For Sale —American Paradise

F
OR
S
ALE
—A
MERICAN
P
ARADISE

How Our Nation Was Sold an Impossible Dream in Florida

W
ILLIE
D
RYE

Guilford, Connecticut

An imprint of Rowman & Littlefield

Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK

Copyright © 2016 by Willie Drye

All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or
mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission
from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available

ISBN 978-0-7627-9468-3 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4930-1899-4 (e-book)

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National
Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

To the memory of two dear friends

Chapter One: An Old Man's Memories

Chapter Two: Railroad to Dreamland

Chapter Three: Dreamers and Thieves

Chapter Four: Leave Your Brain at Home

Chapter Five: The Stars Shine Brightest in Florida

Chapter Six: The Bootlegger's Curse

Chapter Seven: “Many Die; Cities Razed”

Chapter Eight: Spinning the Tempest

Chapter Nine: Hope from the Swamp

Chapter Ten: Mr. Brown in Paradise

Chapter Eleven: Blown Away

Chapter Twelve: Dreamland After All

 

Acknowledgments

A Note about Sources

Notes

CHAPTER ONE

O
N
T
UESDAY
, M
ARCH
18, 1986, E
DWIN
A. M
ENNINGER WAS THE RELUCTANT
guest of honor at his ninetieth birthday party, thrown by the chamber of commerce in Stuart, Florida.

“I tried to talk them out of it,” Menninger told a
Miami Herald
reporter a few days earlier. “But they decided I needed a party, so I guess we'll have one.”

More than one hundred guests showed up. Menninger, frail and going blind, wore a pink camellia pinned to his lapel and a garland of purple azaleas draped around his neck. He seated himself in a rattan chair and took in the festivities like an aged, decorated chieftain being honored by his tropical tribe.

“My, there's quite a gang of people here, isn't there?” Menninger murmured softly. When some of the guests wished him “Happy birthday,” a mischievous grin flashed across his face.

“Merry Christmas!” he responded impishly.

Despite the old man's gentle irascibility, the guests made it clear that they adored him. The mayor said a new park would be named in his honor. One of the guests rose to speak about Menninger's long and productive life.

As Menninger listened to the tribute, the Florida that he had played a small part in creating hummed with activity that held the attention of people around the world. Wealthy snowbirds who'd fled the frigid Northeast several months earlier were enjoying their oceanfront homes at Palm Beach or Jupiter Island or Ocean Reef, or they were cruising aboard their yachts in the Keys or off Sanibel Island. Others were basking in the sunshine at small stadiums throughout the state as they watched Major League baseball players get ready for the upcoming season.

In Port St. Lucie, Port Charlotte, and other rapidly growing retirement towns, retirees of more modest means were relaxing in their 2,000-square-foot homes on 10,000-square-foot lots, chatting on the phone with their grandkids back home in freezing places like Pittsburgh and Perth Amboy.

In Orlando, thousands of excited families from all over the world were enjoying the squeaky-
clean fantasies at Walt Disney World. And in Miami Beach,
beautiful people and their entourages from Milan and Barcelona and other centers of European style were displaying themselves at trendy cafes and nightclubs on Ocean Drive.

A few days before Menninger's birthday party, millions of Americans had watched the latest irony-laden episode of
Miami Vice
, a trend-setting TV show in which stylish cops fought a ceaseless battle against fiendish and even more stylish criminals. Men across the country were cultivating the three-day stubble constantly sported by the show's hero, vice cop Sonny Crockett. And they were copying Crockett's fashionable South Florida wardrobe—linen slacks, loafers with no socks, and pale pastel-
color T-shirts worn under expensive, unstructured Italian sports jackets. The look was becoming so popular that Macy's department stores would soon open a
Miami Vice
section in its men's clothing departments.

The show's set designers were making stars of Miami and Miami Beach. Every week, Miami's flashy skyline, South Beach's Art Deco architecture, and the cities' gritty tropical streetscapes were captivating the show's huge audience.

But Edwin Menninger, who had once been a driving force in South Florida's evolution from a swampy frontier to America's winter playground, could no longer participate in what he'd helped set in motion. Now, all he could do was listen to the accolades of an admiring speaker.

“Ed, we love you,” the speaker said in conclusion. The other guests stood and applauded.

As the crowd sang “Happy Birthday,” Menninger struggled gamely to his feet and raised his right arm in acknowledgment. He seldom allowed his left arm—mangled in a long-ago accident in a college chemistry lab—to be displayed.

Moments such as this stir the emotions and sometimes prompt old memories to come swirling into our thoughts. As Menninger looked around the room at the applauding crowd, he might have remembered a moment more than sixty years earlier when he'd been part of another festive crowd that was applauding a great man of that era.

It was a breezy day in late June 1925, and Menninger, twenty-nine years old, was among a gathering of about four thousand people who had assembled in Pocahontas Park in Vero Beach. The wind off the ocean made the early summer heat bearable and fanned the tantalizing aroma of barbecue over the gathering, which had assembled to celebrate the creation of Indian River County.

William Jennings Bryan probably caught a whiff of the sizzling beef and pork as he rose from his seat and walked ponderously across a wooden platform that overlooked the throng. His substantial bulk underscored his well-
known fondness for such simple food. As the acerbic journalist H. L. Mencken had noted, Bryan “liked the heavy, greasy victuals of the farmhouse kitchen.”

Bryan—a three-time candidate for president of the United States and one of the great orators in American history—approached the railing at the edge of
the platform. This was the day's main event, a moment to tell one's grandchildren about, and the people sharpened their focus and prepared to absorb Bryan's every word.

They had been listening politely all morning to local politicians congratulate themselves for the vision and brilliance they'd displayed in persuading the state legislature in distant Tallahassee to approve the creation of the new county, which would officially come into existence at midnight, with Vero Beach as the seat. They'd heard local business boosters predict well-deserved prosperity for the good residents, and they'd heard the politicians vow to enact new programs to guarantee that prosperity.