WORLD WAR II
Meta Chesser, would take the class to the Indian River Citrus Bank
in Vero Beach.
“They had a bell and tower there, so we’d exchange the book
of stamps for a war savings bond and someone would ring the
victory bell,” Hurst said.
Air-raid drills and rationing were facts of life during the war
years.
JJ Wilson, a seasonal resident, lives in her family’s historical
Riomar cottage, which still lacks air conditioning and heat. She
first visited in the early 1940s, when her family came down from
Northern Virginia for the winter. It was wartime, which meant gas
and Scotch whiskey were in short supply.
“Rationing meant we didn’t drive down because we didn’t have
gas,” she said. “We took the train.”
NIGHTLY AIR- RAID DRILLS
She remembers air-raid drills at night, when her family was
required to turn off the lights and get away from the 71 windows
in the house.
“Where the bar is now was a closet,” she said. “It was the only
place without windows, so we would all go in there, at 8 o’clock I
think it was, and hang out there until the all-clear sounded. Since
it was a bar, the adults had a few drinks and got jollier and jollier.”
Scotch whiskey was nearly impossible to get, and Wilson said
her mother bought from a merchant who required customers to
buy six bottles of rum to be allowed to purchase one bottle of
Scotch. Once, her mother had squeezed a load of grapefruit to
make juice to mix with rum for a party. Wilson and her playmates,
meanwhile, were spending too much time in the sun.
“We went to where the club is now, the fancy Quail Club,” she
said. “It used to be an oyster bar. We played on it for so long that
we got sunstroke. When we got back we drank all the grapefruit
juice that was ready for the party.”
A doctor who treated the kids said they were so dehydrated
that the juice probably saved their lives.
Curiously, Florida grapefruit juice was in short supply in most
of the country during the war. Florida shipped canned grapefruit
juice to service members overseas. Ads claimed the juice was
loaded with “Victory Vitamin C” essential to the war effort.
“How good to know that our boys chasing Adolph’s ‘supermen’
are armed with Victory Vitamin C,” an ad from the Florida Citrus
Commission proclaimed.
AFTER THE WAR
The Naval Air Station was decommissioned in 1946 and the
property returned to the city. Some of the buildings became the
core of Dodgertown, the spring-training facility of the Brooklyn,
later Los Angeles Dodgers. The Navy dispensary served as the
city’s hospital until a newer facility was built in the mid-1950s.
Navy barracks became the Airbase Apartments, providing
inexpensive units for young families when housing was in short
supply .
The Vero Beach Regional Airport became the hub of a commercial
is long gone, but Elite Airways provides regularly scheduled commercial
ranks and service branches of all who died while training for war
in Vero Beach.
Commercial fisherman and guide Richard Milton Jones served
in the Army as part of the Allied North Africa invasion. Afterward,
when he returned to his family’s historical home on Jungle Trail,
he faced more fighting men.
He says about 200 men from the Navy’s Underwater Demolition
50
and industrial park anchored by Piper Aircraft. Eastern Airlines
service. A historical marker at the airport lists the names,
Teams , along with some Army Scouts and Raiders, were
marching north from their base in Fort Pierce when they passed
his house en route to Sebastian Inlet.
“The mosquitoes were chewing them a good one!” he said.
“They marched up to Sebastian Inlet before A1A was even
thought about, and when they got there they made a bivouac.
They had all their foodstuff and they had a lot of demolition stuff.”
Jones said they hoped to get rid of the explosives while also
reopening the inlet, which was filled up with sand.
“They put the TNT they had in hoses, long hoses, and they dug
a trench across the mouth of the inlet and they put it down in
there and covered it up,” he said. “They were going to blast the
inlet open! That was a foolish idea. They blew it straight up in the
air and it came right back down the same hole it blew from. But
they got rid of the TNT. That was the object.”
The mosquito-plagued men stayed at the inlet for a couple of
days before abandoning camp and leaving everything they had
brought. Jones got wind of that and managed to salvage some of
the gear.
“I had this beach buggy and me and this friend of mine discovered
what was up there,” he said. “We met this contingent of men
marching on the beach going back to Fort Pierce. A captain was
in charge. I stopped and said, ‘Captain, we’ve been up there and
looked over your bivouac and there’s lot of good food up there.
There’s a lot of lifesaving equipment, all kinds of tools, silverware,
baloney, sausage, milk. Everything!’ I said, ‘Have you left that stuff
behind up there?’ He said, ‘Yeah, we ain’t coming back.’ I said,
‘Would you give it to me?’ He said, ‘I won’t see you if you get it.’ ”
Jones and his buddy made two round trips with their fully
packed beach buggy.
“When we went back the third time to get the third load, we
had a competitor! He had an old Model-T and he was up there
picking up stuff, so we traded.”
Jones, a third-generation native, died in 2011 at the age of 92.
He sold the family’s property, which includes the iconic Jones
Pier on the Indian River Lagoon, to the county for use as a public
preserve and historical site. F
Rudy Johnson contributed to this story.
City of Vero Beach 1919-2019 VeroBeach100.org
CHRISTINA TASCON
Visitors to the Vero Beach Regional Airport can read this historical marker that
recounts the role the naval air station played in training dive bomber pilots
during World War II.
/VeroBeach100.org