Steamship Company, and when his work
took him to sea, the family lived in Boca
Grande. When her father had a long shore
assignment, the family moved to wherever
he was based. Helen remembers living in
Tampa and New Orleans but says she stayed
on the island for most of the 1930s and early
1940s.
Helen Betty remembered that her
grandfather, John Riley, had a house at the
corner of Banyan and Park. Next door were
the Fugates, and Ellie Fugate was her best
friend. Ellie was the daughter of Jerome and
Ida Will Ormsby Fugate and the sister of
Jerome Jr. and Delmar Fugate. Helen’s other
best friend was Dorothy Hawkins, through
whom she met her future second husband,
Dorothy’s brother Pete. Helen Betty told how
the three friends and their contemporaries
“lived in the water. We would get up each
morning and put our suits on and go down,
and we would all meet on the beach, and
then in the after- noon we would go home
and get cleaned up, get dressed and we
would go to the Community House.” She
remembered that in the spring, the school
gave a double recess, enough time to put on
bathing suits and go to the beach for a swim.
She recalled that Louise Crowninshield
started a Boy Scout mariners’ class,
explaining that this was a sailing group
with the scouts. The class had two 18-foot
Lightning-class boats, one bought by Delmar
Fugate and the other by Mrs. Crowninshield.
While the mariners were all boys, Helen
Betty remembered that the girls went along
on sails around the island, and the whole
group would picnic on Cayo Costa.
During World War II, Helen Betty manned
a tower that had been built at the Boca
Grande Hotel, and later one across from the
hotel on the beach. She had one shift a week
from after school until dinner time, during
which she watched for submarines and other
boats and phoned in any sightings. She
told that one evening when with a group of
friends at the beach near today’s Gasparilla
Inn Beach Club, they saw “these red lights
coming up way off in a distance, so we ran
down and reported it. I don’t know what it
was, whether it was ships needing help or
whether it was submarines or what. But we
got some help.”
Helen Betty also remembers that women
helped the fi re department fi ght brush fi res
in the 1940s, when many of the local men
were at war. She even learned to drive the
fi re truck.
Helen Betty did not fi nish her schooling at
the Boca Grande School, as the family joined
her father in New Orleans, and she fi nished
school there. Later she married Vincent
Moore of New Jersey and had four children:
Iliene (Corcoran), Diana, Douglas and Brian.
Helen’s grandsons, Brian and John Corcoran,
are island realtors.
After her fi rst husband Vincent died, Helen
Betty married Pete Hawkins. She told the
Boca Beacon that she met Pete in the third
grade and attended the school prom with
him. Pete left the island in 1942, moving
to Orlando. He fi nished school there and
then joined the Coast Guard. After the war,
he attended Georgia Tech and became an
engineer.
Mrs. Mary Gross Riley standing
outside her home.