To Sam, Love Dad

Twenty nine years ago today I became a father for the first time.

I was 25, working for the local newspaper and had recently bought my first home—a townhouse on Barwick Road for $69,000 with a few upgrades. Different days indeed….

George H.W. Bush was president, Michael Dukakis spent his winters in Delray and locally Tom Lynch was running for mayor in a hotly contested three-way race as part of a loose slate with Jay Alperin and David Randolph.

January 1990 was an interesting time in Delray. The late 80s were a volatile era with lots of intrigue on the commission and turnover at City Hall but by 1990 the city had a few blueprints on which to draw inspiration and hope.

Visions 2000 led to a $20 million plus bond issue that would pay for all sorts of improvements downtown. A city once split between east and west of 95 came together to vote overwhelmingly on a plan to beautify the downtown and replace crumbling infrastructure.

The city had also adopted an ambitious plan to improve local schools called “Sharing for Excellence” and community oriented policing was beginning to take root and build trust in neighborhoods beset by crime and drugs.

Professionally, I was excited to write about it all. I was living my dream of being a reporter.

Personally, I was thrilled and a little bit scared about becoming a father.

Secretly—for some reason—I wanted a girl and I was granted my wish when Samantha Arielle was born at West Boca Medical Center with Jimmy Buffett music playing in the birthing suite. I high fived the doctor and the nurses—it was a surreal feeling. She was a beautiful baby—happy, healthy with big brown eyes. When we brought her home she was greeted by a big golden retriever named Magnum (after the TV detective). She’s loved dogs ever since.

Today, Sam is a beautiful woman. Still happy. Still healthy (thankfully) and still with big brown eyes.

She grew up in an evolving Delray—going to pre-school at Little Friends with the legendary Mrs. Echols, attending Poinciana Math, Science and Technology’s magnet in Boynton Beach, Trinity School for her middle school years and Atlantic High School for the perilous high school years—which thanks to her goodness weren’t so perilous after all.

After graduating from USF, she taught ESE for two years in Tampa before leaving this fall for Cary, North Carolina to continue her career working with exceptional students.

We miss her. I miss her.

It seems like a blur….decades fly by. Babies grow up. The new townhouse we were so excited about seems like a lifetime ago.

Tom Lynch would be elected in March 1990 and would spend six years as our mayor. He was as good a local mayor as I’ve ever seen and a role model for when I got elected a decade later. I never dreamed that would ever happen as I sat in the back row with Darcie Lunsford of the old Boca News covering the issues of the day.

These days, Darcie is chair of the National Association of Institutional and Office Properties (NAIOP). We still work together. We retained her to represent The Arbors office building that my company owns—back in the 90s, it was an IBM building. There were so many IBMers in Boca that they spilled into Delray. Today, I hear there are less than a handful in Boca these days. Don’t quote me, but someone recently said there were two IBMers left. Is that possible?

Regardless, Boca survived and thrived. So did Delray.

Visions 2000 came to fruition, we won a few All America City Awards, and we adopted a Downtown Master Plan and got that done too. Pineapple Grove—which was a dream back when Sam was born– is thriving too.

You can’t buy much for $69,000 these days…never mind a three bedroom townhouse.

Time waits for no one says the old Rolling Stones song.

Birthdays have a way of focusing us on the value of time, the inevitability of change and the beauty and pathos of life.

I’ve been blessed to have the best daughter a dad could ever wish for…here’s to the next 29 years. I hope to be here to celebrate.