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Ted Robinson drives his 1931 Buick Phaeton with wife Joyce and Fort Myers Beach friends Carol and Jim Munsie at the Fort Myers Beach Woman’s’ Club St. Patrick’s Day Parade along Estero Boulevard. Photo by Nathan Mayberg
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Ted Robinson drives his 1931 Buick Phaeton with wife Joyce and Fort Myers Beach friends Carol and Jim Munsie at the Fort Myers Beach Woman’s’ Club St. Patrick’s Day Parade along Estero Boulevard. Photo by Nathan Mayberg
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Thomas, Boston and Jamie Brozowski, of North Carolina (in front) with Debbie and Thomas Brozowski, of Fort Myers Beach and Michigan (in back) at Saturday’s Fort Myers Beach Woman’s Club St. Patrick’s Day parade.
Photo by Nathan Mayberg
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Auggie, Maggie, Poppy, Seth and Ashley Ehlert of Fargo, North Dakota via Minneapolis, visited Fort Myers Beach for Saturday’s St. Patrick’s Day parade. Photo by Nathan Mayberg
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Fort Myers Beach Mayor Dan Allers
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Fort Myers Beach Mayor Dan Allers. Photo by Nathan Mayberg
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Ted Robinson drives his 1931 Buick Phaeton with wife Joyce and Fort Myers Beach friends Carol and Jim Munsie at the Fort Myers Beach Woman’s’ Club St. Patrick’s Day Parade along Estero Boulevard.
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Watching Ted Robinson stroll down Estero Boulevard in his shiny 1931 Buick Phaeton in the Fort Myers Beach Woman’s Club St. Patrick’s Day Parade, you might have thought he was time-warped from a life of 1930s luxury straight out of a Hollywood movie. In fact, for more than three years Robinson was living with a relative across the street from his old home as he worked on rebuilding his Estero house that he had to tear down after it was flooded by Hurricane Ian.
It wasn’t until Monday night, on the eve of St. Patrick’s Day, that he was finally able to live in his home again and it wasn’t even the sane home had. It was his neighbor’s home that he had swapped with in order to rebuild after contractors he had been working on to rebuild his own home, fizzled out. That home still had a frame when he took on the mission of rebuilding it, a step up from the vacant lot where his home had stood before Hurricane Ian.
All those details weren’t as important on Saturday as the joy Robinson brought to his Fort Myers Beach friends Carol and Jim Munsie, who accompanied Robinson and his wife Joyce in the rare 1931 Buick during the St. Patrick’s Day Parade on Saturday.
Mr. and Mrs. Munsie have owned a home at Fairview Isles for the last 41 years. They met the Robinsons in Vermont, where each couple had owned a home, before selling them before Hurricane Ian. “I asked Ted if he wanted to be in the parade and that’s how this whole thing got started,” Mrs. Munsie said.
Robinson, who grew up on the New Jersey shore, bought the 1931 Buick in 2022 before Hurricane Ian in part because it reminded him of a 1931 Chevrolet he purchased for $25 and restored when he was a teenager in the 1960’s. “It’s a pretty cool car. It really is,” he said. He had stored it in a couple different garages where it was able to stay dry and safe. He bought it in the Poconos in Pennsylvania from an elderly couple who had owned it for more than two decades and had restored it. Robinson said the interior and engine are original. Robinson already has entered it into The Great Race, a classic car rally.
Mrs. Munsie was thrilled to ride in the front seat of the vehicle during the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. “I had more fun. I had those big sunglasses on. I loved it. It was a day,” she said. “I was excited to be in it.”
A group from the Fairview Isles community marched along in the parade with the vehicle. “I thought the parade was wonderful. There is a lot of work that goes into it,” Munsie said.
Robinson said he “couldn’t believe there were so many people out for the St. Patrick’s Day Parade.” Robinson said. “It’s fun.”
The Munsies had gone to Estero to stay with Robinson during Hurricane Ian but they had to evacuate when the road flooded. Robinson said there was 13 inches of water in the home. He, his wife and the Munsies ended up staying with the sister-in-law of Robinson across the street. “I was out for three and a half months out of here,” Mrs. Munsie said of not being able to stay in her home at Fairview Isles on Fort Myers Beach due to the hurricane’s impact there. The Robinsons stayed inside the house across the street for more than three years before Mr. Robinson completed work on his neighbor’s home, which was down to just a frame, walls and stilts, which he switched with. “I just wanted to get into a home,” he said. Robinson gave his neighbor his vacant parcel in exchange for being able to rebuild his neighbor’s home and live there.
“I just finished rehabbing it,” Robinson said of his new home. “A lot of people went through a lot worse than I did.”
Robinson, who has a background as a contractor in construction, said he hopes the new home doesn’t flood again. He was planning on elevating his old home but will settle for just having a house of his own again, even if it is on a slightly lower elevation.
The parade brought out a number of floats as well as three marching bands – the Cape Coral High School Marching band, the Dunbar High School Marching Band and Island Coast High School Marching Band.
“People seemed to love the marching bands,” said Dawn Thomas, a Fort Myers Beach Woman’s Club past president.
Thomas said the St. Patrick’s Day parade was a large success, bringing out more paradegoers and more floats than last year and about 2,000 people to the club’s afterparty underneath two tents on the Fort Myers Beach Woman’s Club property at Sterling Avenue. Partygoers enjoyed two live bands, food trucks and drinks. “We were excited,” Thomas said.
“We had a fantastic response,” Thomas said. “It was a huge success.”
The club raised approximately $60,000 from the afterparty, which will go towards the organization’s rebuild of their old clubhouse. The clubhouse was destroyed by Hurricane Ian. The funds will bring the club “another step closer” to rebuilding the clubhouse. The organization is about halfway to their fundraising goal and recently announced a partnership with local builder Cole Stinson which Thomas thinks will be a major boost to their plans.
On Monday, the club won approval from the town council to go forward with the rebuild.