An Everglades Providence: Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the American Environmental Century

24 The Book Idea

The doctors at first said eighty-three-year-old Frank Stoneman was too old to survive major surgery. Then, when complications related to a kidney stone worsened, they decided an operation was his only hope. His wife, Lillias, could not be with him on the morning of his surgery, February 1, 1941. She was ill and confined to bed at home under the care of her younger cousin, Mildred Shine. Marjory was at the hospital, and she and her father last spoke as the orderlies wheeled him away to the operating room. When the doctor later came out to share the worst, she pulled her grief-stricken self together and prepared a page-long biography, which included several reminiscences of friends and colleagues, for the Miami Herald . Douglas wanted readers to be aware of the unknown parts to the familiar public man, his beliefs, personal integrity, and habits of life—the sensible way he treated blacks and whites the same when they came before his municipal court, the time he fined himself for driving through a red light, the unselfish energy he gave to civic life through the work of the Masonic Lodge, the long hours he put in at the newspaper, the abstemious life he led manifested in the plain clothes he wore, and the egalitarian ideas he held about women. The Book Idea [ c h a p t e r t w e n t y - f o u r 24. the book idea [ 345 The biography paid tribute to Stoneman as the model citizen of the world. Testimonies of the loving husband and the good father were only implied. Stoneman had orchestrated his life primarily around community , directing its rhythm and progression when and where he believed he could. Douglas never seemed to begrudge him this arrangement in priorities, and father and daughter remained close in their own way. After moving to Coconut Grove, she continued to spend two or three evenings a week at the Spring Garden house playing checkers or reading books with him. Their relationship had achieved a level of shared comfort, with a salutary intellectual companionship and a mutual avoidance of touchy family subjects. It was typical that he never retired from the editor-in-chief post at the Herald. It was also typical that he did not leave a written record of his family. Instead, in the year leading up to his death, he began writing a column about his city’s past. Titled “Miami Memories,” it bequeathed to readers beloved renderings of the city’s history, its growing pains, and its adjustment to national and world events. Appropriately, funeral services were held at Trinity Episcopal Church, which he had helped found, and standing as his honor guard were the Knights Templar, proud gray-haired men in dress regalia from the James Canell Masonic Lodge, which he had also founded. When the pallbearers passed beneath the gabled row of drawn swords, lying atop the casket were Stoneman’s scabbarded sword and naval-style chapeau, festooned with snowy egret plumes. Lillias remained bedridden, so Marjory was the only family among the mourners, who included the mayor and Frank Shutts. Retired for four years after selling the Herald to the Knight family of Akron for $2.25 million, Shutts gave the eulogy, remembering Stoneman as a civic gentleman. “The people of Miami owe more to Frank Stoneman, much more, than they realize. His love for this city was a continually demonstrated fervor.” Shutts closed with a reference to the philosophical Stoneman , who had not feared death because he had enjoyed life. “No one has ever been able, yet, to look beyond the veil,” Shutts remembered Stoneman saying. “But whatever lies over there, whatever it is, no matter what, it is all right.” 346 ] part two Aunt Fanny had died three years earlier, and the two deaths brought an end to the rancor and grudges within Marjory’s family. Fanny left the Taunton house and fourteen thousand dollars she had relentlessly squirreled away over the years. In the midst of the national depression, the house sold for a miserable one thousand dollars, but Marjory’s portion of the estate, divided with her uncle, Charles Trefethen, and her cousins, enabled her to pay off the mortgage on her house. For all his efforts to do well, Frank’s estate was smaller. Marjory and Lillias shared $11,331 in cash, a car valued at $150...