Coquina Daily

Coquina Crossing newspaper celebrates anniversary

By LAUREN HOGAN - St. Augustine Record

Twelve years ago, the gates of Coquina Crossing opened for retirees in Florida. Five years ago, "Inside the Gate" was founded, a 16-page newsletter for the retired community to enjoy, inside the gates of Coquina Crossing. June marked the fifth year anniversary of the newsletter, founded by editor and resident, Carol Napper.

Repeat articles from the first issue were featured in the anniversary newsletter, to highlight stories on how the newsletter was formed and to recall memories of life in Coquina Crossing as it used to be, such as when the former Gentleman's club was used as a landmark for guiding visitors to the residence. There was also cake and ice cream served at the association meeting to celebrate the first issue. "We have had a lot of fun with it," said Napper.

Among other stories, the newsletter features people in the community, lists recipes for homeowners to try, gives helpful hints, and Napper writes her own article "Beyond the Gate," which lists activities in which residents can partake outside the community. Before "Inside the Gate" was created, the community did not have a paper. A monthly bulletin was posted in the clubhouse, which had a calendar and several listings about different events coming up.

When English major and former travel agent, Napper moved in, she decided that, with the help of her husband and members of the community, they could create an interesting source of news. Initially, the idea was met with some resistance. "When we first talked about starting the newsletter, people were negative, thinking it would be neighborhood gossip, or they didn't think it would be interesting," explained longtime resident and writer for the newsletter, Jan Blaine. "But it got great reviews from the very first issue."

The paper started out at eight pages, but with growing popularity, it quickly became a 16-page spread, with members of the community constantly contributing ideas. The staff currently contains about 15 members; some of whom take on separate writing personalities, such as resident Barb McIntire, or "The Cruise Lady."

"Inside the Gate" is a quarterly paper and free to the community. It costs about $400-$500 to print an issue, done by PIP printing, but 2 1/2 pages of ads and donations from the treasury of homeowners association, usually covers it.

Veteran one of youngest B-17 pilots

By LORRAINE THOMPSON
October 30, 2006
Ph
WWII veteran William Finch.
Photo by MADELYN TROYANEK madelyn.troyanek@staugustinerecord.com
 


Being drafted into the U. S. Army Air Corps during World War II wasn't the worst thing in the world to happen to William Finch. "Heck," Finch said from his Coquina Crossing home, "I got to see Europe."
The 82 year old proceeded to rattle off the places he had visited -- Italy, Germany, Switzerland, France, Monte Carlo, Africa, Mt. Vesuvius and the Isle of Capri. Finch recalled being part of a group that was given an audience with Pope Pius XII in Rome. Even though Finch was not Catholic, he said it was a thrill for a lad in his early 20's who had previously never been far from Iowa.

"We explored the Vatican Catacombs, saw where dead popes were buried. I even climbed to the top and was able to enter the small steeple," he said.

From the time Finch was 8 years old, his dream was to become a pilot when he grew up. That dream came true, when as a 19-year-old draftee, he was assigned to pilot training at Maxwell Field in Decatur, Ala., then sent to Freeman Field, Seymour, Ind., for advanced training. Finch's plane was the B-17 bomber. He recalls his mother pinning on his wings and second lieutenant bars at flight school graduation in August 1944. His father and his girlfriend, Kathryn Carter, were there, too.

"It was one of my most memorable and proudest moments," Finch said.

B-17 bombers were a vital part of the United States' WWII offense in Europe, and Finch was assigned to the 815th Squadron of the 483rd Bomb Group, 15th Air Force. At 20, he became one of the youngest men to fly combat in a B-17. The four-engine bomber was equipped with six defensive gun locations and was called the "Flying Fortress." Group formations of the plane provided its best defense. Planes flew in tight formation to allow the guns of multiple planes to be brought to bear on approaching enemy fighters. With a crew of eight, Finch had the job of air commander. After the first encounter with enemy fire, "Flying didn't seem as much fun," Finch confessed, nor was the near mid-air collision with another plane. But his whole crew survived the war and came home safe, and for that he says he is thankful.

"Even as a young boy, I never approved of war, but I know it's a necessary evil. War is hell," he said. "I was lucky. I got drafted near the end of the war, lived through it, and celebrated the end on V-E Day." Finch said. He and his crew were in Foggia, Italy, on that historic day, May 8, 1945. For those who don't know, V-E stands for Victory in Europe, the day Germany surrendered. The surrender of Japan, or V-J Day, was still months away.

Finch was discharged at the age of 22 in October 1946 with the rank of captain. During his short military career he earned the Air Medal, American Theatre Ribbon, European-African-Middle East Theatre Ribbon with two bronze battle stars, Occupation Ribbon with two service bars, and a Victory Medal.

After the war, he enrolled at Upper Iowa University, and in 1948 married the girl who had waited for him, Kathryn Carter. They have been married 58 years and have three children: Janet Harris of Switzerland, Susan Dixon of St. Augustine, and Kevin Finch, who was the original owner of Scarlet O'Hara's in downtown St. Augustine. There are also four grandchildren.

Both William and Kathryn are currently recovering from an auto accident that occurred when their car was rear-ended a few weeks ago. That put a damper in their favorite past time -- traveling.
"We've traveled in our motor home to every state except Hawaii," Finch said.

Rebel with a big heart

Newman 'Rebel' Landis, who served aboard the USS McKee, a destroyer, during World War II, displays a case of medals. He is a resident of Coquina Crossing. By Ryan Pelham, ryan.pelham@staugustine.com.

Newman Landis served aboard a destroyer, seeing action at Leyte Gulf and Tarawa

By Paulette Perhach - paulette.perhach@staugustine.com 

"He was a big redneck from Chattahoochie, Ga. He left the CCC's, signed for six years with the Navy SO THE WORLD COULD SEE HIM." That's how Newman "Rebel" Landis is remembered by his crewmates. That passage, like others that describe the tough country boy, came from a remembrance of the USS McKee. The book, called "Gran'pa, What Did You Do in the War?" is a fictional story of one man telling his grandson about the ship. It's based on the real crew members of the McKee and their letters.

"Reb was big, loud, boisterous and a fighter. But also big hearted," says the book. Landis, 85, now lives a quieter life in Coquina Crossing with his wife, Edith, his poodle, Tarzan, and his cat, Miss Gator. Thinking back on his country farm-boy life growing up in the Depression brings a chuckle to Landis now.

"I didn't know a destroyer from a tugboat," he said. He remembers the first time he saw a blimp. "We thought the world was coming to an end. We all ran in the house," he said.
All he knew was farming. He learned about the war from the movie houses, where he would pay his 10 cents to get in, then stay until it closed. He saw the ships on the news reels.

"I seen them ships on there. I thought maybe I'd better try that," he said. "I figured I'd rather be in the Navy with something to eat than stay at home and starve."

He had worked in the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Depression, making $8 a month. Joining the military seemed like a step up. But he still had a lot to learn.

"When I went over the Chattahoochee River, I thought I was overseas," he said. "That was the biggest body of water I'd seen." He joined the Navy because he thought it would save him from all the walking and the mud of the Army. He soon realized he underestimated the size of the ocean, and suffered on the months-long trips out to sea. He headed to California for training, where he and a friend saw people eating these odd things for breakfast. They went in the shop and ordered whatever they were, then made themselves sick eating plate after plate of waffles. They also got on the first roller coaster they ever saw, thinking it was some kind of tour train.

"Man, I'll never forget that first drop," he said.

Landis went to boot camp and raised some more heck in California.
But then it was in Orange, Texas, that Landis saw the ship that would be his home for the entire war. The McKee, a 40-foot wide Fletcher class destroyer, was built to be fast and light, one of the "tin can" ships. Landis became a "plank owner," one of the sailors there for her commissioning. Landis remembers his first trip taking her out after she was commissioned on March 31, 1943. Being the tough guy that he was, he boasted that he wouldn't get seasick. But he didn't make it out of the river before the swaying got to his stomach. He was the Master at Arms of the Forward Compartment, and still has the whistle he used to call the sailors to chow.
The book says his position "put him in charge of keeping Crew's mess neat and orderly, and made him Lord over the main coffee pot. One morning he found a cigarette butt in the post. He yelled so loud that he could have won the cow calling contest back in Georgia!"

The boat cruised around the destroyers, providing a shield from torpedoes."We got attacked two or three times," he said. "I didn't like that too good." The good times were leaves. Other sailors joked they would get ulcers from going on leave with Rebel. Landis recalls the time he crossed the equator, or, the E-quator in Chattahoochie speak. He went in as a Pollywog, then after a rough initiation, became a Shellback.

"And trouble, I got in quite a bit of that," said Landis. "I hit an officer one time. I went ashore."
He said he came back, "about half-looped, maybe more than half." As the book describes that time in Pearl Harbor: "There's no way we could get away without some incident involving Rebel. He and Lt. Ferguson got into it over whether Rebel saluted the flag at the gangplank or not. Rebel socks Ferguson, knocking him down! Lt. A.D.Ferguson was in charge of Damage Control. He told me years later that the only damage he ever had was Rebel, and he couldn't control him!" Rebel remembers that time with a laugh. He said they didn't have a brig, but a pea coat locker he would have been locked up in, if he didn't have friends in high places who got the report dropped.

In more serious times, Landis lived through a typhoon where it seemed the ship would capsize. He fought as the gun captain of turret number two during the battle of the Leyte Gulf and the landing on Tarawa, where his ship would bombard the shore to clear way for the Marines.
They were assembling for the raid of Tokyo when they saw a mushroom cloud of the A-bomb.
"We didn't know what it was," he said. "We just saw a cloud of smoke."

He remembers being scared the night after the war ended, when word of the surrender hadn't gotten to all the kamikaze pilots and one tried to run into the ship. "Here we'd lived through this whole war, and now they're going to kill us," he remembers thinking.

Through the war, the McKee earned 11 battle stars. It was attacked 229 times, and her crew rescued 11 pilots, three airmen and 10 others. After they decommissioned the McKee in Charleston, S.C, on Feb 26, 1946, Landis left the military as a boatswain and found a job at a welding shop in Chattahoochie. He's worked as a plumber and steamfitter, moving around northeast Florida for the last 40 or so years. He called Jacksonville, Orange Park and Palatka home before moving to Coquina Crossing.

Perhaps the McKee book, which includes several pictures of Rebel with his arms around his shipmates, sums him up best: "Rebel was the best 'butt kicker' on ship -- he had more practice. But he'll tell you, 'They all sure loved me.'"

May 09, 2007

The lives of America’s “greatest generation” are coming to a close, but Flagler College students are working to preserve war stories long held back by local veterans.

Most of the 30-plus World War II veterans living in Coquina Crossing never spoke about their military careers.
 
In the 62 years since the war ended, they went about their lives. They married, raised children, worked and eventually moved to the St. Augustine retirement community. It took a determined neighbor, a curious television station and a group of Flagler students to bring the veterans’ stories to light in a new documentary, “Serve & Protect.”
 
William Finch, a former bomber pilot, said fellow Coquina resident Michael Rothfeld put the project in motion. Rothfeld had a passion for history – he received a master’s degree in the subject – and he wanted to record and share the memories of his veteran neighbors before their time ran out.
 
“You didn’t talk about what you did in the war,” Finch said. “I didn’t talk about it with my children … It took someone like Rothfeld to bring it out and get the veterans talking.”
 
Rothfeld contacted WJCT, the local public broadcasting station, with his documentary idea. Producer/director Ron Agnew picked up the project, filming more than 16 hours of interviews with the Coquina veterans. The station decided to use short vignettes from the footage to coincide with a previously planned WWII documentary, however – without editors, the rest of the film would never reach an audience.
 
That’s where Flagler College came in. Communication professor Jim Gilmore’s television workshop class needed a project for the spring semester. His students took on those 16 hours of film, transcribing every word and editing the best clips into a 30-minute film.
 
In April, more than 250 people packed into the Coquina Crossing auditorium to watch the premiere of “Serve & Protect.” The students attended and met the men and women they’d been watching on screen for months.
 
Broadcast major Chelsea Hamashin introduced the film at the premiere. She had already spoken with some of the veterans when she edited the documentary, meeting with them at a local bagel and coffee stop.
 
“The project meant a lot to us,” Hamashin said. “You could see how much they appreciated it all. There’s not going to be much more time to get to hear these stories.”
 
Bob Ong served with the Air Force in the final year of the war. The plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima came from his airbase. He said the documentary gave him a new perspective on some of his neighbors.
 
“It was exciting,” he said. “I don’t think any of us have ever been much for sitting around and discussing our war experiences … but some of these guys, they really were heroes.”
 
Gilmore said the documentary project gave students a rare opportunity to connect with their film subjects and to “see what they do really impact these people’s lives.”
 
Rothfeld said the Coquina retirees never would have been able to afford a professional editor for their documentary. He hopes to pass their stories on to a larger audience next, showing the film at local schools and maybe holding another public screening.
 
“I think public service is a big part of broadcast,” Gilmore said. “Over the years, we [the television and film industry] have gotten away from that a little bit. But the medium itself can be a medium of good – it can be an agent of change.”

from the website of Flagler College 

May 9, 2007

Evening of honor

Vets documentary introduced at Coquina Crossing celebration
Special to The Record (of St. Augustine, FL)

From the Greatest Generation to the Latest Generation was the theme of an evening of entertainment, applause and tears held last month at the clubhouse at Coquina Crossing on State Road 207 in Elkton.

This evening was the culmination of a year's worth of work by many and the concept of Coquina resident Michael Rothfeld as he sought to honor the approximately 30 World War II veterans living in the community.

With initial assistance from County Commissioner Ben Rich's office, Rothfeld was able to contact Michael Boylan, president and CEO of WJCT/Jacksonville the local PBS TV station. His next contact was with Don Angew who is a producer/director at WJCT who came to Coquina Crossing to film more than 16 hours of unedited memoirs of the veterans. Rothfeld and the members of The Coquina Veterans, a group of veterans of all wars residing in the community, joined together to try to use this historical information and make it into a documentary to provide to local schools and libraries.

The problem was, says Rothfeld, that there were no funds available for a volunteer group to proceed with such an undertaking. As fortune would have it, the veterans group had invited William Proctor, state representative in Tallahassee, to speak before them. Proctor made it possible for Rothfeld to speak with Mary Jane Dillon, assistant to the president of Flagler College, and then to professor of communications, H. James Gilmore, whose class turned the unedited film into a half-hour DVD.

Premier

The premier was attended by 250 people. All the dignitaries mentioned attended, including the World War II veterans.

Cmdr. Deidre L. McLay of the USS Farragut, based in Mayport, spoke about the first USS Farragut in service during World War II and those men and women serving our country then and now.

Among those in the audience were members of the community as well as the Flagler College students who worked on the project. Chelsea Hamashin, representing Flagler students, delivered a speech, "From the Latest Generation to the Greatest Generation.''

Coquina Crossing resident, Joe Shomo, a World War II veteran, spoke to the college students about what their generation should do to avoid the mistakes of his generation. He warned the young people make sure that they remember that the United States of America is the greatest country in the world and the most compassionate to all others in need.

Members of the singing group of Coquina Crossing "The Classics'' sang "Boggie Wogie Bugle Boy" and Marcie Shomo sang "Rosie the Riveter.''

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March 17, 2007

from Advertising Special Section of The Times-Union, Jacksonville

Affordable lifestyle attainable

Located in Elkton, Coquina Crossing at St. Augustine offers residents an array of on-site amenities and daily activities in a quiet, serene setting just 15 miles from the heart of historic St. Augustine.

The community features a private, gated entrance, 17,000-square-foot club- house with 4,000-square- foot ballroom, an indoor heated swimming pool and whirlpool/spa, an outdoor swimming pool, a fully equipped fitness center, tennis courts and on-site activities, entertainment and clubs.

The public is welcome to tour beautifully decorated model homes featuring cathedral ceilings, island kitchens, spacious living areas and luxurious baths. The homes at Coquina Crossing are designed in traditional Colonial, American Craftsman, Florida Cracker and National Folk architecture. The neighborhood recreates the comfortable, congenial style of early 20th century America with century-old streetlights, welcoming park benches and graceful white arbors.

Residents can participate in the vast array of on-site activities and clubs hosted by the community. Coquina Crossing boasts an on-site activities director who keeps the daily event calendar full throughout the year. Activities and events range from on-site arts and crafts classes, knitting, crocheting, card making and quilting classes, bible study, computer classes, photography classes, bird watchers clubs, walking clubs, tennis tournaments, ballet and tap classes, and themed dances
to off-site activities such as day trips to local attractions, dinner shows, plays and shopping outings. Many times throughout the year, activities director Renie Lyniuk brings in live entertainment, such as the New Dawn Singers.

"Renie makes things happen ... she's sure to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries each month with an exciting place to go for lunch," resident Ginny Pierson said. "She coordinates golf tournaments, fries Latke forl Hanukah parties and decorates for Christmas. She has even taught us how to make fleece blankets for gifts. She and her committee have more wonderful things for the future coming up, including trolley rides, a trip to the Lightner Museum, Mardi Gras Casino Night and more monthly trips to the beach and state parks.

"We have many talented people who have retired to our community, and many of them are able to showcase their talents here. One resident even teaches the art of Faberge Egg making. The only thing we don't have is enough time to do it all."

Coquina Crossing recently was named one of America's 100 Best Master-Planned Communities by Where to Retire magazine. The community also has received two Community of the Year awards by practicing professional integrity and demonstrating high standards. An independent panel of judges in the home-building industry selected Coquina Crossing based on community planning, design, mainte-
nance and management.

Coquina Crossing is owned and operated by Equity LifeStyle Properties Inc., the leader in high quality, affordable lifestyle communities for more than 30 years. Equity LifeStyle Properties operates more than 270 lifestyle communities and RV resorts throughout the nation. Each unique property offers a fun, friendly atmosphere with resort-style amenities.

The community is located at 4536 Coquina Crossing Drive in Elkton. To visit, take Interstate 95 to exit 311 and drive west on Florida 207 for one-half mile.

For more information, contact sales director Rob Mathis at (904) 826-0699 or Rob_Mathis@mhchomes.com.

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