The author acknowledges she is a community activist, but she prefers to regard her role as more of a passive one, working behind the scenes, bringing people together who can make good things happen.

When ill health forced her husband's retirement from Ford Motor company in Dearborn, Michigan, she decided she would retire also, but fate and circumstances intervened and she was caught up in the spirit of helping to build a new community. In her ten years with the Port St. Lucie Community Center she served on the board of directors and held the offices of secretary, treasurer, vice president and president. Charter memberships in the Chamber of Commerce, the Port St. Lucie Business Women, the Hospital Auxiliary, the Democratic Women of St. Lucie County, and helping to found the Port St. Lucie Historical Society indicate her early involvement with these groups. Extending activities beyond her immediate community, she has been vice president of the St. Lucie County League of Women Voters, a director on the Council on Aging Board and serves on the Board of Directors for the Indian River Community College Foundation. Her nineteen years as a columnist for the Tribune has afforded her access to people and events within the community about which she is quite knowledgeable. The Board of Education in Livonia, Michigan, on which she served for three terms, named an instructional center in her honor. Here in Florida, a classroom building on the Port St. Lucie Campus of Indian River Community College also bears her name.

She transferred that same deep sense of community she demonstrated in Cleveland, Ohio and Livonia, Michigan, to Port St. Lucie with a commitment to contribute to its development, especially in those early formative years. She believes this book, an account of those early years, as she knew them, will reflect the strong dedication she found among those first residents to build a community that would endure and inspire those who came after them to follow in the same pattern.