Tag Archives: Brevard County

Abundant Connections

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Today, I was working in my yard. It is something that I love to do. Our property on Sewall’s Point, very close to the bridges to Hutchinson Island, happens to have once been divided by the county line between first, Dade and Brevard, then Palm Beach and St. Lucie County.

I placed the little statue at the corner of our property where the section lines crosses.

For years I have had a sign on a palm tree at the corner of our property declaring this.

The little concrete statue once belonged to Michelle Coutant.

Eleven years ago, I stopped at a yard sale on Indian Street near Old St. Lucie Boulevard. Norie Neff, the daughter of Dorothy and Clyde Coutant was selling the property that had been her family’s for many years.

I can see this statue from my window over the kitchen sink.

It was Norie’s grandmother, Aura Fike Jones, who secured the statue “Abundance” that now stands in Haney Circle.

This image was in a Stuart Woman’s Club scrapbook that belongs to Norie Neff. Perhaps it was a photo Aura Fike Jones’s son , Larry, who knew about the statue sent to her suggesting it would “add a bit of glamor to Stuart.”
The statue “Abundance” did not find its way to Haney Circle where it was originally to be placed in 1950 until Stuart was revitalized in 1991.

A small concrete statue, similar to Abundance, was in the yard sale. It had belonged to Norie’s late sister, Michelle. I bought the statue because of my many connections to the Coutant family in my “world of regional history,” as well of its symbolic connection to the beautiful statue that stands in downtown Stuart.  I placed the statue near the former county line and it has remained there.

Abundant connections bring me much pleasure.