Making history with Arva

The cultural season started last night at The Bookstore with a full house who showed up to hear Arva Moore Parks talk about Coconut Grove history. She was there to sign her new book called "Coconut Grove, Images of America," and she said she wasn't expecting to speak, but when she did, she had every ear in the place.


She has a way of speaking that just draws you in and the history of Coconut Grove is a very interesting subject. I liked when she talked about rooting through the attic at The Barnacle years ago and finding old glass negatives from the 1800s, which ended up being the basis of her first book in 1977 called "The Forgotten Frontier: Florida Through the Lens of Ralph Middleton Munroe." The glass negatives were actually pioneer Ralph Munroe's own work.


Michelle Niemeyer is having her book signed by Arva, as Bo Bennet looks on. Bo is Arva's partner in this new book on Coconut Grove.


In line to have their books autographed are Mary Struzenberg, Donna Sweeny, Sonia Sanguinetti and Lili Dones. Lili is on page 126 of the book, so am I, we actually signed the page for each other in each of our respective books. Others asked me to sign their books, there were a lot of people in the audience last night who are featured in the book, so it was almost like signing yearbooks.


At left: Francesca and Glenn Terry (Glenn is in the book); at right: Bo and Arva signing more books. Hundreds were sold last night. Many people bought more than one.


At left: District Commissioner Marc Sarnoff with Village Council member Renita Samuels-Dixon; right: Michelle Niemeyer and Brian Davis. Comm. Sarnoff introduced Arva to the crowd at the beginning of the night. Renita's family is part of Village West history.


Ron Nelson, Sylvia Cherry, Lee Marks, County Commissioner Carlos Gimenez


Sandy Francis, co-owner of The Bookstore in the Grove with Laura Pashaei, sold plenty of books last night. At right: Gay Ingram with Elizabeth Dufresne.


Nancy Everett and Kathy Wynne. Bobby Ingram performed as guests arrived. Here he is, one of the last to leave.

If you didn't make it to the event last night, you really did miss a great evening, one of those memorable Grove evenings that will go down in history. But you can still get Arva's book at The Bookstore, so that's the good news.