In 1979, my husband Vance and I landed back in my hometown. Vance was hired by Jacksonville native Arthur Milam to join his law practice. We chose to move to the beach, renting part of a Jacksonville Beach house that belonged to my childhood doctor. We walked our dog on the beach almost every day. BBQ LTD (now Skratch Kitchen) and The Homestead (now Taco Lu) on Beach Boulevard were our go-to restaurants. There was no downtown in Jacksonville Beach; “redevelopment” of the area was promoted by numerous developers, but it just didn’t get traction in those years. There was the Lifeguard Station, a wonderful restaurant called 12 North owned by dear Marie Yazbec, some mom-and-pop hotels and a funky auditorium for concerts. J. Turner Butler Boulevard opened in 1979 as a limited-access highway between the beach and town (I-95). I was on the first public transport over that highway, a media bus, and wrote an article about JTB.
This is how I came to work for the Ponte Vedra Recorder.
Looking for a job, I ran into a friend from Episcopal days. One of his family members knew Peggy Bradford, who ten years before had founded the Recorder with her friend Gretchen Carpenter. Gretchen was ill, and Peggy was struggling to handle the many aspects of the publication. Someone told Peggy about me, an energetic former local who grew up hanging around the Ponte Vedra Club and who had experience working for newspapers.
Peggy invited me for an interview. We met at her house on Rutile Drive, where a front bedroom was the Recorder’s office. I spent almost two years working with Peggy. What an opportunity it was. I interviewed, wrote, edited, created ads, laid out pages, labelled papers to subscribers and delivered them to the post office. Peggy handled the money side, including getting bank presidents, like Rip DuPont, to bring their camera-ready ad copy to the house, sometimes with payment for insertion. The St. Augustine Record, with great help from then-president Bobby Martin, later a chairman of The Players Championship, printed the paper for us. It was like Driving Miss Daisy when Peggy and I went down A1A, over the little Vilano Beach Bridge, downtown to the Record office to proofread, me at the wheel of her Mercedes and she in the back. On the way back to Ponte Vedra, we would stop at the drive-through window of the Vilano Beach liquor store for Peggy’s favorite libation. By then it was 5 p.m. … in those days, cocktail hour was real in PVB!
It was truly a labor of love working for the Recorder. Peggy and I did everything, often with help from wonderful neighbors and friends who loved Peggy and the paper that had grown to tell the stories of residents’ lives. People would deliver articles, often handwritten, to Peggy’s house – travel notes, gardening tips, names of tennis and golf champions, often with photos. Nancy Hickey was the social photographer, later joined by Peggy’s son, Tim, who eventually took over the paper.
Regular contributors who pitched in gratis were Susie Sears, Shirley Bowers and Georgia Wahl. I could count on them taking on any task. Artist Everett Draper created a masthead for the Recorder featuring his signature sea gulls. Everyone loved Peggy and loved helping. I knew a lot of people from having grown up here, but I got to know everyone through the paper and the very active Ponte Vedra Community Association, which was and continues to be the voice for unincorporated Ponte Vedra Beach.
There were fewer than 6,000 people living in Ponte Vedra Beach at the time. I would drive my MGBGT to the post office on Ponte Vedra Boulevard, at today’s Racquet Club location, leave the engine running, and go enjoy what was then the social hub of PVB. Most people had post office boxes. They would stand at the large trash cans and deposit whatever they didn’t want, while visiting with friends, planning their next get-together. Next door was “The Store” where you could buy beautiful filets wrapped in bacon. Just north on Ponte Vedra Boulevard was “The Flower Shop,” where staff from the Ponte Vedra Club (now known as the Ponte Vedra Inn and Club) would create beautiful arrangements.
The classic Ponte Vedra Boulevard home was white clapboard with green shutters. Most of those are replaced with a wide variety of styles. I remember when I started my real estate career in the mid-1980s, I listed an oceanfront home near The Club for $350,000. That house sold in the last 5 years for around $3 million.
The Recorder gave me an insider’s view of all that made Ponte Vedra Beach turn, socially, politically and economically. I’m so happy that the paper’s owners have continued Peggy’s vision, to keep the residents informed and entertained. Happy 50th Birthday to Publisher Susan Griffin and all the hard-working staff of the Ponte Vedra Recorder!
