Some had yet to graduate from elementary school. They arranged flowers and picked strawberries, kneaded biscuits and sang the blues. They were immigrants from Poland and the Philippines and lifelong Floridians who retired along the waters where they’d fished as kids. They sold lottery tickets and tended to the sick and lonely. They were cab drivers, veterans, teachers, traffic cops. Plenty had nicknames: Coach G, Cookie, Big Mike, Moosie, Boo-Boo.
They loved Taco Bell’s Nachos Supreme, Disney cruises, the Golden Girls and an ice-cold Coors. The people these Times reporters wrote about loved Bible study, fish and chips, trains and flea markets.
A grandma who sipped pink Moscato and ordered Hawaiian pizzas.
A shell-hunting soccer mom who loved anything with a palm tree on it.
