February 2021
Serving Highland Beach and Coastal Boca Raton
Volume 14 Issue 2
Along the Coast
Boca Raton
Recalling an earlier
vaccine rollout
Participants’ stories of 1964 polio preventive show parallels to COVID-19
Pandemic cripples fundraising; no reopening date set By Larry Keller
By Joyce Reingold Walter and Jean Dutch left New York in 1946 to settle in Briny Breezes with their two young children, Karen and Wayne. Karen Dutch Steinke was just 6 months old then, but she would later learn that on the trip south, her parents bypassed an area of the country where they had heard poliomyelitis was present. In the 1940s, polio outbreaks Children receive oral polio vaccinations at the Boynton Beach Jaycees program in 1965. were becoming more frequent, Photos provided by Boynton Beach City Library History Archives and millions of parents like the Dutches became fierce sentinels protecting vulnerable children from the highly contagious virus that too often resulted in muscle weakness, paralysis and sometimes death. In summer, when cases of the virus spiked, parents kept children indoors. Families social-distanced, selfisolated and quarantined. The virus is transmitted through contact with fecal matter or via droplets from coughs or sneezes. But then, there were many theories — perhaps flies, car exhaust or Inside even cats were to blame. In the South County residents absence of scientific evidence, scramble for COVID-19 fear festered. Boynton Beach Jaycees during a ‘Let’s lick polio!’ push vaccines. Page 12 See VACCINE on page 10 that included three Sabin Oral Sunday doses in 1964. Thieves targeted unlocked cars that had keys or key fobs left inside. The Coastal Star
Gumbo Limbo short $900,000
While other nature-themed attractions that shut their doors to the public last year because of COVID-19 soon reopened, Gumbo Limbo Nature Center remains mostly closed for pandemic reasons, with no scheduled reopening date and its fundraising auxiliary hurting financially. “Funding is urgently needed,” Sheila Reinken, treasurer of the nonprofit Friends of Gumbo Limbo, wrote in a recent newsletter. “The effects of this crisis on Gumbo Limbo Nature Center are becoming more and more challenging each day. For the first time in 36 years, we face a $900,000 shortfall in funding.” Among other things, the nonprofit runs the nature center’s gift shop, collects voluntary admissions, underwrites its website, pays for veterinary care, has picked up the tab for GPS equipment for sea turtle research and provides scholarships to graduate students. It also organizes fundraisers such as a 10K run and Gumbo Fest. The nonprofit had total revenues of $1.5 million in fiscal 2018 and expenses of See GUMBO on page 26
Along the Coast
Thieves drive off in style from coastal homes By Larry Barszewski Stealing luxury is easier than you might think when it comes to cars in South Palm Beach County’s coastal communities. While the U.S. top-10 list of stolen vehicles includes a number of Hondas, PRSRT STD US POSTAGE PAID WEST PALM BCH FL PERMIT NO 4595
Toyotas and pickup trucks, most of the 11 cars ripped off in Gulf Stream last year had more panache: three Porsches, two Land Rovers, two Mercedes-Benzes, two BMWs, an Audi and a Dodge (a rental, of course). Thieves found 10 of them unlocked with the keys or key fobs inside.
Delivery of this month’s edition is sponsored by our friends at
Valentine’s Day Football great Howard Schnellenberger and his wife, Beverlee, share six decades of love letters. Page AT1
The seven cars taken in Ocean Ridge in 2020 were also left unlocked with the key/key fobs inside. It was the same story in Highland Beach, where a Mercedes and a Cadillac were stolen, and for the lone auto theft in See THEFTS on page 16
Secret Garden Couple cultivates roses. Page AT17
‘Glasstress’ at Boca Museum. Page AT9