Doc's Dream – Part Two

When amiable realtor Chris Middlebrook last saw Isles of Capri founder Doc Loach, he probably didn’t realize that a changing of the guard was in the offing. Loach had been in poor health for years. And his strong-willed wife Rosanna Loach, who was every bit Doc’s equal, was in her twilight years. Middlebrook, an ambitious young man in his mid-20s, had already won over the close-knit community shortly after arriving and had worked with Rosanna Loach in 1979. Whether or not he realized it, Middlebrook was ready to take up the gauntlet and lead Isles of Capri into the future.

"I remember we had a civic association meeting,” Chris Middlebrook said. "Doc was still alive, and we had him come down. He couldn't speak, but we all were able to honor him and we had this picture. A nice painting by an artist on Capri. We gave that to him, and it was hung up in the Capri Community Center. I remember him standing up there and we were all clapping. And Rosanna had given the background and everything about Doc. He had tears coming down. He couldn't talk, but he definitely knew what was happening. It was a very touching time.”

Middlebrook had been a police officer in Pennsylvania before landing on Isles of Capri as a 24-year-old. Blessed with the ability to make people feel like he's happy to see them every time they meet, Middlebrook had a personality Capri townsfolk found as comfortable as an old shoe. The fact that he was Chief of the Isles of Capri Volunteer Fire Department only bolstered his standing in the community.

"I think that's just my personality,” Middlebrook reflects. "And I think people kind of trusted it, with me living there and being involved in the fire department. They kind of trusted what I said. And that really helped me in the business because real estate agents didn't have a much better reputation than a used car salesman. And it was one of those things to overcome. And then being young, being in my middle 20s, it worked out good for me. But I like people. And the people on Capri were just great. And every house I sold, literally, they became a friend. It truly was one of those things where, if somebody didn't know something, then they would go see Chris, or we had lots of times where people got hurt and instead of calling for help, they'd come into my office with their hands bloody or a fish hook in cheek or cut off finger or whatever it was, because it was easier just to come down there and then go from there with it. It was the general store type. People would come in and just find out what's going on and tell me what's going on. And there wasn't a lot of people to talk to back in the beginning.”

Mark Creighton moved to the Isles of Capri from Martinsville, Indiana, in 1973 with his parents Eleanor and Bob, and younger brother Eric. Already an avid outdoorsman, Creighton must have felt like he had died and gone to heaven when his family moved to Isles of Capri.

"I was 13,” Mark Creighton said, "and the very last day of eighth grade, I walked out of the door, walked to the end of the sidewalk, got in the family station wagon, and we drove to Isles of Capri. That was the end of May in 1973. It was like the best place I ever lived in my life. Best summer of my life. All I did all day was fish and swim in the river, ride my bike around the island a little bit. Go to Poor Paul's to buy shrimp. Back then, you could buy a dozen shrimp for a dollar and a quarter.”

Visitors to modern day Isles of Capri know Poor Paul's building as today's popular restaurant Pelican Bend. Poor Paul's was a combination marina and general store owned by Paul Winchell, a tall, middle-aged Florida Cracker type. Winchell seemed to have an inherent distrust of the local teenagers. He was always ready to exchange barbs with the local kids, who probably liked to hang out in the store a little more than he liked. He questioned whether the pop bottles they were turning in for deposit - or more likely being traded in for candy - were stolen from his back room. “I saw some kids in there this morning,” he once said.

"He was just a salty old guy that always seemed like he was grumpy,” Creighton said. "That's the thing I most remember about Paul. He never had a good thing to say about anybody that I remember. But, you know, he was always reliable for snacks and cokes and stuff. And I remember for a period of time, our hangout at night was the phone booth in front of poor Paul's Marina because it had a light.”

There are very few street lights on Isles of Capri to this day. It’s part of its subtropical island ambiance.

Pelican Bend owner Mike Cooper commented about Poor Paul’s in a 2020 interview with the Coastal Breeze News (Pelican Bend is Still the Same & That’s a Good Thing). Cooper arrived on Isles of Capri in 1979.

“It was rough and rowdy,” Mike Cooper laughed. “It had a pool table, a pinball machine and an old air conditioner hanging out of the wall that worked sometimes. They sold a little bit of food, some sandwiches. It was more of a pool hall, and they sold bait. They had a little skiff out back. The parking lot had some old boat trailers in it and it was kind of overgrown and weedy.”

Creighton liked the 1970s version of the Isles.

"Isles of Capri was like old Florida,” he remembers, “It was an old Florida small island, classic old Florida houses on canals, quick access. There was nothing big and grand over there. It had a small seafood restaurant and had a little small Marina. It was old Florida, the way I view 1950s old Florida. People weren't uptight. Everybody was loose and friendly. And as a kid, you could run up and down the seawalls on the river, across backyards, and nobody said a word.”

Of course, the river Creighton references is the Marco River, which lies between Isles of Capri and Marco Island. The snook fishing in the 1970s could best be described as excellent.

“All along the river there were docks,” Creighton said. “And you would ask people permission to fish on their docks. And I knew which docks were the best docks. And I'd go hit them at night. Most people would let you go on their docks. And you could sneak on a dock once in a while. I'd sneak on docks all the time because I was out at 3:00 in the morning. But that's back when you could walk up to a snook light and see 40 snook lying under your dock. Back then, the limit was four snook a night, and it was nothing to limit out every night. I caught my first what I consider a big snook - about a 10 or 12-pounder - with a Calcutta pole with a finger mullet on it. And I was so proud of it that I walked into my mom and dad's bedroom at like two in the morning and turned the lights on and said, 'Look at this!' Dad still used to talk about that until he died.”

Creighton remembers Isles of Capri in the 1970s as the perfect place to grow up.

“All the big fun we had as kids,” he said, "we had boats with outboard motors to run around all the backwaters. That was like a dream come true. Capri was the best place to grow up and play. We used to play football under the streetlights at night on Pelican Street. Played hide and seek at night.”

Middlebrook said business on the Isles could be very slow in the early years.

"I remember at one point in like 1981, I had five months where no one walked through my office door,” Middlebrook said. “It was weird. I was getting nervous. Five months and not one customer. Not one. We had residents that would come in and see how you were doing. I had lots of people come in the office, especially when I moved over to the Driftwood Realty building because I bought that building five years after I started, around 1984.”

“Once I moved into that building, that’s when it became like the old general store where residents would stop in and sit down and we'd always have coffee,” Middlebrook said. “And I had one of those Spunkmeyer cookie machines. So they were always cooking, and they would come in and sit down and shoot the breeze. So lots of people came in for other things."

Middlebrook changed the name of the Driftwood Realty building to Christopher Realty. The building is now known as Capri Realty, where Jeri Neuhaus has been the owner since 2003.

"I went to work for Christopher Realty,” Neuhaus said. "Chris no longer owned it. Chris called me one day and said, 'I really don't like the direction it's going in. You ought to buy it if you can.' So I did. I bought the company and I took ownership in January of 2003. So it's been 20 years.”

The relationship between Isles of Capri and Marco has never been contentious, but it has taken different shapes over the decades.

“It was almost to me an extension of Marco Island,” said Creighton, whose mother Eleanor was manager of the Marco Island Country Club and the Surf Club, Deltona Corporation’s only foray into the timesharing business. Deltona developed Modern Marco starting in the mid-1960s. Deltona built and operated the Marco Beach Hotel (now the JW Marriott), the Marco Island Yacht Club, the Marco Island Country Club, and the Marine Ecology Lab. The Marine Ecology Lab was located on the property on North Barfield Drive that is now home to the Sheriff’s Substation. “Isles of Capri was the suburb of Marco Island,” Creighton said. "And Isles of Capri was better than Marco Island. Now, why do I say that? Because it had a small island feel."

"We always had a little competition with Marco and the people on Marco,” Middlebrook said. "It was either you like Marco or you like Capri. Many times people came in the office and I would actually try to talk them out of moving to Capri because I just didn't think they would fit. They were looking for more of that country club atmosphere. The few people that did move there that didn't like it ended up moving back to Marco within a year or two. So there was a different way of thinking for the people that lived on Capri. It was not as fancy, and it was a little more of a fishing town that was never meant to be anything but a fishing retreat for people. You'd never expect it to be what it turned out to be.”