History’s keepers
When the Estero Island Historical Society opens its doors, there are more memories walking and talking in the historic cottage than could ever be recorded.
Fran Santini worked for the now-closed Franklin Lumber Company. AJ Bassett remembers when the bayside of the island was all woods. Bill Van Duzer, a former mayor, used to live just a few streets up from where Estero Boulevard ended at Flamingo Street.
The Estero Island Historical Society held its annual holiday bake sale and open house Saturday, Dec. 10, but many of the beach’s current and former residents came together for the sake of community spirit.
It’s a spirit that several of the island’s historians say they can feel slipping away as the small island they remember grows up.
Penny Brown, 74, moved to the beach in 1960, spending her high school years enrolled at Fort Myers High School – the only one at the time. She and her sister spent some time teaching at the beach elementary school, and also her husband Joel Brown attended the small school.
“I remember spaghetti dinners, the whole community coming together at the school,” she said. “Now, if you see someone you know in the grocery store, it’s rare.”
Before the island began to grow, Brown remembers a story her husband told her: he made a bet with a friend that he could sit in the middle of Estero Boulevard for a day and see one car. And he won.
Fran Santini – Santini Plaza is named after her family – said the thing that’s changed the most since she’s lived on the beach is the building. When her family moved to the island (after her sister was born on a house boat), they moved into a 1935 home. She still lives there now. But today, people are tearing down the smaller homes to build bigger, and more.
“How would you like to have a three-story building next-door that you can see and hear everything?” she said.
Santini, and others, are living records of the yester-years of Estero Island – they can remember what life was like before, when the island life was sun, sand and fishing.
A.J. Bassett, the keeper of records and histories at the cottage, remembers when only fishermen in small fish houses occupied the bayside of the island and a panther lived in the woods by the school. Estero Boulevard was a shell road and only 240 people inhabited the beach. Now, with a population in the thousands that fluctuates throughout the season, the island has changed from their memories of their childhoods.
Many of the attendees have been warriors for historic preservation on the island, from beach cottages to cultural sites such as the Mound House.
Brown said she is motivated to push for preservation to help show the younger generations what the island was like before.
“Everyone seems to go their own way, but people are important,” she said. “You have to have a sense of purpose.”
Here, they shared some of their thoughts and memories of Fort Myers Beach:
Fran Santini, 85
Fort Myers Beach
“I just love it here. It’s home.”
A.J. Bassett, 82
Fort Myers Beach
“My mother moved our family here in 1940, I was 6. We went to the beach school which was then on Sterling, and we cut a path through the roods to school.”
Bill Van Duzer, 78
North Fort Myers
“I used to go fishing at the south end before they built the bridge. One time I went down there and saw a piling out in the water. I went to the bait shop there and asked, they said they were going to build a bridge and I thought, to where?”
Ted Reckwerdt, 77
North Fort Myers
“Estero Boulevard was a shell road. We had no TV and no air conditioning and all we did was hunt at fish.”
Penny Brown, 74
Fort Myers Beach
“I remember spaghetti dinners, the whole community coming together at the school. Now, if you see someone you know in the grocery store, it’s rare.”