The Boca Banner: Building a Better Community Together

By Linda Fudala-Tucker

Time to put away the fishing poles and Playstations. School starts Monday for Lee County and Wednesday for Charlotte County.

The Island School with 36 students enrolled this year and 10 on a waiting list, is up from its 24-student enrollment from last year, said Ori Boyum, kindergarten teacher.

"The Boca Bargains trailer will now be the kindergarten classroom," said Boyum. "Out of the 36 students, I think the kindergarten class will be the largest. I'm looking forward to a great year."

All of the teachers at the school hold master's degrees. School director, Beverly Sutton, has over 35 years of teaching experience. In addition, seasonal volunteers such as Dodie Headington provide instruction in topics such as art history complete with tours of the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota.

Students, parents and teachers are hoping to be in a new 8,000 sq. ft. facility by the 2007-2008 school year.

The 2004 hurricane season pushed the building plan back as well as raised the price for building contractors and supplies, said Daniel Cruz, Lee County construction manager for the project that was submitted to his department on Feb. 1.

“We're still in the bidding phase," said Cruz. "With the storms last year there's been a lot of pressure on contractors, but we should be able to start by August of next year according to plan."

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(Printed Edition)

Index...

Back to school................pg 3
(Printed Edition)

GIWA notice..................pg 4
(Printed Edition)

EPA ruling.......................pg 6

Babcock...........................pg 7

EARS...............................pg 8
(Printed Edition)

Kayak Kamp...................pg 9

Theatre at the Asolo....pg13

Fountain.......................pg 14

Kamp photos................pg 19

Babcock photos...........pg 20

Up and Running . . . Again

The Boca Banner is on the internet. There are new links to weather and tide charts. Current news and photos. Links to Boca Grande's Real Estate leaders. Keep watching the site grow.

Its www.thebocabanner.com . The redesigned site is maintained by JD Web Design. of Port Charlotte Florida

By Jim Tucker

Serendipity Lane, Boca Grande -- Poet Don Blanding is just one of the hundreds who have "fished the Pass" every year for over a hundred years. He probably came here directly from his desk at the Fort Pierce News- Tribune to hunt tarpon with long time local guide Harold Wilhelm. Evidently Wilhelm helped him find them because Blanding kept coming back to Boca Grande to fish.

Blanding's personal history is filled with seemingly random decisions, fortuitous meetings and chance opportunities. It is human nature to turn away from chance and opportunity as too risky. Blanding capitalized on his.

He may have inherited that trait. His father had an adventurous spirit and took his legal training to the Cherokee strip in the Oklahoma territory, scene of the most competitive real estate market in history: The Oklahoma Land Rush -- an actual stampede of hopeful settlers racing in wagons and on horseback to reach their promised land before anyone could beat them to it. Free sections of land were given on

a first come, first served basis in September of 1893.

Donald Benson Blanding was born November 7, 1894, in that territory and grew up in a land still dominated by wild west standards of law and order. His father became the first "Police Judge" of the territory. That job title would not pass politically correctness tests today.

After high school young Don left for "back East" - Chicago. He was accepted at the Art Institute where he paid for his own studies by working as both an art teacher and theater usher. Ushering led to his friendship with future literary notables Sherwood Anderson, Ben Hecht, Maxwell Bodenheim and Floyd Dell.

To list Blanding's friends and acquaintances is like spilling out a namedropper's cornucopia. From Wallace Beery to Sally Rand his address book reads like a Who's Who of American Culture. His artwork led him to illustrate Sara Teadale's "Scarf of Stars" and his youthful courage helped him

save the life of "The Little Girl Across the Street" who was Lucille Fay LeSueur as a child but Joan Crawford as an adult. It was Don who carried a badly injured "Billie," as she preferred, to safety and called for medical help.

He was headed back to Oklahoma after his Chicago art studies when he stopped in Kansas City and, by pure chance, happened to see a new theatrical performance of "The Birds of Paradise." The play is set in Hawaii and Blanding

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