the state Legislature created a special taxing district and the county library system was born.<br /> The first branch library opened in Tequesta in September 1969.<br /> In October 1969, that $30,500.90 bookmobile made its first stops at Canal Point and South Bay on Lake Okeechobee, Lake Worth Road by Florida’s Turnpike and the city of Atlantis.<br /> The South Palm Beach stop arrived in 1982. In 2013, the bookmobile added a stop in Ocean Ridge, but it didn’t attract many borrowers.<br /> “It lasted one year,” Ron Glass says, “then we went right down the street to Briny Breezes, and it does real well, especially in season.”<br /> But it’s no match for South Palm Beach.<br /> “The bookmobile is No. 1!”<br /> Inalee Foldes is hugging a new biography of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. She’s already read the lives of justices John Paul Stevens and Sandra Day O’Connor. “Mike knows what I like,” she explains, referring to Barto. “This is the first place you come after you’ve been away.”<br /> Today’s bookmobile is not the same one the County Commission bought in April 1969. That one was retired in 1977.<br /> This current model is the sixth bookmobile to serve the county in the five decades since, and it didn’t cost $30,500.90.<br /> Its price tag: $245,000.<br /> But it didn’t cost taxpayers anything.<br /> Look closely at the rear of the bookmobile on the driver’s side and you’ll find, beneath the brightly painted books and lettering, a small rendering of a black fireman’s helmet bearing the message, “FDNY 343.”<br /> “An anonymous donor paid for this bookmobile,” Jennifer Busch says. “We don’t know who it was, but he or she requested only that it feature a fireman’s helmet somewhere on the outside and the number 343, the number of firefighters who died in New York on 9/11.”<br /> Ingrid A. Eckler, first president of the Friends of the Library and a member of its advisory board for 21 years, died in 1998 at age 85.<br /> Culpepper, the only county commissioner to vote against spending $30,500.90 for that first bookmobile, is alive and well at 87, still living in Jupiter, and still happy to chat.<br /> “That $30,000 was a lot of money back then,” he says. “As I said, I didn’t vote against the bookmobile. I voted against the price. But coming from Jupiter, we had no library branch then and the only service we had was the bookmobile, so I was always a strong supporter.”<br /> Then he got on his computer and found an inflation calculator. <br /> “You know,” he said. “That $30,000 in 1969 would be the equivalent of $210,000 today. So if the county were going to pay $245,000 for the new one, that’s $35,000 more.” <br /> The former county commissioner from Jupiter thought a moment and laughed. <br /> “I might vote against it again.”</p>
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<p><span style="font-size:18pt;"><strong>About the bookmobile</strong></span><br /> The Palm Beach County Bookmobile stops at the South Palm Beach Town Hall every Friday from 10:30 to noon.<br /> In Briny Breezes, it stops on alternate Fridays from 1:30-2:30 p.m. The upcoming dates are Oct. 11 and 25.<br /> You can request up to four items a week by calling 649-5476. If the staff is unavailable, leave a message and your call will be returned.<br /> Library cards are also available on the bookmobile.<br /> For more information, visit <a href="http://www.pbclibrary.org">www.pbclibrary.org</a>.</p></div>Celebrating Our History: St. Paul’s Day School celebrates first 50 yearshttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/celebrating-our-history-st-paul-s-day-school-celebrates-first-50-2013-10-02T16:00:00.000Z2013-10-02T16:00:00.000ZChris Felkerhttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/ChrisFelker<div><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960461688,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960461688,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="538" class="align-center" alt="7960461688?profile=original" /></a></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><em>St. Paul’s Day School in Delray Beach marks its 50th anniversary on Oct. 27.</em></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><em>During that half-century, it has had only two directors.</em></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><span><b>Photo contributed</b></span></p>
<p style="text-align:left;"><b>Staff Report</b></p>
<p> Today, they are engineers, lawyers and professionals.</p>
<p> Back in their youth, depending on the season, they were Indians, pilgrims and shepherds.</p>
<p> St. Paul’s Day School in Delray Beach has been nurturing little bodies, minds and spirits for 50 years and celebrates the anniversary of its founding on Oct. 27.</p>
<p> The school, nestled in the Children’s Village at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, is one of the oldest in the area and serves about 30 prekindergarten children a year.</p>
<p> The day school was established in 1963 as a ministry of the church and is now a VPK (voluntary pre-K) provider. </p>
<p> Over the past 50 years the school has been able to offer financial assistance to children who would otherwise be unable to afford preschool.</p>
<p> The school has had but two directors. </p>
<p> It was founded by Rolene Gent, who made it her life’s mission to serve children. “Miss Gent” served as director for 33 years. She died in 1996.</p>
<p> That year, the Rolene Gent memorial fund was established to honor her years of service to the school.</p>
<p> “The teachers and I strive to continue in the caring, kind ways that were part of Rolene’s legacy,” said Patti Daniell, the current school director. “To nurture the love of learning inherent in young children so that they will continue to grow in knowledge all through their lives.”</p>
<p> Day School Sunday will be celebrated during a child-friendly service at 10 a.m. Oct. 27 at the church, 188 S. Swinton Ave.</p>
<p> Offertory music will be sung by the preschool students of the day school. </p>
<p> There will be a reception in the Children’s Village following the service.</p></div>