By Ron Hayes
GULF STREAM — On Easter Sunday 1969, Robert Ganger and his father explored a Gulf Stream mansion they found to be dilapidated, covered with mold, and empty.
Miradero, the former home of Lila Vanderbilt Webb, granddaughter of railroad magnate Cornelius “Commodore” Vanderbilt, had been willed to Good Samaritan Hospital, which had a developer with an option to buy.
Where the developer saw a future investment, the Gangers saw a past worth preserving, and in January 1970, Miradero — Spanish for a “vantage point” or “lookout”— became their new home.
Robert Ward Ganger died in Miradero on April 25 — 33 years to the day after the death of his own father, Robert Mondell Ganger, in the same house. He was 89.
When Mr. Ganger retired to Gulf Stream in 1991, he brought with him the same reverence for preserving the past that had saved that moldy old mansion, and for the next 34 years that devotion blessed both Gulf Stream and all of Palm Beach County.
In 2007, when developers hungered to buy Briny Breezes and replace the mobile home community with towering condos, Mr. Ganger and Kristine de Haseth formed The Florida Coalition for Preservation to fight the sale.
Briny Breezes is still here, and so is the coalition.
“Bob was involved in many worthwhile nonprofit organizations, but his pride and joy was The Florida Coalition for Preservation,” de Haseth said. “We have dedicated 18 years to preserving the small-town quality of life we all enjoy on the barrier island, which includes supporting Briny Breezes in their efforts to remain a unique, independent community.”
Robert Ward Ganger was born in Bronxville, New York, on Jan. 5, 1936.
After graduating from Bronxville High School, he earned a bachelor’s in American studies from Yale in 1957 and an MBA from the Harvard Business School in 1959.
From 1959 to 1964, he served in the U.S. Air Force Reserves.
Mr. Ganger spent his career in marketing and strategic planning at General Foods Corp., from which he retired after 32 years.
“He never retired,” said his son, Rob Ganger, “and of all my father’s contributions, I think his greatest were in Gulf Stream.”
A year after leaving General Foods, he founded the Gulf Stream Consulting Group, a business development and financial strategies company, which he ran for 20 years while also pursuing his volunteer work.
On an Alaskan cruise in 1993, he struck up a friendship with a gentleman from Broward County, who suggested introducing him to a Finnish woman living in Boca Raton, a friend he thought Mr. Ganger might like.
Mr. Ganger liked her very much, and in 1995, he and Anneli Perlow were married in Gulf Stream, with his adult children Amy and Robert attending.
The newlyweds set about restoring Miradero, but carefully.
“To assure that the restoration was legitimate, we researched the plans of Lila Vanderbilt Webb,” he recalled. “Her story compelled me to write a book on who Lila was, and why she decided to build a house in Gulf Stream.”
The Historical Society of Palm Beach County published Lila Vanderbilt Webb’s Miradero, Window on an Era in 2005, and the book went on to win a best nonfiction award from the Independent Publisher Book Awards.
From 2004 to 2007, Mr. Ganger served as president of the Gulf Stream Civic Association, and from 2006 to 2012 as a member of the town’s Architectural Review and Planning Board.
Not long after joining the board of the Delray Beach Historical Society in 2005, Mr. Ganger found a new challenge. The society’s historical archives were about to be expelled from the 1913 schoolhouse at Old School Square to make way for an expansion of the Cornell Art Museum.
He went in search of a new home for the records and found the offices of architect Digby Bridges at 124 NE Fifth Ave. The 1906 house, former home of the Harold Hunt family, had been bought by developers planning to tear it down and build a condominium complex.
With Ken Blair, a friend and local contractor, Mr. Ganger crawled under the hundred-year-old home to inspect the Dade County pine flooring.
The house was in good shape, and Ganger, named the board’s new president, helped raise the estimated $750,000 needed to move the building to the society’s property on Swinton Avenue — on the north side of Cason Cottage — and attach it to a windowless, prefabricated bunker that would hold the archives.
On Nov. 11, 2007, the Hunt house was moved from Federal Highway to Swinton Avenue and became the Ethel Sterling Williams Learning Center, named for the society’s first president—and the Hunt family’s babysitter when they first arrived in Delray Beach.As a board member of the Historical Society of Palm Beach County, Ganger worked with Harvey Oyer III to save and restore the 1916 Palm Beach County Courthouse in West Palm Beach, now the Johnson History Museum.
“Bob was a true leader on our board, and the project would probably not have happened without Bob’s leadership,” Oyer said. “He was levelheaded, pragmatic, optimistic, persistent, and an idea-generating machine. He was almost always the smartest person in the room, but deflected the credit to others.”
In August 2012, Mr. Ganger was appointed to an interim seat on the Gulf Stream Town Commission after the death of Mayor Bill Koch, and in 2014, he was elected to a full term.
Scott Morgan was named mayor and Mr. Ganger vice mayor.
“No one cared more about the town, or knew more about its origins, than he did,” Morgan said. “His spearheading of the town’s electrical undergrounding, his leadership role in annexing the adjoining county pocket, and his published books and articles on local history are all testaments to his dedication to our community.
“I will treasure his memory — as a mentor, a colleague, and a friend — not just to me, but to so many people along the barrier island and elsewhere whose lives he touched.”
On April 17, 2016, Mr. Ganger suffered a stroke, a “brain drain” as he called it. The man who had worked so diligently to preserve the past, woke to find he had lost his own.
“I literally could not remember where or who I was,” he would say.
As part of his recovery, he took the suggestion ofa neurologist towrite an autobiography and recapture his past.
He published The First 84 Years in 2020.
“A critical part of my brain had blown its cover,” he wrote of the stroke, “spilling its contents hither and yon.”
He could remember, and he could write.
In a 2018 interview with The Coastal Star, Mr. Ganger was asked his favorite part about living in Gulf Stream.
“Besides living in a lovely home,” he replied, “Gulf Stream provides an environment allowing me to engage in small-town public service.”
Bob Ganger certainly did engage in small-town public service —but he did it in a very big way.
In addition to Anneli Ganger, his wife of 30 years, he is survived by his son and daughter-in-law, Rob Ganger and Jodi Wille of Tallahassee; a daughter and son-in-law, Amy and Mike Diethelm of Atlanta, Georgia; stepsons Ossian and Patrick Ramsay; and six grandchildren.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to The Florida Coalition for Preservation, 4600 N. Ocean Blvd., Suite 102, Boynton Beach, FL 33435, or at www.preservationfla.org.
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