By Peter Ffolliott - Archived by the Boca Grande Historical Society
Ispent about a year and a half
of World War II in the windswept,
fog-bound, damp and
chilly islands of the Aleutian
Chain off Alaska with a Navy
patrol squadron. After that I was
fortunate to be assigned to a
Naval Air Station primary fightertraining
facility in Sanford, Florida.
My wifeTudie and I settled into
the new location, and one week
we were invited to visit the
parents of one of my close
school friends who lived in
Venice. The drive down there
from Sanford in July of 1943 was
an adventure.
I haven’t been to Arcadia
since the mid-1990s, but the last
time I was there, the main
street looked very much the
way it did 50 years ago. On
Highway 17 toward Punta
Gorda, you had to keep a sharp
eye out for the large number of
cattle that were lackadaisically wandering back and forth across the
road, because there were no fences. We turned north from Punta
Gorda on the last leg of the trip and, somewhere around Murdock,
Tudie turned to me and remarked, “I think we are near where Aunt
Gee (Mrs. Michael Gavin) lives in the winter, a place called Boca
Grande. ”
That was the first time I had ever heard that name, a name that
became such an important part of our lives. Our visits commenced
seven years later, in 1950, and with each succeeding year, our stay
became a little longer and we became more and more familiar with
the local folk who made Boca Grande such a distinctive and delightful
place to live.
Harry Whidden
Harry Whidden was Sam Whidden’s first cousin. He began working
at the Mercantile Grocery Store, located where the Post Office now
is, when he first came on the island. By 1950, he had gone into the
grocery business for himself in the building that came to be known as
Hudson’s. He was a meticulous man - everything had to be neat and
in order. His customers’ needs were paramount and he tried to
provide any special item anyone asked for. The most extreme expletive
I ever heard him utter was, “Oh, my goodness!”
He adhered to a backbreaking schedule during the “season,” before
the bridge to the mainland was built in 1958. Twice a week, to stock
his store, he would drive up to Tampa (“Via 301, NOT 41,” he