“They were in a sense pioneers, these year-round settlers who came to Naples in the early 1930s, ’40s and ’50s. They didn’t fight savages, but they did fight mosquitoes, snakes and the wilderness beyond.”

Naples City Clerk Tara Norman called me not long ago with some wonderful news. She had discovered a cache of information about The Naples Plan. “No wonder we could never find anything about it,” she told me. “It’s held under its original name: ‘The Make Naples a Better Place to Live to Live Plan.'”

Cracker is one of the oldest “epithets” for hardworking, white Southerners who have an abiding tie to the land. For many, there is a mystery to the origin of a word that might be described best through lifestyles than by its historical development.

The Education Foundation of Collier County has received the highest rating, four stars, from Charity Navigator, an independent charity evaluator. The fourstar rating is achieved by only 25 percent of all evaluated charities, indicates that The Education Foundation is operating in the most fiscally responsible way. Co-chairs of the foundation are Todd Bradley and Sharon Treiser; president is Susan McManus.