June 2017
Volume 10 Issue 6
Serving Highland Beach and Coastal Boca Raton
Boca’s hospital turns 50
How a tragedy sparked the move to build what is now Boca Raton Regional Hospital
LEFT: Boca Raton Regional Hospital today. BELOW: Gloria Drummond at the 1965 groundbreaking for the hospital.
Along the Coast
Property values rise to pre-crash levels By Mary Hladky
By Sallie James The horrific poisoning deaths of two children and the absence of a local medical center became the impetus for the “Miracle on Meadows Road.” Boca Raton Regional Hospital sprang from the dreams of a grieving mother and the close-knit community that rallied to her side. As the sprawling 400-bed hospital celebrates its 50th birthday this year, the
volunteers, physicians and staff recall the facility’s humble beginnings and how it grew into a community bedrock. “The hospital rose out of tragedy. The town was small and the thing that was particularly impressive to me was how supportive all the people were of the effort to build a hospital,” recalled Dr. A.J. Peterson, 86, one of the first doctors on See HOSPITAL on page 15
Ten years after housing prices began cratering in the Great Recession, taxable property values in Palm Beach County have zoomed past their previous record high set in 2007. While the previous peak was $169.4 billion before the housing bubble burst, taxable values countywide jumped 7.1 percent to $176.5 billion last year, according to estimates released May 26 by Property Appraiser Dorothy Jacks. This is the fifth year in a row that values have surged, although once double-digit growth has slowed in recent years. But increases in the county and municipalities remain generally within the 6-8 percent growth rate considered healthy before the real estate crash. Taken together, city increases averaged 8.81 percent. “This (7.1 percent) is a good number as far as healthy growth, but not too heated growth,” Jacks said. The recovery in home prices and the completion of large construction projects countywide that are now on the tax rolls have spurred year-over-year gains, she said. “New construction continues See TAX on page 19
Along the Coast
Life lessons from city’s most senior citizen By Ron Hayes
Eula Mae Johnson has reached that awkward age where family members no longer put one candle on the cake for every year. The Delray Beach fire department would no doubt be relieved, because Eula Mae Johnson and Palm Beach County were born in the same year. On April 30, 1909, the county was officially created out of the northern chunk of Dade County. Johnson arrived on Aug. 6, 1909, in Bartow, Georgia.
In 1923, when Delray Beach was incorporated, she was already 14. In 1935, when she arrived in Boca Raton to pick beans on Butts Farm, she was 26. Boca Raton was just turning 10. By the 1940s, she’d moved to Pearl City, Boca Raton’s black neighborhood. “She probably is the oldest person living today in Delray Beach,” Janet DeVries, an archivist, historian and author, concluded after searching the city’s census and marriage records. See JOHNSON on page 22
A photograph shows 107-year-old Eula Mae Johnson of Delray Beach as a young woman. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
Inside Every Dad has his day
Celebrate that special man this Father’s Day. Page AT1
Dreamboat Annie
Heart’s Ann Wilson makes solo stops in South Florida. Page AT7
Downtown’s Mizner 200 moves on to City Council. Page 4 Construction overrun costs soar at playground. Page 11
Cultivating Delray
Community Greening project plants fruit trees. Page H1