Author Archives: Lois A. Bolin, Ph.D.

I’ve always been told the third time’s a charm, and I’ve always wondered why this is so.

Under English law, anyone who survived three hanging attempts was to be set free (with a lifetime supply of turtlenecks, I hope). This adage stems from John “Babbacombe” Lee, a sailor who was convicted of murder in 1885 and survived three execution attempts. His sentence was commuted, and subsequently he became known as The Man They Couldn’t Hang. He died finally in the 1940s.

In 1974 Henry Kissinger said, “As a professor, I tended to think of history as run by impersonal forces. But when you see it in practice, you see the difference personalities make.”

It’s impossible to come to Naples and not think of water: the Gulf, Wiggins Pass, Gordon Pass, Naples Bay, Gordon River, Haldeman Creek — the list goes on. These waters were the very life source of sustainability and safety for early inhabitants, and today these same waters are essential to the city’s identity and quality of life.

“Few counties in modern times have been created with a smaller population and less developed resources in so large an area (as Collier County).” That’s according to Charles Tebeau in “Florida’s Last Frontier: The History of Collier County.”