Wednesday
November 12, 6 PM

Best known for the Belleview Biltmore Hotel, Belleair has long been
one of Pinellas’ most historic locations. Yet, aside from the hotel’s
role in developing the Pinellas peninsula, little is known about the
community that grew up around it. From Presidential retreats to air
shows, spring training, polar explorers and ghost tales, this lecture
will bring the forgotten stories of Belleair out of obscurity and back
into our community’s modern memory in honor of the town’s centennial.
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Admission for our WacKy TALES WEDNESDaY is FREE. Donations are cheerfully accepted!

PLUS, munch on yummy refreshments, compliments of The Parri Law Farm and Palm Harbor Trader Joe’s.

Wednesday
October 8, 6 PM

Arminda will be demonstrating the impact of the various groups on Ybor- the Spanish, Cubans, Sicilians, German, & Jewish immigrants- who came to work. The community thrived with multi-ethnic enclaves supported by civic organizations and businesses catering to the unique needs of its residents, becoming a thriving center for culture and commerce.
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Admission for our WacKy TALES WEDNESDaY is FREE. Donations are cheerfully accepted!

Sponsored by The Parri Law Firm who will be treating us to yummy refreshments!

1 January 1914: The world’s first scheduled commercial passenger flight took place when Antony Habersack Jannus piloted a Benoist XIV Air Boat, a small biplane, from St. Petersburg to Tampa, Florida. The passenger was St. Petersburg’s mayor, Abraham C. Pheil. Over 3,000 people witnessed the departure.

Before 1914, a horse and buggy or automobile trip between St. Petersburg and Tampa took several hours over rutted, unpaved roads. Trains and steamships made the trip in no less than three hours.

Jannus flew 50 feet over the water at speeds up to 75 mph. Only twenty-three minutes after lifting off across the bay, the airboat landed in the Hillsborough River in downtown Tampa to the cheers of 1,500 spectators.
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Admission for our WaCKy TALES WEDNESDaY is FREE. Donations are cheerfully accepted!

Sponsored by The Parri Law Firm who will be treating us to a yummy light supper!

From the stone forts at St. Augustine, to the Everglades or “The Big Swamp,” Jeff & Mike offer a stunning portrait of the history of our one-of-a-kind state.
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Admission for our WaCKy TALES WEDNESDaY is FREE. Donations are cheerfully accepted!

Sponsored by The Parri Law Firm who will be treating us to a yummy light supper!

Liz Childress
Weedon Island Preserve Cultural and Natural History Center
Learn about the buzzes, chirps, and clicks heard in the west-central Florida landscape, who makes them and why. Attendees may even get a chance to “stridulate” (make a shrill sound by rubbing the legs, wings, or other parts of the body together) like a singing cricket!
PLUS, munch on our yummy cookies!
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Admission for our WaCKy TALES WEDNESDaY is FREE. Donations are cheerfully accepted!

Sponsored by The Parri Law Firm who will be treating us to a yummy light supper!

Myrtle Scharrer Betz was a born storyteller. Her tale begins, when her father, Henry Scharrer, a native of Switzerland who came to America in the early 1890s as a adventuresome young man, sailed Caledesi Island during stormy weather. He stayed the next forty-four years. He improved the land, married, and applied for a homestead. In February 1895, he celebrated the birth of a daughter and named her after the wax myrtle trees that surrounded his remote home.

Myrtle’s account of growing up, motherless, on Caladesi Island, is one of the richest portraits available of long ago life in Florida when it truly was a natural, tropical paradise. Terry Fortner, Myrtle’s granddaughter brings her story to life through captivating photos and the recounting of adventures of the only child ever born on Caladesi Island,.

Meet Terry and purchase “Yesteryear I Lived in Paradise” and “Caladesi Cookbook.”
Book signing following program.

Enjoy our yummy, nutritious snacks.
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Admission for our WaCKy TALES WEDNESDaY is FREE. Donations are cheerfully accepted