Heavy Traffic at Marco on the Move Exhibit

While they didn’t arrive by trains, planes, or boats, a crowd of 230 was transported back to a simpler time on Marco Island during the opening of the Marco on the Move exhibit on Thursday, November 12, at the Marco Island Historical Museum. Adding to the excitement of the exhibit opening was a nod to the 60 year anniversary of the Mackle Brothers’ development of modern Marco Island. Alan Sandlin and Frankie Ray Ortiz turned back the clock to the 1970s by pulling out their acoustic guitars and performing some of the songs they played as entertainers at the Marco Beach Hotel during the glory days of live entertainment on Marco Island.

Museum manager Rebecca Mazeroski, the exhibit curator, was surprised at the large turnout.

“It’s probably the largest crowd we’ve had except for the time we had Clyde Butcher signing his book here. We were hearing some ground swelling. We kind of thought, 'yeah, it’s going to be a pretty big crowd.' We had a crowd that was really here for this exhibit, and we had a crowd that was really here because of the 60-year anniversary of the Mackles. There's still plenty of people who were here when Alan and Frankie Ray started singing, who remember Quinns back when it looked like a chickee hut. This started as an anniversary celebration and as the exhibit was developing, we decided these really do go together and we could bring them together. We said, ‘Let’s do it!'"

Ortiz, better known as Frankie Ray, came to Marco Island with his wife Mary Ellen to play at the Voyager restaurant and lounge at the Marco Beach Hotel (now the JW Marriott). Frankie Ray and Mary Ellen were beloved entertainers at the hotel, then went on to start a popular restaurant, La Casita, where they entertained nightly.

Sandlin and his wife Linda both had stints at the Marco Beach Hotel before becoming prominent Realtors and philanthropists on the island. Linda was a lead actress in Oklahoma! before Alan was hired as a one man band to play at Quinn’s. In fact, the Sandlin Gallery, the museum’s rotating gallery, is a gift of the Sandlins.

Frankie Ray got things going when he played Marco Memories, the official song of Marco Island, that he wrote himself. Sandlin followed with Billboard’s top song of 1965, Wooly Bully. Both were warmly received.

In addition to a gallery full of fascinating photos and stories focused on the various modes of transportation used to access the island over the decades, there were two noteworthy items on display, one from the Island’s pioneer era, the other from the beginning of the Island's modern development.

“The cog is an interesting story,” said Heather Otis, curator of collections. "That's from the old ferry landing in Old Marco, and it was recovered in early 2000. There were two divers, recreational divers, who were swimming around the Snook Inn. They saw these two gears on the floor. Word gets around really fast on the island. So within a few hours, Eleanor Burnham called up Betsy Perdichizzi. They were both members of the Historical Society at the time. They gathered a couple people and tried to remove the gears from the water themselves. And they managed after a lot of effort. I think there were four or five 70-plus-year-olds who thought the history was so important that they got in the water and moved these gears, which weigh anywhere from 200 to 400 pounds, depending on which gear you're trying to move. Then they had to somehow get them into the flatbed of someone's pickup truck to drive to storage. And they managed. It took a team of five to move them into the exhibit."

“It was just we're so lucky to have someone like Roger Johnson and Ron Rutledge,” Mazeroski said, "because together they helped us so much. When we were thinking about putting those ferry landing gears in the display, we were really thinking about the story we're telling and how can we use a pedestal? What can we use? I'm thankful for them and their help to really bring those really fun and special details together for us."

The gulls in flight sculpture, designed by Miami artist Rolf Nyberg (1927-2005), originally graced the entrance sign to Deltona’s Sales/Administration building, starting in 1965.

“The gulls were actually out in front of the first building that Herbert Savage designed for modern Marco in 1964,” Otis said. The sales and administration building was the first one. Which makes sense, because if you can't sell, then you can't grow the island.”

The gulls have been added to the modern Marco area of the museum.

"He was known for working with sheet metal, so this isn't cast, it's sheets,” Otis said. "And if you look closely at the wings, the sheet metal is actually folded over. He wanted to evoke emotion with his art. He wanted to capture the feeling rather than be really detailed. He is also known for his ability to capture motion. The gulls were there until 1992 when the building was demolished to put in the fire station at the corner of Heathwood and San Marco. They were saved for the first time and brought to the public library. They stayed there for 25 years. We got permission from the library to move the gulls into the museum building, then we got them transferred to the collections. So we were able to conserve them and then put them on display in the gallery. So now they're welcoming people to modern Marco Island again. That's really their original job. The only mystery we have is if you look at the original picture of the Sales and Administration building, you'll see that there were originally four gulls. Now there's just three. There's a missing gull. We don't know when it went missing, but it wasn't there when we collected it back in 2017."