USS Renshaw DD/DDE-499Reunion 2011
FORT MYERS, FloridaSeptember 20-22, 2011
We stayed at the Holiday Inn Ft. Myers Airport Hotel at Town Center(239) 561-1550
Morning Tour
Sanibel Historical Museum & Village
Wednesday September 21, 2011
Sanibel Historical Museum and Village was founded in 1984 with a mission to preserve and share Sanibel history. The story of Sanibel is told from the Calusa and Spanish eras to the early pioneer families who settled on the island in the 1800s. It tells of warriors, adventurers, fishermen, farmers and proprietors.
Seven historic buildings were moved from their original island sites to the Historical Village. Each building has been restored to its original state. Volunteer docents share the stories of Sanibel with almost 10,000 visitors a year. We followed the footsteps of the past.
Afternoon Tour
Miromar Outlet Mall
Wednesday September 21, 2011------------------------------------------
Edison & Ford Winter Estates
Thursday, September 22, 2011
We planned your trip to the Edison & Ford Winter Estates to get in touch with your inner genious. The Edison & Ford Winter Estates offer a unique combination of history and science that can be found nowhere else. This National Register Historic Site is one of the top most visited historic home sites in the nation. There were many different options to explore the nine historic buildings, the 1929 historic landscape and the 15,000 square foot museum filled with hundreds of inventions and artifacts, special exhibit galleries and documentaries about the famous inventors. It gave us a chance step back in time as you imagined Fort Myers as it was before Thomas Edison arrived. We learned how Edison changed Fort Myers from a cattle town with 50 buildings and 200 residences with no roads, electricity, or railroads into what it is today. They have one of the largest Banyan Trees in the United States, that is 85 years old and over 400 square feet wide. We returned to the 1920s as we walked through the nation’s only historic Botanic Research Laboratory where Edison, Ford and Firestone planted and researched more than 14,000 plants to find a source of natural rubber which could be planted in this country and commercially produced for uses in the automobile industry, factories, airplanes and other wartime needs. The site itself is full of inventions and thoughtful utilization of natural resources with artesian wells, water cisterns and fire systems that showed how the two inventors and their families used what was available to create their winter homes in southwest Florida more than a century ago. We enjoyed a guided tour, which was very helpful in learning about the estates.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reunion Contact:
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