Ft. Myers Magazine                                               January/February 2012


          RECOLLECTIONS AND RECIPES by Jeri Magg


KATIE GARDENIA’S EFFERVESCENT SMILE greets visitors to the Tower Art Gallery on Sanibel Island. Renown for wonderful doll sculptures, the artist has designed and written a new book, A Bubble Moment, about her experiences running a restaurant on Captiva. Proud of her gypsy heritage, Gardenia is quick to recount how life experiences have affected her art. “My grandparents came from Poland and ran a restaurant/bar in Cleveland. I was born next to the flower bin in the kitchen,” she chuckles. At age four, she and her parents moved to San Antonio. Years later, after her husband was killed, leaving her with a young baby, Gardenia needed money. Not able to support herself as a switchboard operator, she decided to start a home business designing handbags out of lunch kits. The successful business grew into a small corporation.

Her next foray as a risk taker was buying and renovating houses. “My grandmother always told me that the most important thing to have is a home. I’ve owned twenty-eight homes.” (Unfortunately, Gardenia lost her home on Sanibel to Hurricane Charley in 2004.)

A second marriage brought the almost-native Texan to Captiva in 1978. Stunned by the beauty of the island, she wanted to buy a place and turn it into a “fern bar.” Gardenia and her husband pursued the owners of a gift shop called The Owl and the Pussycat. Erudite and elusive, these folks preferred following a daily lunch of champagne and burgers at the Mucky Duck with a nap. “After many meetings, pleadings, and bribes (my famous cakes), we finally came to an arrangement.” However, there was a problem. Having never been in the restaurant business, the couple was clueless as to how to convert a gift shop into a restaurant. “We had less than $20,000 to perform this miracle,” states Gardenia.

Unable to afford converting the shop into a “fern bar” they decided to make do with less. “It was my gypsy spirit, the ability to land on my feet, whatever the outcome, which kept me going. ”Some of their money was spent on a used eight-burner stove that took Gardenia three weeks to clean. Wall decorations were made up of old movie and theater photos, framed in black and white along with treasured childhood toys. The final touch solved a lighting problem —their bankbook was empty — so old Christmas bubble lights were strung around the rooms. And so the name ‘Bubble Room’ was born. The fivetrain Lionel set was a last minute atmospheric addition.

On May 27, 1979, after placing flyers on cars in Bailey’s parking lot, the Bubble Room opened. Gardenia baked and cooked for three days, and was ready at 5:30pm for the onslaught, but no one darkened their doorstep. Finally at 7pm, the first customer arrived and by 8pm, the little place was full. She remains grateful for the neighborly spirit of the residents of Captiva. Aware of Gardenia’s limited funds, local workmen frequently allowed them extended time to pay bills, or bartered for dinners at the restaurant.

One of her favorite stories involves air conditioning, fish in a bag and the mayor. Soon after opening, the air conditioning quit. With no money, the couple distributed hand fans to all the customers as a gift upon arrival. One of the items on the menu was called ‘Eddie Fishermen,’ an eight-ounce filet of black grouper with secret toppings wrapped in parchment paper (except it was wrapped in aluminum foil). One night, after delivering the fish order, the waiter returned saying that the gentleman at table one wanted to talk to the chef. Fred Valtin, mayor of Sanibel, told her how he loved the dish but hated the presentation. “He told me to go to Bailey’s hardware, get a number four paper bag used for nails and a paint brush. Open the bag, put it over my hand, then brush the inside with vegetable oil, put the fish in, close and bake. Voila”, she said, “fish in the bag.”


Their bankbook was empty — so old Christmas bubble lights were strung around the rooms. And so the name ‘Bubble Room’ was born.


A Bubble Moment was a labor of love. “The book brought closure to that time in my life. I’ll never forget the funny and sad things. It’s not a cook book, but a piece of art, ready for any coffee table,” she contends. “A combination of old recipes and clues for a treasure hunt, it’s something that makes my friends and admirers happy.”

Gardenia left the island in 1989 after the sale of the restaurant and moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico. “Things didn’t work out like I planned.” Again single, she returned to Captiva and began reading palms, a technique she’d learned from her gypsy relatives. During this time she started sculpting her dolls and was able to combine artistic talent with her love of the fantasy world. The dolls, constructed from all natural materials, have jointed bodies that move. The eyes are made with silk embroidery floss and acrylic paint and the faces are colored with German dried chalk fixed with fabric spray for permanency.


The dolls, constructed from all natural materials, have jointed bodies that move.
Her meticulous attention to detail is one of the reasons the dolls are so remarkable. To date, she has created well over two thousand individual figures of art that are cherished by collectors all over the world. Not content with sculpting alone, Gardenia opened and operated Katie Gardenia’s Mermaid Kitchen on Sanibel from 2001-2003. Her legendary cakes have been the focus of private parties and public events throughout Southwest Florida.

Today the artist/baker/restaurateur has taken on a new challenge — dancing with the island stars. On January 28, Katie will be on stage at the Sanibel Community Center as one of the talents at the third annual event. “I love to dance and am honored to be helping to raise funds for this wonderful Sanibel institution.”

When asked what she’d tell people about her life, she pauses a moment and smiles, “I wouldn’t trade any of my experiences, each has helped me grow. But while I’m sewing my dolls, I meditate and wonder what I can give back. I hope it’s my art with its dreamlike quality. I never gave up on my dreams.” •

MARCO FILMMAKER BUCKS HOLLYWOOD        by Jeri Magg

     The jingle of spurs, a shot in the dark, and a man lies dead. A cowboy is wrongly accused as three men hop a fast train out of town. Another ho-hum western bites the dust. Not this western.

     JERICHO, directed by Marco Island resident, Merlin Miller, follows the traditional values of classic Hollywood westerns, with a story worth remembering that has good triumphing over evil. It’s been a hard won battle for Miller, who’s fought against the Hollywood behemoth, to finally get it on the screen.

     The film won the Crystal Palm Award for best feature at the Marco film Festival in 2000. It also took First Place in the feature category at the Western Film Competition of the National Festival of the West in 2001.

     Why haven’t you seen it at the movies? It took him three years to get the film rated and find a distributor.

     The Motion Picture Association of America slapped an ‘R’ rating on Jericho, which meant ‘sudden death’ for the foreign market. Miller appealed the MPPA rating, and won a ‘PG’ rating, the first time in 40 years that a director had won an appeal to a MPPA rating.

     Even though the film did exceptionally well in limited wide-screen release, major distributors were reluctant to take it on because it wasn’t part of the Hollywood establishment. Miller finally switched gears, and negotiated with Monarch Home Video, the largest independent video distributor in the U.S., for video release. Now Jericho will appear on cable movie channels, is available on home video, and will soon be available to foreign markets.

     “We were bucking the system,” muses Miller, “making an inexpensive film that appealed to family audiences.” Bucking the system is Miller’s modus operandi.

Growing up in Des Moines, Iowa, Miller’s first taste of the movie business came at a local cinema where he worked as an usher. Walt Disney was his idol. After graduating from West Point in 1974, he married and went to work in air defense, learning how to man missile systems that would shoot down enemy aircraft. He left the military as a captain and decided that it was time for a change, moving to South Carolina where he worked as an engineer for a tire company.

     He finally got a break and was accepted to the Peter Stark Motion Picture Producing Program at the University of Southern California. Miller interned at Paramount Studios for a summer and continued working there after graduation in 1985. To gain experience for producing films using limited resources, he worked breaking down budgets, and keeping productions on schedule for low-budget horror and action films. He then worked on the production of Witness, starring Harrison Ford.

     Through all the frustrating years when money was tight, he credits his wife, Suzie, with helping to support the family as a teacher.

     Fed up with LA, and looking for a better place to raise his family, Miller moved to Missouri in 1993 where he taught film and media courses at several colleges. That’s where he wrote, produced and directed his first film A Place to Grow, for less than $1 million dollars. The film featured Wilford Brimley and Gary Morris, and was favorably reviewed and selected as one of the ‘Best of the Fest,’ at the Santa Barbara Film Festival.

     Miller and his family moved to Marco Island, Florida in 1998 where a number of his friends from West Point were living. That year, he and some of his former classmates formed Black Knight Productions as an alternative to Hollywood. Black Knight’s mission is to produce low cost, high quality films with stories promoting American values.

     Miller feels that “Hollywood has lost sight of the fact that quality story telling is what filmmaking should be about.” Jericho was Black Knight’s first venture.

     Bucking the system has paid off. Merlin’s success with Jericho has allowed him to move on to his next project, a film with a contemporary focus. “It’s an action film full of romance and intrigue. Kind of in the Tom Clancy mode, with the lead as a young Errol Flynn type, bigger than life, fun loving but true-blue,” explains Miller. The script, which should be completed by the end of the year, mixes a West Point graduate, the Russian Mafia, Afghanistan, special ops, and a machine that makes perfect diamonds, and stirs up quite a tale. Miller got the idea after visiting a warehouse in Florida where a roomful of Russian-designed machines spit out 3-carat diamond roughs 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

     Miller’s enthusiasm for the film making process is undaunted. He’s currently negotiating a cable series, looking for more scripts, and lining up backers for his new film.

     Merlin Miller’s attitude is typical of today’s independent filmmakers. No matter what, he’s going to make the kind of films that have entertained audiences for years with good stories reminiscent of a Golden Age in Hollywood.  •

HISTORICALLY SPEAKING                              BY JERI MAGG

Before the advent of the computer, Internet and text books, cultural knowledge was passed down from generation to generation by storytelling, a process that made history more appealing.

With this column, it’s my hope to chronicle the colorful past of people and places on Sanibel and Captiva by spinning tales that will amuse and educate the reader.

Let’s begin by recounting the life of one of the islands’ foremost pioneer women and the house she built.

Laetitia Ashmore Nutt - Sanibel Pioneer

Laetitia Ashmore, one of 15 children, was born in Woodford County, Kentucky in 1835. A stunning beauty at 22, she married Leroy Mancure Nutt, a well-born Virginia gentleman. When the Civil War broke out, Nutt was authorized by the governor of Louisiana to raise a company of Conferderate partisan rangers.

Refusing to be separated from her beloved husband, Laetitia and their three small daughters drove two mule-team wagons through deadly battlegrounds, thick forests and raging rivers to follow the rangers.

In Courageous Journey, Laetitia’s journal account of her two-year trek, she offers very personal insights into the war and the condition of the countryside. She notes her frustration with her mules. “After we crossed the first deep bayou, they (mules) jumped up the bank in such haste they broke both single trees and left us backing into the water.”

The rainy weather, sour water, moldy food and sleepless nights shaped her character into an even more gritty and tough-minded woman.  She and her daughters found rooms in close proximity to the Confederate camps. Neither her children’s illnesses nor dangerous cannon fire could deter Laetitia from meeting her “darling” husband.

Undaunted by her surroundings, Laetitia remained a proper Southern lady. Even in time of war, Southern hospitality must not be forgotten. When the size of her boarding rooms permitted, she entertained many callers. Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis were often part of her “soirees.”

Captain Nutt was captured on January 11, 1863, at Arkansas Post, Louisiana. After bullying the prison warden where Captain Nutt was held, Laetitia was allowed inside.

The Nutt family on the porch of Gray Gables, the home built by Laetitia Nutt on Sanibel Island.

Until his release on May 4, 1863, Laetitia stayed by his side to nurse and care for him, leaving occasionally to visit her daughters who were living with a family friend.  Indomitable during the war years, the South’s defeat dealt her a bitter blow and she never forgave the Northerners or President Lincoln for the hardships in the South.

After the war, the Nutts traveled to Shreveport, Louisiana, where Leroy became a lawyer and later state senator. Their girls grew up surrounded by music, dance and people of culture. Laetitia proved to be a possessive and controlling mother. Her oldest daughters, Cordie and Lettie, chose to fall in love with men objectionable to their mother, so they never married. Nannie, the youngest, married late in life.

In the winter of 1882, Laetitia’s round-the-clock nursing could not save her husband from succumbing to cholera.  An inconsolable Laetitia tried to carry on, but a few years after, a fire destroyed her home and most of her possessions. Facing financial ruin, she had little choice but to become a truck farmer and headed south to Sanibel Island.

Laeticia and her daughters homesteaded 109 acres along the Gulf beach and built a house called Gray Gables. Ten acres was all a person could reasonably tend, so she sold off a portion of the land for $10 to $25 an acre. Before long, she and her daughters were again comfortably well off.

Gray Gables is still owned by Laetitia Nutt's descendants. This is how it looks today on West Gulf Drive.

Laetitia became an integral part of the island by starting the Sanibel Home School in 1885. She took boarders and day students into her house, using the second floor for classrooms and guest rooms. This remarkable lady was also appointed the first postmistress on Sanibel on July 3, 1889.

She died in 1914 and is buried in the cemetery behind Gray Gables, next to her brother and mother-in-law. Her daughters, Cordie, Lettie and Nannie, later organized the Fort Myers Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in their mother’s name.

Today, Gray Gables is still occupied by members of her family. The house stands as a monument to this strong-willed woman who loved so deeply and lived life as a proper daughter of the Confederacy. Hers is a story of love and devotion to a cherished husband and a treasured lifestyle.