Catholic Church In Destin Fl

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GULF BREEZE!

I t was a warm, somewhat humid Thursday evening when Dr. C.J. Heinberg stood on the grounds of the town’s elementary school and raised his right hand before Judge Woodrow W. Melvin and was sworn in as the first mayor of Gulf Breeze.

The Aug. 10, 1961 outdoor ceremony atop a flat-bed truck trailer in front of hundreds of well-wishers marked the birth of a city destined to become a robust commercial and residential suburban community with a major, four-lane U.S. highway bringing new residents and visitors from across the country.

Five decades after Heinberg’s induction, Gulf Breeze has grown to a city of 5,763 residents with a world-class medical complex, a rising international Internet security company, a highly successful financial bonding company, first-class educational opportunities, and some of the world’s most beautiful bays and beaches.

Gulf Breeze is blessed with a low crime rate, outstanding recreational facilities, affordable taxes and Santa Rosa County’s most affluent citizenry. Residents stroll the streets and ride their bikes in relative safety, and neighbors still speak to one another under canopies of twisting live oak trees and draping Spanish moss.

“I’ve lived in New York and Los Angeles and traveled around the world,” beloved resident Ann Martin Brodie recently said. “The best living, without a doubt, is right here in Gulf Breeze.”

Brodie visited the peninsula as a young girl as early as 1933 and officially became a resident of Eufaula Avenue in 1960. She attended the 1961 swearing in of Heinberg and four other founding fathers – Allan Davis, Wayne Lee, Michael Batz and John Schilf. She watched the year before as a new four-lane bay bridge replaced the old, two-lane bridge that had been in service since 1931.

Brodie shopped the stores of the Benson Complex – stores like Bokas Pharmacy, which opened in 1956, the Friendly Service grocery store and, in later years, Greenfield’s clothing store and the Tastee Freeze ice-cream shop, just to name a few.

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