The other day, I heard a phrase about facing a challenge: "Look for the light."
This past hurricane season challenged the Gulf Coast of Florida and elsewhere. On Anna Maria Island we faced three storms in a brief time. Our historic (more about that in a moment), seventy-four-year-old home, weathering storms for decades, was humbled by the storm surge from Helene as she passed the island one hundred miles west in the Gulf of Mexico. While our home survived, I described our experience as "bloodied but unbowed." It suffered enough that a necessary restoration is underway.
In the aftermath of Helene and her companion Milton just two weeks later, Anna Maria Island has regained its stamina and is being restored, renovated, and rebuilt. "AMI Strong" is our battle cry. The leader of my real estate office, Darcie Duncan, suffered substantial damage to both our offices and her home, yet spent the days following Helene's surge leading an effort to get for our community cleaning and building supplies, food, and clothing, all to a central location, The Center of Anna Maria Island. She later led the organization of a community Thanksgiving dinner at The Center, attended by hundreds of AMI's strong. With its staff and volunteers, the Center made clear its role as a true community asset.
I mentioned my family's historic home, built in 1950 by a then locally famous person. As the third owner, our family hired a Frank Lloyd Wright Taliesen Fellow to design improvements after our purchase 27 years ago. As we restore it, we see its quality and resilience. We see the strength of the community around us, the intrigue of the island, and the reality of its good life. Storms are a part of it, a challenge, but there is light that follows.
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The author of this post is Tom Aposporos, a licensed real estate broker in both Florida and New York. In a business career of more than four decades, he also served as mayor of his home city, a commissioner in his adopted island city, and chaired a publicly-owned bank through a period of financial recovery. These experiences have enhanced his knowledge and have brought an additional dimension to his real estate career.
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