News

By Ron Hayes

    BRINY BREEZES — Marilyn David saw Briny Breezes for the first time from a 32-foot travel trailer in July 1946.
She became a permanent resident in 1953 and raised a son and three daughters here.
    She was here on June 19, 1963, when her husband, Hugh, was sworn in as the newly incorporated town’s first mayor. She was here through the 33 years he served as its only mayor, and after his death in February 1997, she stayed on in their home on Mallard Drive.
    At 7:30 a.m. on May 19, she died there. She was 93.
    “My parents were crazy about each other, and loved each other so much,” her son, David David, said a day after her death. “They never argued in front of the children. If they had an argument, they went out for a walk and came back pacified.”
    Her career, her son said, was her family.
    “My mother did all the raising of the kids, and we were raised on the beach in the summertime.”
    Up early, they’d hit the sand by 9 a.m. and spend the day.
    “My mother taught us how to swim,” he recalled. “She had two long black ponytails, and she would tow my sister and myself down the reefs all day long.”
    The future Marilyn David was born July 24, 1922, in St. Louis, Mo., and adopted by Milton and Eunice Bellis. On New Year’s Eve 1940, she and her high school sweetheart, Hugh Edward David, eloped, but kept the marriage a secret from their parents for more than a year until she had graduated.
 The Davids and their two small children, Judy and Diane, came to Briny Breezes in July 1946 because their St. Louis home had burned down.
    “It was wintertime, and of course that’s no time to build back in Missouri,” Hugh David told The Palm Beach Post. “We got the idea of getting a trailer and going to a warmer climate.”
    His mother had friends in Delray Beach, “and they’d seen a trailer park on the ocean.”
    Once here, Marilyn David quickly settled in, and stayed.
    “I wouldn’t be happy in a home,” she told The Post in a 1965 profile. By then, Judy had married and moved to Boynton Beach, but the Davids and their three youngest children were still sharing a two-bedroom mobile home.
    “The girls have one bedroom, David the other and my husband and I the living room couch, which is easily converted into a bed,” she explained without complaint.
    “She was a very outgoing person, always willing to help with what we called the park back then,” said Rita Taylor, the longtime Briny Breezes town clerk (now Gulf Stream’s clerk) and a friend for nearly 50 years. “She was very loyal to Briny and the people there.”
    While her husband sold real estate with Dutch Realty in Boynton Beach, Mrs. David volunteered with the county health program, driving needy children to the dentist. But her first priority was her own children.
    “She was an excellent cook, and every night it was something different. I wouldn’t say she was strict, but when we got punished it was a hard punishment: Go play on the beach,” David David said.
    Her hobbies included snorkeling, skin diving, bike riding, shell collecting and sewing, he said.
    “She made all her own clothes and never bought anything at the store,” David David said. “And she sewed for everybody in the neighborhood. If somebody got a little plump and ripped their pants out, she’d fix them for her.”
     In addition to her son and his wife, Edith Behm, also of Briny Breezes, she is survived by her three daughters, Judy Wood of Boynton Beach; Diane Potter of Atlantis; and Denise Berg of San Diego; and four grandchildren.
    The family plans a small private service in her home, followed by a larger memorial in the town’s clubhouse during the season.
    Donations in her memory may be made to Hospice of Palm Beach County.