The Nearest Thing to Paradise

Life was good in 1952. I had a successful public relations office with interesting and challenging clients, a splendid house, my beloved son, Kenny, our boxer dog, Ginger, and a life ahead that held promise and prosperity.

Yet there was something missing. St. Petersburg, where I had lived for several years, was too big, too settled and too staid. I longed to live in a small town and to bring my son up where I felt, as a single mother, that he would be safe among friendly neighbors. One afternoon, the publisher of Florida Speaks magazine, Lou Boeri, dropped by for a visit. He had been in Naples for several weeks preparing a special issue of the magazine and described the town as the "nearest thing to paradise."

Lou was excited that a group in Naples had organized a chamber of commerce and was looking for a manager. I laughed when he suggested that I apply for the job, since I had worked so hard to establish my own business and finally had some interesting, lucrative clients.

Later that same week I drove along the coast to Miami to meet with Malcolm MacDonald, president of Florida Power and Light. During our meeting, I casually mentioned the job in Naples, and he stood up and pointed a finger at me.

"Young lady," he intoned, "I don't know what this job entails, or how much it pays, or what you have to give up in St. Pete; but my advice to you is to sell yourself to those directors and do anything you can to get the job. Just do it! Naples is going to be one of the best cities in Florida and probably the country."

Six weeks later, on Oct. 1, I arrived in Naples and began my career as the executive secretary and managing director of the Naples Chamber of Commerce. This impressive title compensated for the $65 a week I was paid.

My office was a run-down shack measuring 20 feet by 30 feet, with no bathroom, two dirty windows, an old desk, a manual Underwood typewriter, an antique mimeograph machine and a telephone. When I arrived for my first day at work, the place was locked up and all the directors were in the Everglades hunting. I quickly made my way back home, discarded my business suit, high-heeled shoes and silk blouse and replaced this splendid apparel with jeans, a T-shirt and sneakers. I stopped by B and W Hardware, where I purchased cleaning supplies, then crawled into my executive offices through an unlocked window and began an adventure that has lasted for 53 years.

One of the first people I met was Mamie Tooke, a brilliant businesswoman who was to become a lifelong friend. Her husband, Clarence, had been disabled by a stroke, and Mamie took over as president of the town's first bank, the Bank of Naples. She was the only woman on the chamber's board of directors and kindly invited me to stay at her house until I found an apartment or house. Each afternoon, Mamie would come home from the bank and invite me to join her and Clarence for a ride around town.

After a few weeks I knew the occupant of almost every house in Naples. There were only 1,600 people in the town then, and I soon was familiar with their accomplishments, families, and yes, their idiosyncrasies and foibles.

On the business side, I made a list of all businesses, chamber members or not, and visited with them. I was presented a real challenge, since I had signed a contract with the chamber that promised to pay me half of all the yearly dues I was able to raise. I also began a column in the weekly Collier County News (now the Naples Daily News); and long before there were computers, I began a case history of every business here with owners, employees and other pertinent information.

The tiny chamber office stood on Tamiami Trail, just north of Four Corners, on a lot that is now part of the alley that runs behind the 800 block of Fifth. I soon met Leon McCormick, who had an earth-moving fleet of trucks but no office and no telephone. He parked his trucks behind the chamber office, and thus I became Naples' first answering service, when people would call Leon and I would yell to him out the window.

On our afternoon forays, Mamie would point out all that was planned for Naples. There were dredges at the end of Gordon Drive where Port Royal would soon be. Glen Sample, a wealthy and brilliant advertising pioneer (he was one of the inventors of the soap opera) had come to Naples in 1938 and had purchased the southern end of Naples for $50,000. When World War II ended, he began the development and built a small office right on Lantern Lane.

While Port Royal was employing the very best consultants and crew, the Walker family, Forrest, the father, and sons Lorenzo and Robert, began the mammoth Aqualane Shores. This pioneer family undertook this mammoth project by doing all the dredging and other manual labor by themselves.

Naples had only one doctor (but no hospital), two churches, three grocery stores, one traffic light, one school, four restaurants and one theater, which showed movies only on weekends-and sometimes not even then, since when it rained the converted Quonset hut was not insulated for sound.

There were several bars, the most famous being Clarkes Bar, which had survived Prohibition and now sported a huge sign declaring, "Don't Drink. But If You Do . Buy it Here!"

Dial telephones did not come to Naples until 1954. Mrs. Booker was the 24-hour operator and she lived in an apartment in the telephone building at the corner of Eighth Street and Fifth Avenue South. She kept tabs on the comings and goings of everyone in town and was the source of the most titillating gossip.

When dial telephones finally arrived, the telephone office was vacated and the building became the chamber offices, complete with a bathroom and ample space. I lived in an apartment just across the street from my office, which permitted me to keep constant watch on Kenny and Ginger, who spent their days with me.

On Wednesday afternoons everything closed down, and the townspeople gathered on the beach or surrounding waters for fun in the sun. We fished at Doctors Pass-accessible only by jeep since there were no roads-and then had fish fries on the beach. There was no leash law, and dogs ran free on the sand.

No one had ever heard the word "condominium," and the beachfront beyond the Beach Club Hotel was unfettered by a single building, road or access. Deer, bears, panthers and other wildlife thrived in the woods and were fair game for the many hunters in Naples.

The Pier was the center of social life in Naples. The guests at the historic Naples Hotel (it opened in 1898) often took their bourbon and branch out on the pier to watch the sunset. Many of the original town folks wandered down to the Back Bay (now Crayton Cove) to watch the fishing boats come in and partake of spice cake and homemade ice cream dispensed by Mrs. Clara Tuttle and Grandma Nancy Storter.

The jail, called the Paw Paw Patch, was located on 12th Avenue South, where the city dump had once been. We had one police officer who was also the chief, Cale Jones; he also doubled as the driver of the mosquito-control truck. Shooting out clouds of repellent, the noisy contraption attempted to conquer the hordes of invaders that made our otherwise tranquil lives miserable.

Shortly after I moved to Naples, Malcolm MacDonald sent me a gift, a small gold desk clock. It remains on my desk, a talisman of my good fortune, my good friend and the best advice I was ever given.

Food columnist, editorial consultant and historian Doris Reynolds established Naples' first magazine, The Naples Guide, and is the author of Let's Talk Food and When Peacocks Were Roasted and Mullet Was Fried.