Princeton, Indiana, my birthplace will forever be home to me. I have deep roots there dating back to pioneer times, 1811. I grew up in Indianapolis until the age of 17 and that city also feels like home to me. But from a very early age, Florida has had a special hold on me.
My first time in the Sunshine State I can only recall from faint memories and family photos. My parents took my sister and I to the new Walt Disney World in Central Florida for Christmas 1971. We stayed in the Contemporary Hotel and I found the space-age monorail going right through the heart of that concrete and glass building an absolute marvel! I was only three years old at the time.
I believe we went from there to visit my Dad’s oldest sister, Pat Kern, and her family who had just moved to Miramar, Florida. Uncle John took a teaching position at Miami-Dade Community College upon his departure from the news media in Indiana. It was my first beach experience and seeing the massive Atlantic Ocean.
It was just a couple of years later that my Dad’s parents retired to South Florida from Princeton, IN. We visited them once in Lake Worth before they died, at least I have photo evidence that we did. My Doyle grandparents lived in a trailer park with shuffleboard courts for four years before death visited them in March 1977. Grandma and Grandpa Doyle died within days of each other and were buried in Lake Worth’s Catholic Cemetery very near the edge of town and the Everglades.
Mom had an oldest brother, David, who also became a Floridian in the early 1970’s. He sold insurance for Prudential and left Princeton for New Port Richey after adopting my cousin Shawn. That period of my life from being a mere toddler to a kindergartener was full of upheaval. In a matter of two years, my Godmother Aunt Pat, my grandparents and my Uncle David all left our small town in Southwest Indiana for Sunny Florida. Following that, in ‘74, we made the move to Indy.
By the time I reached junior high in 1980, my family was vacationing in Destin in Florida’s Panhandle. We loved the pristine sand dunes, soft powdery white sands and emerald waters. It wasn’t as populated or developed back then. My parents fell in love with the area and moved their vacation spot to the Seaside Villas in Panama City Beach for the next three decades. Like I would later become, my Mom was a certified beach bum!
The mid-1980’s would find my immediate family in Florida, too. Making good on a promise to my Mom, Dad took a transfer to Florida with his job as soon as it became available. So a week after I graduated high school, we all moved to Tallahassee. That began my 26 years in the Capital City of the Sunshine State and 30 in Florida, including Fort Myers Beach.
I found FMB only because another one of Dad’s sisters had purchased a winter home here on Bay Beach Lane. I caught the beach bug in 2011 and after a brutal winter in Indiana moved here that summer. My time here with my wife and kids 2011-12, then on my own as a recent divorcee until February 2014, is when I fell in love with this island!
You can ask my daughters. From the time I moved back to Tallahassee in ‘14, they always knew I’d find my way back here. After my youngest graduated in May 2023, I did just that. Coming back to a hurricane ravaged coast had its downsides but I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else! FMB is my home…and my happy place.
But while riding out the outer bands of Hurricane Idalia into the early morning hours, I considered for the first time how early my connection to Florida began. I remembered Aunt Pat and Uncle David moving here first and then my grandparents. Those early trips to Miramar and New Port Richey, trips on David’s boat out to a private key and all subsequent beach visits gave me a real love for being near the water.
I guess my connection to this state runs pretty deep, too. Regardless of Andrew, Micheal or Ian, all major hurricanes that impacted me in some way or another, I’ll never leave this place again…my happy place!
