Features

Barbara Clark and Don Hall have created a partnership as timeless as the unique finishes they create for their clients in their Vero Beach studio. Ten years ago they merged two distinctly different viewpoints into the team that has become Barbara L. Clark Architectural Finishes. Their decorative painting business has been growing steadily since it began in 1995.

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.

Some dreams really do come true. Our magnificent, expanded Center for the Arts is the product of a dream that kindled a virtual bonfire of talent and contributions. Hardly a soul in Vero Beach has not been touched in some way by the Center for the Arts.

Images of Meryl Streep in dire straits notwithstanding, kayaking is a gentle sport, providing serene access to the wildlife that teems in our backyard.

“It takes a village to raise a child,” states the popular African saying, and this is brought home very vividly in our own community by the existence of a unique organization, the Education Foundation of Indian River County.

Taking the grand tour with Alto “Bud” Adams, Jr., on his 60,000-acre ranch near Fort Pierce is a lesson in ecology, geography and history all rolled into one. In 1937, when Bud was 11, his father, Alto Adams, Sr., bought the beginnings of what would later evolve into one of Florida’s largest, privately owned cattle ranches.

Dreams start with “what if?” With vision and a lot of hard work, they grow — sometimes dramatically.

Valentine’s Day has a hodgepodge history.

At 11,200 feet, base camp is a rock pile close to a natural spring.

Early in the 20th century, unscrupulous Florida citrus growers began stamping “Indian River” on orange crates bound for northern cities — when their oranges were grown on the Gulf of Mexico.

The Turtle Creek Dairy farm in Loxahatchee is the love child of Jim Berke, a New Jersey native who learned about goat cheese in Europe and turned his appreciation for the product into a career.

No more than two out of many dozens of celebrities have been discourteous or demanding,” says Pat Bourdic, assistant general manager at Vero Beach’s Doubletree Guest Suites Resort, where she has worked since 1992. “More often than not, they’re nicer than you’d expect a regular guest to be.”

Anglo-Caribbean” barely begins to describe the Orchid Island home of Rody and Ann Sherrill, formerly of Lookout Mountain, Tennessee.

“The planet is in trouble, and the coral reef, the ocean’s most biologically diverse and sensitive ecosystem, is telling us we’re making some bad decisions,” he says.

For several days John LaRoche and his brother Daniel had sailed through an endless maze of mangroves on a southerly course down the Indian River.

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.

I love to travel, and I just happen to have a friend in the travel business.

The goal of the Samaritan Center shelter is to reduce the number of homeless families in Indian River County.

You probably didn’t know that Florida’s sweet onions can give Vidalias a real run for the money.

Week after week, they came in droves. There were bank managers and office workers, a horticulturist and a librarian, a circle of 50 friends and staff from Sea Oaks, and winter visitors from New York and Kentucky.