Today in Keys History – June 4, 2023
1921 – A.B. Solomon was arrested at Key West on a charge of grand larceny stemming from a scam he pulled at St. Augustine. There, he claimed to have invented a machine that could make gold from earth, but the device had to be fed with money before it could produce.
1924 – Key West Captain of Night Police Ivan Elwood and City Jailer Lemuel Baker were each fined $10 for fighting in the street. The officers had argued and gotten into a public fistfight over election results.
1939 – The newly built schooner Western Union was given a trial run, with Captain G.R. Steadman at the wheel. The schooner met all expectations and would soon be put into service for the repair of undersea cables.
1945 – Mrs. E.R. Lowe of the Newport area of Key Largo grew a pineapple that weighed 10 pounds and nine ounces, a reminder of the island’s commercial pineapple farming heyday decades earlier. She took it to Key West, where it was photographed at the Chamber of Commerce.
1958 – The Monroe County School Board appointed Alfredo Sands principal of Douglass High School.
1960 – The Old Island Restoration Foundation was formed to restore and maintain the traditional atmosphere and architecture peculiar to Key West. The officers named to serve to the first election were: Reta Sawyer, chairman; Ruth Holtsberg, first vice chairman; Joan T. Knight, second vice chairman; Mary L. Graham, secretary and J.J. Pinder, treasurer.
1961 – Rose Frank, a second grade teacher at the Reynolds School, was chosen as the Teacher of the Year for Florida.
1972 – At 10:30 p.m., a teenage boy stumbled onto a Key West beach with a compass and a knife but no idea of who he was or how he got there. It was estimated he had been in the water for 12 hours. After many days and national publicity, a couple in Indiana identified him as their son, Kim Basil Kadas of East Chicago. How Kadas came to be in the waters off Key West was unknown.
1978 – The Key West Business Guild was formed with the object to make the island a better place to live and a beautiful resort for tourists. Jim Camp, owner of the Island House, was elected president.
Information compiled by Tom Hambright, Historian Emeritus, and Dr. Corey Malcom, Lead Historian, Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.
Image: The cable repair schooner Western Union at anchor in Key West Bight circa 1960. Photo by Don Pinder, gift of Mike Hatt. Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.