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Updated: November 30, 2024 @ 12:41 pm
#lighterside: Susan Loveland.
#lighterside: Susan Loveland.
When Susan Loveland was a child, her dad used to hoist her up on his shoulders and point out the constellations. He had been a celestial navigator during World War II and knew all the stars.
“Key Biscayne was a different place then,” recalls Susan today. “There was very little light from the mainland. The sky was so vivid – we’d look up and see a tapestry of stars.”
Susan was born into one of the Key’s pioneer families. Her parents bought one of the first Mackle houses, on West Enid Drive, in 1950.
When Susan was growing up, there was an unmistakable spirit of adventure on the Key. “There were kids everywhere and we had the run of the place,” she reminisces. “We slept on rooftops and backyard trampolines. When the moon was full, we’d head down the beach at midnight to look for ghosts in the lighthouse.”
“Most of us were the children of returning WWII veterans who bought houses on the GI bill,” she continues. “My dad had been a Prisoner of War and that affected him. He wanted his kids to have a better life – to be happy and free and healthy and running in the sunshine.”
“We were children of the ocean. We’d swim in the sea morning, noon, and night. There was a water skiing school at the Yacht Club – we learned to ski and sail prams at the age of five.”
She recalls the abundant marine life in Biscayne Bay. ”There were so many manatees that my mom would load up our prams with heads of cabbage and lettuce to feed them. The manatees would literally swim up to our boats and rock them and want us to scratch their heads. We loved it.”
But there comes a time when every child has to grow up. Once Susan got to high school, she began to think about what comes next. She had always been interested in medicine and decided to set her sights on nursing school, but saving for college was not easy.
Enter the Key Biscayne Women’s Club annual scholarship competition.
Susan entered in 1971 and recalls nervously attending interviews with the committee to talk about her career goals. There were twelve finalists that year and Susan was declared the winner.
A front page story in the Islander covered the news. And Susan, wearing a red-white-ane-blue tophat and grinning ear-to-ear, rode atop the Women’s Club float in the 4th of July Parade that year.
She shares how the scholarship changed her life. “The award gave me the boost in confidence I needed. I became more focused academically, and it gave me an incredible start towards attaining my career goals.”
She started at Florida State University before transferring to the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, where she received a Bachelors of Science in Nursing. She later went on to earn a Masters in Nursing at Nova University.
She became a nurse in the eight-bed Cardiac Care Unit at Jackson Memorial Hospital. Looking back now, she describes that time as “quite the adventure.” As she explains it, “there was lots of heart disease in younger people in those days, and we didn’t have the statins and other medications we have now.”
Since 1958, the Key Biscayne Women’s Club has been offering scholarships to deserving Key Biscayne students, including the children of parents who work on the Key. Fundraisers are held throughout the year, and scholarships are awarded in the Spring.
Susan credits winning the scholarship with motivating her to work hard and enabling her to pursue her dreams. Through the hard work of Women’s Club members and the generosity of so many who support their fundraising efforts, dreams have become reality not only for Susan, but also for hundreds of other Key Biscayne youth. The Women’s Club deserves our collective thanks.
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