More Local news

• South Florida Watershed Journal: Land of no seasons
• Naples residents establish endowment fund at FGCU
• Island community loses a father, fisherman

Tell us about it

• What would you add to this story? Tell us what we missed.
• Do you have photos from this event? Documents we need to see? Share with us.
• Upload photos & videos
• More ways to get your stuff online and in the paper.

STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• iPod friendly
• Printer friendly

Share and Enjoy [?]

NAPLES — To those in Naples prior to Sept. 10, 1960, before Hurricane Donna swept through, the world was a different place.

The town was smaller, the water tasted a little different and everyone knew each other.

On Sunday, several hundred people were transported back to that time, suddenly surrounded by faces familiar since the first grade and familiar since Donna finished her whirling, maniacal path through the heart of Naples.

“Everyone that was alive then remembers that day,” said Ray Carroll, one of the organizers of the 2008 “Old Timers” Reunion, hosted by the Naples Beach Hotel and Golf Club on Sunday.

“It may be the one day we all remember clearly. It was frightening. There hasn’t been another one like it since then, thank God.”

The place changed after Hurricane Donna, said Carroll, whose ancestors settled here in 1895. In some ways, it was for the better.

The area had languished for a while before Donna came through, but after the disaster wrought by the Category 4 storm, Naples was suddenly was on the national consciousness, Carroll said. It was no longer an indistinct place name, but an actual location on a map at one of the far corners of the country.

Then again, the changes after the storm took its own distinct toll.

“It’s just not the same place,” said Gail Tuttle, who moved to Naples in 1955 at the age of 15. “It’s unbelievable to me, because I go down Fifth Avenue and it’s just not the same Naples.”

Her family owned one of the first and only dress shops on Fifth Avenue South. She and her husband, John, her high school sweetheart, still live in the house they moved into nearly 50 years ago.

But while the buildings may be changing and more faces moving in, Tuttle has taken comfort in the things around her that stay the same. She still meets with a group of ladies each month who attended Naples High School at the same time.

Then there is the Old Timers Reunion. It began 20 years ago, in the backyard of one of its organizers.

Thelma Hodges, 80, leafs through a photo album from the early years of the reunion. One hundred people attended the first, held in 1988. The next year, her own backyard hosted more than 250 people.

The following year, it had to be discontinued. It was too popular, and parking was a major problem.

Soon after, the Naples Beach Hotel and Gold Club took the torch, “because they were old timers too,” Hodges said.

Sunday’s event is the best — and often only — opportunity for many old-school Neapolitans to see each other. These days, Hodges said, the only rival events for get-togethers are funerals.

Some have moved away, others are less mobile than in the old days and the place has just gotten so big, they say.

“It was a small town,” said Gavin Storter, 69. “Everybody knew everybody.”

His great-grandfather moved to Everglades City in 1896. He moved away in 1960 for 20 years before coming back to retire. He moved away again in 2000, eventually settling in Inverness. He and his wife return, faithfully, every October for the reunion.

As part of the 20th anniversary for the event, the attendees gathered for a group photo outside the meeting rooms of the golf club. They intended to take the photo beneath one of the city’s oldest banyan trees on Saturday, but a stubborn rainstorm (some small reminder of Donna?) nixed those plans.

City Councilwoman Penny Taylor obliged the group by climbing atop a ladder with a camera, shouting instructions to those hidden behind palm fronds and coiffed up-dos. She counted down from 30 before snapping a few shots and dismissing them like a class to recess. They seemed to be having just as much fun and feeling just as rowdy.

It is the first year the group has been captured in a single photo.

“Time is marching on, and I hope they do it every year,” said Taylor. “They need to, because it’s important. These are the pioneers of our community. They’re here and we need to hear from them.”