Revisiting spirit of 1976, history buff beholds pet rock, dad’s letter, more
Winnie Diggans Edwards, above, rode her bike as a child 50 years ago in Delray Beach and today, below, is executive director of the city’s historical society. Photo provided and Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
By Holly Baltz
In the summer of 1976, a young Winnie Diggans — perched on the green banana seat of her bike, streamers fluttering from the handlebars — explored all of Delray Beach.
She remembers watching the fireworks on America’s 200th birthday over Lake Ida from the roof of her house.
Earlier that day, civic leaders and residents had gathered at the city’s community center to celebrate and look to the future. They buried a time capsule amid the sweltering heat.
Fifty years later, now Winnie Diggans Edwards attended the July 4 ceremony in which the capsule was dug up.
“It was a big shock when I was up on the stage,” said Edwards, executive director of the Delray Beach Historical Society. “Commissioner (Angela) Burns said there was a letter here from Roy Diggans.”
Diggans, her father, was Delray Beach postmaster in 1976 and had contributed to the capsule.
Some of the items recovered from the time capsule buried on July 4, 1976, include a $2 bill, postage stamps, various pamphlets and a cassette tape that recorded the observance. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
Other items in the capsule included a pet rock, a phone book, a city budget and numerous letters and booklets from local organizations, including the Delray Beach Voter’s League and Zeta Phi Beta Sorority. The items were on display at the Delray Beach Historical Society’s Cason Cottage throughout July.
The pet rock had been a gag gift at Christmas 1975 for people who complained of the costs and time to care for live animals. It retailed for $3.95 and came in a tiny box that looked like a pet carrier.
A $2 bill, just reissued for the bicentennial, was found, as were a student handbook from Carver Middle School, a letter from the Delray Hebrew Congregation, and the schedule of events for the ceremony.
“It’s not unusual that he would have donated the letter,” Edwards said of her father, considering his best friend, Ken Ellingsworth, manager of the Delray Beach Chamber of Commerce, asked him to do so, according to the letter.
A letter from Roy Diggans, who was Delray Beach postmaster in 1976, lists the names of the postal employees at the time. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
Roy Diggans said in the letter that he thought it would be appropriate to list the 60 employees of the Delray Beach Post Office, and he did. Along with the letter were three stamps showing the Spirit of ’76, the famous painting of a fife player and two drummers of the American Revolution.
Some of the items, which were mainly paper, had water damage, said Kayleigh Howald, the society’s archivist. But the good news was they had no bugs.
Mayor Tom Carney holds up a battered toy Volkswagen Beetle that was in the capsule. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
The treasures were buried in a metal box, in the shape of a large computer tower.
Howald retrieved them on a recent Monday and arranged them on tables as she figured out how to display the items.
She said they were not the only time capsule items in the historical society archives. Another came from the city’s Diamond Jubilee in the 1980s.
Workers and others inspect the time capsule after its excavation from in front of City Hall before the July 4 opening. Photo provided
‘The simple life’
Delray Beach in the 1970s was still small and sleepy. Its population was half the 72,000 residents it hosts today.
“The simple life in a little seaside town was normal to me,” Edwards said.
She said Delray had a few restaurants she and her family went to. She rode her bike around Lake Ida with her friends, fished, played a lot of tennis, “four days a week,” and spent a lot of time at church, St. Paul’s Episcopal on Swinton Avenue.
During that hot summer of 1976, they “lived at the beach” where her dad liked to fish.
Edwards remembered visiting Underground Atlanta that year, where her dad bought her a large book with replicas of the founding documents for the country. She said she kept it all her life then donated it to the historical society a few years ago.
‘Pride in the successes’
On July 4, 1976, about 500 officials and residents from Delray gathered in the Civic Center gymnasium to hear a “brightly sunburned” U.S. Rep. Paul Rogers speak about the country’s beginnings, according to a story in the Palm Beach Post the next day.
“We can take pride in the successes and in the failures because we have used those failures to change our way of doing things,” the Democrat said.
Rogers would end his 24-year congressional career just a few years later in 1979. He was a co-sponsor of the Clean Air Act of 1970 and National Cancer Act of 1971. He also had signed the so-called Southern Manifesto in 1956 in his early years in Congress, opposing racial integration of public places.
Rogers attended 10 events that day in Palm Beach and Broward counties, thanks to the recent completion of Interstate 95 from Palm Beach Gardens to Miami.
Florida House Minority Leader Bill James and County Commissioner Robert Johnson also attended, but James had to leave early for another gathering.
The Palm Beach Post made only a mention of the time capsule.
It said the city received two gifts that day. One was a plaque mounted on a coral boulder presented on behalf of the 1,150-member Beach Homeowners Association — “our tribute to those adventuresome migrants from the North who envisioned a paradise along these rugged shores,” said J. Watson Dunbar in presenting the plaque.
The second gift, from the Rotary Club, was a miniature Liberty Bell, one-fifth the size of the original, but built by the same manufacturer, the Whitechapel Bell Foundry in London.
The story went on to say that the city buried a time capsule of gifts for its residents 50 years into the future.
Coming back home
Edwards was a native of Delray Beach, essentially, having been born at Bethesda Hospital in Boynton Beach.
She went on from those sleepy summer days to attend college in Texas, start her career in Boston and work in California as a creative and marketing director.
The Diggans family came to Delray Beach in 1920 where her father also was born. Her grandfather Leroy Diggans was the first president of the city’s Chamber of Commerce and postmaster in Delray for 30 years. Her father helped found the historical society in 1964. Roy Diggans died in 2001 at age 73.
As often is the case with elderly parents, Edwards came back when her mother became ill. Edwards got to spend more than a decade with her mother, Betty, until she died in December at age 97.
In the meantime, Edwards went to work for the historical society, eventually becoming executive director.
“The joy of my career is being able to do this for my dad and for my hometown,” she said. “We stay on top of current events and put history into that conversation.”
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