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Activist Mannillo mourned
Conservationist developed reputation for
holding officials accountable
BY LAURIE KARNATZ
Citizen Staff Writer
Grace Mannillo
came to the Keys in 1976, and before retiring from public life a few
years ago, managed to help shape the islands' land-use and environmental
rules, as well as help bring a closed political system into the light.
Mannillo died
Friday at her Big Pine Key home. She was 84.
"She had such
a lively spirit and was a classic example of what a citizen in a free
society ought to do with their spare time," said Capt. Ed Davidson, a
long time Keys environmentalist who sat on the county zoning board — an
early incarnation of the planning commission — with Mannillo in the
1980s.
"She taught me
everything I know," said Alicia Putney, a former planning commissioner
and civic activist in her own right. "She taught me what to look for."
"She was
without a doubt the strongest, most honorable, caring person I met in my
time in the Keys," said Garth Coller, growth management attorney for the
county through much of the 1990s.
"We became
working buddies. She was a bright, interesting person," said Marie
Landry Shinkevich, herself an icon in the Keys for her civic work
spanning 30 years.
Mannillo and
Shinkevich, who developed a reputation for holding public officials
accountable, were sometimes called the Bobbsey Twins after the
characters in a series of popular children's' books.
"Grace was
fearless in her convictions about how public servants ought to behave
and wasn't above lecturing them like their grandmother, which she did
many times," said Davidson.
Some say the
presence of Mannillo and Shinkevich at public meetings in the late 1970s
and into the 1980s shook up the status quo, creating openings for future
generations of activists. Few went to meetings in those days, and fewer
still questioned the actions of appointed or elected officials, said
Putney.
"Nobody made
us know that they were uncomfortable particularly," said Shinkevich. "We
went to meetings when no one else did [because] we didn't feel the
development in the Keys should be ruining the Keys. We felt it should be
enhancing the Keys."
And that's
what they worked toward. Without Mannillo, Shinkevich and the last
member of their trio, Vern Pokorsky, it's possible that the Keys would
today look more like Miami Beach, said Putney.
Said Coller,
"Nobody could back her down from a position she thought she was right
on, and very few times was she wrong. She did her homework. Her
decisions were always very, very well founded and easily defensible"
from a legal standpoint.
And on both
the zoning board and later the planning commission, most decisions went
her way. More often than not, the board was in accord, with many of the
most controversial issues — she worked on the vacation rental ordinance
— being approved unanimously or 4-1.
Mannillo also
was known for a smile before a one liner that put many in their places.
On more than one occasion she suggested commissioners, or in some cases
developers pressing their cases, should "wash behind their ears more
often so they could hear better."
"We spoke up,"
Shinkevich said. "We got to the point where we were given copies of the
proposal for the land use plan to take home and read before the next
meeting of the [county commission] two weeks hence."
Much of their
input was incorporated into that plan, first by the Chicago attorney
hired by the county to prepare it, then by the county commission.
Among her many
accomplishments while in the Keys:
l Helped
create and get approval for a county ordinance in the early 1990s that
added neighborhood names to legal advertisements for planning and
development issues in those areas. Prior to that, only legal
descriptions had been used, making it difficult for the layman to
realize something was happening in his neighborhood.
l Worked
toward the implementation of the county's height restrictions, which
ultimately prevented high-rise condominiums from overtaking
unincorporated Monroe.
l Fought a
proposal to develop a large condominium, Ocean Walk, on Long Beach Road
at the east end of Big Pine Key.
She also sat
on public boards and organizations too numerous to mention, some
appointed locally and some by the governor.
But Mannillo
was much more than a civic activist in the Florida Keys, say her
friends. That was, in fact, the third incarnation of her adult life.
Born in Italy,
the daughter of Italian immigrants, she was always precocious, first
starting elementary school early, then going to Barnard College at the
age of 16 and graduating at 20.
In 1940, she
married Elmer J. Kortman, a military flight instructor, and in 1941
became the first woman accepted into the Civilian Pilot Training
Program, which was created by the government at the beginning of World
War II.
"That was a
pretty rare and striking kind of thing," said Davidson, himself a former
Navy fighter pilot. "So her independent spirit goes way back."
Mannillo had
earned her private, commercial and instructor pilot licenses by the
early 1940s, and during the war, while her first husband was teaching
Air Force cadets to fly, she served as an airport manager at two
different airports. She also was a flight instructor and did commercial
flying.
After the war,
for a time she worked for the government ferrying Air Force training
planes that had been sold to private companies and her husband became a
test pilot for Grumman. He died in a plane crash in 1946.
She took it in
stride, going back to school to become a teacher, and in 1948, married
Frederick J. Mannillo. The couple lived in Glen Cove, N.Y., where she
specialized in reading and bilingual education — long before it was
common in public schools. She retired in 1976 and the family moved to
Big Pine Key, where they had been spending vacations.
"She was a
leader and for someone in what looked to be a very frail body, she was
as tough as any human being I've ever known," said Coller.
Mannillo was
preceded in death by her youngest son, Frederick J. Mannillo Jr., an
environmental activist who has a nature trail in his honor on Big Pine
Key. Survivors include her husband, Frederick J. Mannillo Sr., and sons
Richard W. Mannillo of Wareham, Mass., and John E. Mannillo of St. Paul,
Minn.; three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
The family
will receive friends from 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday at Seven Seas Funeral
Home and Memorial Garden Cemetery Chapel on Big Pine. A memorial service
will be at 9:30 a.m. Thursday at the same location. Memorials may be
made to the Key Deer
Protection Alliance, P.O. Box 430224, Big Pine Key, FL 33043.
lkarnatz@keysnews.com
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