To say that Jim Blaha has been hard at work at the Boca Grande History Center is an
understatement. While the center has been closed to walk-in visitors, due to COVID
concerns, the fi rst vice president of the organization has been diligently devoting his
time to many archival projects including putting together numerous tomes of Boca Grande
history, combining information into well-thought-out volumes of Gasparilla Island and Boca
Grande history.
Blaha calls these archival books “onsite data entry research notebooks,” but, as he said,
it’s more or less a fancy name for fi les brought together in one place, so someone could do
research on any selected topic.
The project, Blaha said, is something he has been working on for over a year.
There are currently 30 volumes that include information on the Boca Grande Community
Plan, the railroad, ships and phosphate, Boca Grande’s black experience, Joseph Spadaro,
the business community, World War II, hurricanes, the “Gibson Papers” (written by Charles
Dana Gibson) and supplements to the exhibit “Once a Railroad Town.”
March/April • 2021 • GASPARILLA MAGAZINE 27