POST WAR
SPRAYING WAS DANGEROUS
Jerry Doutrich, living in Vero’s Beattyville
neighborhood at the time, remembers
running into the fog.
“When we would hear the truck, we
would stop playing hide-and-seek or
whatever we were doing and hold our
breath while running or riding bikes behind
the truck,” he said. “I can feel and taste
the droplets as if it were today.”
Beidler said most towns in Florida used
fog machines at the time.
“Any time we saw a lot of kids running
in and out, we made an announcement
that if we saw that sort of thing going on
we weren’t going to fog that area because
we thought it was dangerous, not because
of the DDT or the BHC or whatever
it was, but because of traffic. Cars zipped
in and out of that fog and we were just
scared to death that some kid was going
to get run over.”
Beidler said there were no traffic injuries,
and some residents complained that the
trucks were driving too fast.
“The fastest we ever went was 5 miles
per hour, which was a big problem because
you couldn’t get anywhere. In four
hours, you’d go 20 miles and 20 miles of
streets is not much.”
The assault on mosquitoes helped
open Vero Beach to summer tourism and
outdoor attractions. The Vero Drive-In
was launched in 1950 to offer inexpensive
entertainment to families with young children.
Admission was 44 cents for adults
and free for children, said Jack Chesnutt,
manager until the drive-in closed in 1980.
Hot dogs and drinks were 15 cents each.
“We did have lots of mosquitoes,” Chesnutt
recalled in a radio interview. “I got
DDT spray from Mosquito Control. We had
Air-conditioning helped attract people to Florida year-round. Businesses that
had it before the 1970s proudly boasted about it.
55-gallon drums on the back of a truck
and it went through the exhausts. We
sprayed for mosquitoes and it really made
a difference.”
The federal government banned the use
of DDT in 1972 after Rachel Carson’s book
Silent Spring showed the pesticide posed a
danger to birds and other wildlife.
SHOPPING IN COMFORT
Air conditioning also improved life in
Florida, but it didn’t become widespread
until the 1970s. Historian Gary R. Mormino
says in his book, Land of Sunshine, State of
Dreams: A Social History of Modern Florida,
the cooling technology was available 20
years before the average resident could
afford it. Richards Department Store in
Miami started advertising window units in
1945, he said, but less than 20 percent of
all homes in the state were air-conditioned
in 1960.
Wodtke’s Department Store on 14th
Avenue was one of the first stores in Vero
Beach to have air conditioning, co-owner
Kay Wodtke Trent said in a radio interview.
Her father, Bill Wodtke Sr., opened the
store in 1942 and by the early 1950s had
installed air conditioning.
The store had a sign in the front window
that told sweltering passers-by about its
comfortable interior.
“You had to put that in your advertising,”
Trent said. “It was a drawing card to get
people to come in.”
HOT DEBATE OVER COOLING
Air conditioning was important not just
because of the comfort factor but also
because of the dictates of fashion, even in
small-town Florida.
“At that time, women weren’t completely
58 City of Vero Beach 1919-2019 VeroBeach100.org
dressed up if they didn’t have hats
and gloves,” Trent said. “You always had
a girdle and stockings on. It didn’t matter
how hot it was. That was the thing to do
and we all did it.”
The schools in Vero Beach, jam-packed
with baby boomers in the 1950s, had
strictly enforced dress codes — no shorts
or T-shirts allowed, of course — and no air
conditioning until the mid-’60s or later.
Teachers often had small electric fans on
their desks that allowed stifling air to circulate
a little bit.
An Indian River County bond issue to
finance the construction of new schools in
the 1950s failed at least in part because of
concerns from some voters that air conditioning
would be a frill.
Mormino said that thinking wasn’t unusual
at the time.
“Cooling Florida’s schools ignited a hot
debate,” he wrote. “Many old-time residents
and transplanted seniors argued
that sweating (along with shivering and
walking long distances) bred character,
and besides, taxpayers could not afford
the luxury.”
GROWTH TAXED SCHOOLS
When Ouida and Jack Wyatt moved to
Vero Beach from Tennessee to teach in
1956, there was one public elementary
school in the city, along with Vero Beach
Junior-Senior High School.
“My husband’s first job was teaching
physical education at the elementary
school,” Wyatt said. “He taught two classes
at a time and the classes averaged over
40 children, so he had around 80 students
each 30 minutes of the day, except for one
30 minute period he had off. The schools
were unbelievably overcrowded. I believe
The Keen family was one of many arriving in Vero after the war. Roy Keen arrived
from Lexington, N.C., and purchased the Rosedale Cabins and Grocery in
1951. The Keen family operates the Village Beach Market today.
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