FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH AND WALDO SEXTON

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Waldo Sexton, eccentric pioneer, cattleman, orange grove owner and real estate developer of Vero Beach, has a surprising association with First Presbyterian Church.

 

In 1923, Waldo Sexton and Arthur McKee organized the Royal Park Development Company to build a large subdivision. The plans included 1,000 lots on about 400 acres of land north of today’s 21st Street which now includes the Vero Beach Country Club and 8 acres of the First Presbyterian church property. The main thoroughfare, Royal Palm Boulevard, was originally lined with Royal Palm trees – some of which still stand on the western part of the development. Long time Vero Beach residents indicate that when route US 1 was laid out, the Army Corp of Engineers put a bend in the road to avoid bisecting these grand trees on Royal Palm Boulevard. Local lore also tells us this is why the bend in the east-west section of US 1 is called ‘Miracle Mile’ and from that name came the Miracle Mile shopping Plaza.

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In 1954, First Presbyterian founding families purchased the undeveloped eastern part of the planned subdivision to build a church. On the ‘point’ of this property was a collection of stately Royal Palm trees. One of them has survived and is temporarily transplanted near the Center for Christian Life building. It will be replanted, accompanied by a number of new Royal Palms, for the new Sanctuary. The memory of Waldo Sexton’s Royal Palm Plantation will live on as part of the final landscaping design.

 

Bells were an obsession with Waldo and he collected over two hundred and fifty of them from old churches, locomotives, schools, farmhouses and ships from the United States and Europe. Sexton decorated his business with the bells in McKee Jungle Gardens, The Patio, The Ocean Grill and The Driftwood Inn – where the bells would be rung to announce comings and goings of guests. As time passed and his business holding grew smaller, Waldo would give bells to any church in Indian River County that asked. Architectural plans from the old First Presbyterian Church Sanctuary showed three mismatched bells from McKee, and Oslo (where Sexton owned property). The three bells were ornamental and did not ring in the original church’s Bell Tower. All three of these church bells were likely a gift from Waldo Sexton before his passing in 1967.

 

The cast iron bell restored by Proctor Construction company lacks foundry markings and wheel. This diameter of iron bells was commonly used outside of one room school houses following the Civil War. (Ship and locomotive bells were usually made of brass, iron farm bells were smaller in diameter and church bells usually had more elegant castings.) The hard wear marks on the interior indicate this bell was heavily used – supporting the theory that it was a school bell. Unfortunately, the two other church bells were beyond repair. The restored bell will be on display at the church campus and saved for potential incorporation into the Phase III construction of a planned new Chapel building.