Volume 2 . Issue 5
May 2009
Delivered free each month to the residents of Hypoluxo Island, Manalapan, Ocean Ridge, Briny Breezes, Gulf Stream and Coastal Delray Beach
Michael Bornstein portrays a barefoot mailman of the late 1800s during a re-enactment that took him from Lake Worth to Lantana. Photo by Jerry Lower
Celebrating our History
Taking a stroll along barefoot mailman’s route
By Emily J. Minor
The original barefoot mailman probably didn’t have a microphone headset or bottled water or a blue shirt from Macy’s. And he probably didn’t meet up at the Ritz-Carlton after his route, sitting with the folks who are celebrating
Palm Beach County’s centennial at pretty tables set up to catch the perfect afternoon breeze. But Michael Bornstein is Michael Bornstein — meaning he is a Florida history buff who is extremely ingenious, to put it nicely, and he knows how to make weird things work.
“So many people are from other places, they might not realize that Florida has a history beyond when air conditioning was used,” he says. That’s why one recent Sunday, the clouds casting just enough cover, the locals sidling up to him like eager school kids, Bornstein
Manalapan
There are people you like and people you love. And then there are people like Manalapan Police Chief Clay Walker — the kind you’d pretty much like to clone. “He’s not just doing this because it’s the law,” said Joan Gindlesperger, who 25 years ago started the Deaf Service Center of Palm Beach County. “He’s doing this because he cares.”
Inside Gee, Mom, thanks a brunch! Local restaurants help you treat your mother like a queen on her special day. Page 18
Walker, a Clewiston boy and fourth-generation Floridian, recently sat at a nice luncheon and accepted a nice plaque from the Deaf Service Center. For years, he’s helped working police officers throughout Florida understand the nuances and challenges, complexities and struggles of being deaf or hard of hearing. And while the plaque is lovely — indeed, it’s the only one in his office that says “I
See CHIEF on page 4
barefoot mailmen of the late 1800s — give or take a few condominiums, a few more people, a few new roads. Bornstein, born in Jacksonville, says he fell in love with this idea after moving to Palm Beach County in the late 1980s, helping to organize the See MAILMAN on page 6
Along the Coast
Police chief honored for deaf-services efforts By Emily J. Minor
walked a 2-mile stretch of beach in his barefoot mailman getup, yakking all the way. In years past, Bornstein — Lantana’s town manager — has walked the stretch from Lake Worth to Miami along the beach. That’s about one-half of the roundtrip route done by the
End of sewage’s oceanward trek took activism, work and money By Thomas R. Collins
Elinor Eastman and Manalapan Police Chief Clay Walker. Photo by Jerry Lower
It ended simply: Somebody turned a valve and presto, no more greenish-brown plume of water gushing from the South Central Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant into the ocean a mile off the Delray Beach coast. Instead, that water was redirected deep, deep underground.
Getting to that point, though, took three years of work, $17 million, and came only after a staredown between plant officials and environmentalists, especially from Palm Beach Reef Rescue, who decried the effects of the treated sewage on coral reefs, mainly algae blooms but other maladies, such as
See SEWAGE on page 6
Intracoastal traffic:
Residents can have their voices heard in the controversy over boat speeds along the waterway. Page 9 Obituaries, Page 31
House of the Month
At this Delray Beach estate, it’s all about the view. Page 34