The Fruits of a Caring Community

A few years ago, I returned to Bradenton, to my family home, to care for my aging mother, who was quickly approaching 100.

My wife and I moved in with her, back into the home that raised me. A home my Dad built by hand just a couple of years before I was born. The home where, as a kid, I fell out of every tree in our yard, where I would run around and play and laugh with dogs. The home where I learned how to ride a bike. The home where my mother knew, the moment she stepped inside this home for the very first time and would meet her future husband, that it would be the home in which she would grow old and live out the rest of her years.

While my wife and I cared for my mother during her golden years, it seemed like the world around us was falling apart. A financial crisis took place that nearly destroyed the economies of nearly every nation around the world. A financial crisis that was blamed on real estate. Which the Wall Street Journal wrote had originated in Manatee & Sarasota counties.

The word “epicenter” was used in that article. So I Googled “epicenter” and “Manatee County”. And what Google gave back to me shocked me. It wasn’t just the real estate crisis that led to that worldwide financial downfall that had its “epicenter” right here in the county where I was born and raised. Google also identified Manatee County as the epicenter for other dark, dangerous, and destructive things.

“Drugs” - especially opioids and fentanyl. Manatee County, more than any other location across the entire United States, was considered the “epicenter” for the distribution and their use. This included, as well, ‘deaths’.

This was so sad for me to read. Near daily, there were articles in our local press of what seemed like very nice people dying from opioids and heroin, which would include fentanyl. Children returning home from school, in very good neighborhoods, discovering their parents lifeless, lying in bed or reclined on outdoor pool chairs no longer breathing. Hard-working, beloved teenagers, dead. There was an increased search within our local government for Guardians due to all of the parent-less children happening in our county. No protective barrier to the penetration of this drug entering into our local family’s lives existed, from what I could read.

It was so pervasive, it was reported then, that multiple entirely legal medical offices were operating on nearly every street corner, dispensing opioids. Our then-governor, encouraged by our then-state attorney general, wished to stem this. They began closing down all of these drug dispensing locations. With unexpected results. When local residents could no longer legally obtain opioids, they would illegally pursue the acquisition of heroin and fentanyl to replace it. I witnessed this myself in the parking lots of our local stores, where drug deals would very quickly take place right in front of me while I was sitting in my vehicle speaking on the phone. Not wishing to die at that moment, I did nothing. I did not get involved because I did not want to be killed. The drug & money exchange would happen so fast, with their vehicles driving away so quickly, there would have been nothing to report even if I’d phoned the police.

Out of all of the bad news I was reading I did come across one inspiration of hope. A church near where I live used their outdoor sign to advertise free meetings for those who were suffering from all of this. A beacon of community hope and help.

“Gangs” - of course. When a community has an incredibly pervasive amount of legal & illegal drug use, of course, there is going to be the presence of gangs infiltrating the area. Things became so violent that trials for gang members who were caught were arranged possibly better than Trump’s most recent outdoor speech. Snipers and semi-military were located on top of every downtown rooftop and along every street just to ensure that a trial would proceed undisturbed. ‘Shoot-outs’ were prominent then, everywhere within our area, during bright daylight in open parking lots of major stores. Gangs were infiltrating our local schools all the way down to the youngest grade levels.

And, there was more. Even more that Google showed me that my local, very much beloved county of Manatee had become the “epicenter” of. But what I also noted was that none of it - nothing that I read - were things that were created ‘here’ in Manatee County. Everything that was bad was originating from ‘outside’ Manatee and was entering into and being forced upon, and essentially destroying our area. Hurting the wonderful people who live here, all coming at us from beyond our area. In sum, Google and the Wall Street Journal may wish to insinuate that our county is the ‘epicenter’, but we who live here are most definitely not the cause for any of it.

Like possibly many of you, I remember growing up here knowing the streets were safe. We literally never locked our doors, and the kids played outside. I don’t see that or feel that anymore.

I am trained in design, with an additional advanced degree in education. I have worked for the largest architecture, media, and design companies in the world. I have taught at elite design schools. It is my belief that good design can change a person and inspire a community. It can improve one’s fate. This is why I became so involved in reacting to downtown Bradenton’s current plans to build a massively tall hotel/condo filling its only downtown waterfront. Essentially, in my personal opinion, it is killing our downtown from ever being a place where local residents will ever go again. Because our downtown waterfront will all become private. Submerged by the shadow sky-blocking massive presence of a very oversized, truly unneeded building.

Instead, I believe a community, including its downtown, should be a place where we all help each other. Support each other. Create an environment that is nice and inviting and maybe even fun for everyone. Then, a community might have a chance of stemming the bad things that would otherwise try to force their way into its area.

Why am I so inspired to be involved this way? Why do I care so much? Because, like many others, the presence of addiction and abuse has filled my family, as well.

My mother, when she was quite young, married a man she met at college. A man who was ‘the life of the party.’ Fun, funny, clever, entertaining. She’d never met anyone like him before. Their romance was quick. Their marriage was poor and criticized by her parents and my grandparents. What my then very young mother did not know at the time was that her husband’s quick wit and outgoing nature were all the result of alcohol. He and his family before him were drunks. Incurable, unstoppable drunks. Her husband’s mother literally fell down one night and died in a gutter.

From my family, I have learned how this addiction can flow through a family’s DNA. My mother bore her first husband and two sons. They were intelligent. But they also both had drinking problems. My oldest half-brother would keep open bottles of strong booze in his Brooklyn apartment, from which he would take a large swallow starting early in the mornings. He had famous friends. The actor Peter Coyote told me personally that he considered my older half-brother his “best friend”. When I went up north to visit my younger half-brother, he served me my very first morning visiting him a tall glass of soda and booze - before 11 AM. The glass he served himself was quickly downed, as well as several more. Most of my nephews and nieces would carry this habit into their lives. How could they not? They were born with it. Several are already dead. They died too young due to bad addictive habits, which affected their health. I remember them as little kids I would play with, tickle, swing around while making each of them laugh. Now I can no longer ever see them or talk to them ever again.

When she moved to Bradenton before she met my father, my mother divorced her first husband. His addictions had become so bad he couldn’t keep a job. They were always broke and suffering. He’d become useless. One day, my mother gave me the one piece of jewelry her first husband had ever given her. And, she told me, that he’d “stolen it.”

Thank you, Manatee County - for giving my mother the strength and fortitude to divorce that man. Soon after their divorce, they quickly moved away. Very soon after, my mother walked next door into what would become my family home, where she would meet for the very first time the man she would say for the rest of her life was the only man she truly loved - my Dad. Even though both were older at the time, I would soon make my appearance. A few months later, I would be born the night my Mom and Dad picked up my older brothers from a Manatee High School football game. My ties to this community are strong and caring.

Why am I writing about this now? Because a man just gave a speech at a political convention in which he described the suffering he has experienced from addiction within his own family. This man, in a few short months, may very well become our nation’s Vice President. Which just shows how pervasive and destructive this has all become. Even someone who might be in the White House, who may someday be our President, has suffered because of addiction within his very own family.

So, what is the cure? How do we who have suffered heal?

I believe in community. In good design. Designed environments that inspire and embrace. This, again, is why I was adamantly opposed to this new huge, tall building being built downtown on our city’s only remaining waterfront. But I also believe there is more that can be done. Those places where people and children used to gather - DeSoto Mall and skating rinks- are no longer there. When I drive around Manatee County, which I do - a lot, I really do not see places where entire families can go, to hang out, to have fun. Where they can safely drop off their kids. I believe our local county needs these places. But that’s just ‘the designer’ in me.

Perhaps some of you have other positive ideas you can share. It just might make our local county the best county anywhere.