Author: John Parkyn

She comes to Windsor whenever she can spare time from her schedule as the wife of Canadian billionaire Galen Weston, the mother of two children with four grandchildren, and a professional life that includes well-documented skills in business management and philanthropy.

Back in the ’60s, the songs of the Beach Boys said it all.

… Viewed from the perspective of 1998, it sounds crazy, but 50 years ago Vero was a remote little town of 3,000 people, and developers were not exactly beating at the door.

It was St. Edward’s School that clinched Barbara and Tom Matesic’s decision to make Vero Beach their new home.

A series of car accidents convinced Pamela Tan it was time to move to Florida.

It was water that brought Cheryl and Ken Hebert to Florida — the kind you drink. Ken, a wide receiver for the Pittsburgh Steelers back in the ’60s, now works in the water-utilities industry and had taken a job with a subsidiary of Culligan Water as vice president for sales in the Fort Pierce regional office.

Nancy and Dick Mercer bought their first home in Vero Beach because they were tired of the rain.

There are more than 150 lawyers in Vero Beach, but few have led a life as enthralling as a tall, blonde attorney named Lynne Larkin.

The first time Walter Brightwell saw the ocean he was 22 years old and had just arrived in Florida to visit a friend in Palm Beach.

If there’s one thing Vero’s real estate brokers agree on, it’s that 1998 was a year for the history books.

John K. Moore, the man from Detroit who would become one of Vero Beach’s most influential bankers, might never have become a banker at all if his father hadn’t suffered a severe attack of island fever.

Sporting vacations have played an important role in Nicky Szapary’s life. Ten years ago, on the ski slopes of the French Alps, he met a tall, beautiful girl from Argentina named Stephanie Auersperg-Breunner. They were instantly attracted and married a year later.

It's not easy to create a house that stands out in a community as superbly designed as Windsor, but that is just what Hugh Newell Jacobsen has done.

Sprinkled along the 24 miles of Intracoastal Waterway that flow through Indian River County are 55 “spoil” islands – more than in any other county on the Treasure Coast. As anyone who knows the Indian River Lagoon will tell you, they are among the prettiest and most diversely populated islands anywhere on the 156-mile waterway. They are also the most controversial.

For 30 years, Eve Johnston Siebert kept her secret. A founding member of the Vero Beach Theatre Guild, she impressed everyone with her enthusiasm for backstage work and at various times served as stage manager, costume designer and wardrobe mistress.

The great day has come and gone. Somehow we’ve all survived Y2K and the Chicken Little crackpots, and we can rest easy for another thousand years.

Sometimes, when Walter Rowan gazes down from the bridge of the sleek, 154-foot Roxana, he still wonders how a young necktie salesman could have ended up as the captain of one of the most luxurious yachts ever built.