Support for this program provided by Howard K. and Nancy B. Cohen, the Jack Forté Foundation, and the following: It is a fragile existence that we live here on Sanibel in the state of Florida.

We're a peninsula in the Gulf of Mexico.

Were very vulnerable to the weather.

We're very vulnerable to rising tides.

Our biggest threat to our community and our way of life is the development of Florida.

Richard Johnson and his family own Bailey's General Store, the oldest store on Sanibel Island.

The family business has endured multiple storms since 1899.

In 2022, its longevity was tested yet again with Hurricane Ian.

Islanders fled as the Category 4 storm barreled toward Sanibel.

OK, hold on, kitties.

[meow] I know, I know.

The dire forecasts came to fruition.

A 13-foot storm surge overtook the small island.

The powerful water and wind damaged or destroyed, thousands of homes and businesses.

Ian's force washed out sections of the Sanibel Causeway, the only road to the mainland.

Sanibel was battered and broken.

A symbol of hope emerged.

The historic lighthouse survived.

The Johnson family was among the flotilla of islanders who returned by boat to assess the damage.

The store pretty much looked intact, And I looked at my daughter, Calli, and said, hey, this is not that bad.

I think we're going to be OK.

I said back to him, I don't think so.

You need to come inside.

I was not prepared for what I saw.

You can see we had water up all the way to the ceiling here.

When we saw the waterline pretty much above my dad's head, and everything was upended, I knew that this would be a really long road.

The island was in limbo after Ian, the worst hurricane to hit Sanibel in a century.

Residents faced tough decisions amid uncertainty and threats of more powerful storms.

Sanibel, its founding families and the island's iconic store were at a crossroads.

I think since the storm, we have seen, every emotion every single day.

And I think that weve, as an island, just pushed it down and plugged a, plugged away.

The year after Hurricane Ian, islanders were in the thick of recovery when Baileys Shopping Center and store were demolished.

When that store came down, it was an, an emotional moment for the entire island and it allowed us a chance to, to mourn.

Not having the store sitting at the corner over there, is, it's a very odd experience.

You know, you need some bolts for something at the house.

Well, I'm just going to run down to Bailey's and get it.

And then you stop and you can't run down the Bailey's and get it.

The center had housed the third iteration of Bailey since the 1960s.

The family's first store was also destroyed by a hurricane.

A history of island resiliency can be traced through Bailey's General Store.

Without Bailey's, Sanibel would just be like any other Florida town.

Bailey's was a very integral part of the whole evolution of Sanibel.

And Francis Bailey was the most welcoming person imaginable.

Francis, part of the second of four generations on Sanibel, was the island's grocer for most of his life.

I think he really cared about it.

And that was kind of like one of his kids.

He, he did everything he could for that place.

Frances Bailey is actually my hero.

Hes the personification of the community of Sanibel in so many ways that we, I would call him the the forever mayor of Sanibel.

Its been my home forever.

And it just well, its home, that's it.

and its just its, part of, its part of me, a whole heck of a lot of me.

Francis' father and uncles were the first generation.

They came to Florida in the 1890s from Kentucky to farm after their family's tobacco business went bust.

There were three Bailey brothers on the island.

Frank, Harry, and Ernest.

Ernest arrived first.

And he wrote back to his brothers that I've got a great place for us to move mom and the family to this island called Sanibel.

And that's where the story begins.

[banjo music] Well, in many cases, ah there were people that, that and I think thats partially, partially if not totally true of my family, that they were had sort of reached the end of their rope in a way and, and looking for a fresh start.

Its like people that went out West, people came down here.

Back then, many islanders farmed to survive.

One of the reasons the land was so open was probably storm surge from hurricanes.

Back in the 1800s, we had a couple of them that were 14-foot storm surge, very similar to Ian.

So you have kind of salt-infused soil, that is one of the reasons that the vegetables were particularly, good tasting.

The Sanibel tomato became the star of plates up North, where it was a revelation to get a fresh tomato in the wintertime.

And the people in New York got to know our tomatoes from Sanibel Island.

And they would go in the store and actually, in New York City and ask for Sanibel tomatoes.

At the time, there was no bridge to Sanibel.

People and their necessities were shuttled by boat.

In 1899, Frank Bailey, Francis father, founded the Sanibel Packing Company, the precursor to the general store.

But somebody had to order the mules, the plows, the fertilizer, the seeds, the overalls, the white bacon, the grits, the beans and shovels, hoes, seeds, whatever it needed to be done.

And it evolved into a store.

The store sat on a large wharf on the bay from there, boats shipped island crops to places like Key West, Havana, and New Orleans.

The Bailey business grew and so did the family.

Francis father, Frank Bailey, married Annie Mead Matthews.

Her family ran the Matthews Hotel, which later became the Island Inn.

The hotel was an oasis for winter visitors, who relished the beaches and fishing.

In 1921, Frank and Annie welcomed Frances, the first of three sons.

The Baileys were doing well.

They were landowners during the real estate boom of the 1920s.

And a lot of subdivisions were being plotted out on the island, including one from the Bailey family.

But the bubble burst in the aftermath of a destructive storm.

The 1926 hurricane was a distinct turning point in the island's history.

The Great Miami hurricane claimed hundreds of lives.

After annihilating Miami, it plowed west, through the Everglades, and toward Sanibel.

It just skirted the coast and Sanibel sticks out into the Gulf.

So, it captures the worst of, of what's going on.

When the eye passed over the island, Bailey's employees tried to salvage cases of vegetables.

In a lull of the storm after the store had gone, we carried stuff out of the warehouses and put it in what they called a tea room, and that was right on the shore there.

That's when the eye was on.

So it didn't take it long, had to work pretty fast.

The storm surge inundated the island.

For many farmers, it was a final blow.

And you had a lot of people who had been farming that just said, Whats the point?

It's time to stop, you know, I can sell the land instead of cleaning this up.

The Category 4 storm forced half of the island's residents to relocate.

The general store was destroyed.

The family rebuilt, not far from the first location.

But this time on shore.

Because island life revolved around the docks.

Other landmarks had to be rebuilt too.

I guess you could say that rebuilding was easier because it wasn't built as well.

For example, the little post office was built entirely out of recycled materials because they just pulled it out of the mangroves and hammered it back up.

The natural disaster was followed by a financial one.

The Great Depression began in 1929.

Frank Bailey accepted credit at the store.

He wouldn't give tobacco and and other things ah, when the, when their charge account got outta line.

But he never turned anybody down for food.

People gave him land as repayment, and the Baileys came to own more of the island.

During the decade- long depression, the island felt empty.

And if a car went by and you didnt recognize sound Youd run at the window and say, who in the hell is on the island?

Somebody new, somebody new is on the island.

In the absence of many other children, the second generation of Bailey brothers, Francis, John and Sam, were each other's most reliable friends.

We went to swamps and played baseball in the wintertime.

And we like the beach in the summertime.

Remember when they had the streaking?

Well, we originated that.

What we would do was, is we would go to the bay or the Gulf, and run up in the bushes take all our clothes off and run like heck for the water.

It wasn't because we worried about anybody seeing us, we was just trying to get away from mosquitos.

While Sam was the family storyteller, Francis was the expert on mosquitoes.

A torment more aggravating than the heat.

Youd count hundreds of mosquitoes on your arm if you had to hold, hold yourself still for a few minutes.

And I remember when I went away to school, and some guy said, I couldn't sleep last night, I had a mosquito in my room.

I just burst out laughing.

A mosquito?

Like the Baileys, other island families run generations deep.

The Gavins arrived around 1917.

Not long after came the Walkers.

The families blended with the marriage of Edmund Gavin and Elnora Walker, who had 20 children.

Mom and dad, the baby and, whoever was next to the baby, lived in one room, the girls lived in one room and the boys lived in one room.

And I can remember, um four boys being in one room, one bed, you know, two heads down here and two heads down here And we had to deal with stink feet.

I do remember that.

Sanibels Black residents did critical work.

They cared for children, tended crops, and helped develop the island, working jobs like construction.

And even some of the white families that were here on Sanibel, if it wasn't for the Gavins and the Walkers, they wouldn't have been able to stay because we supported them so much, with helping their properties to be maintained.

Black residents also supported tourism, which had become an essential part of the Sanibel economy.

Despite such contributions, those residents were subjected to legal segregation into the mid-century.

The Gavin brothers recalled when the island had separate schools for white and Black children.

We walked to school and the white kids rode to school on the bus.

At that time, when it rained and there was puddles of water in the road, you'd see the bus coming, big yellow coming, and we'd try to get ahead of the water puddle and get off the road so we wouldn't get splashed.

But now the bus driver and her husband were good friends of our family.

But yet she couldn't pick us up, and give us a ride, even though we played together.

But that was the law.

Yet islanders relied on each other, no matter their color.

The bus drivers family and the Gavins shared fish and went alligator hunting.

I was on the back of the truck and they gonna put the alligator on the back of the truck.

And I said, No, um um Ill walk back home first.

I'm not gonna ride on the back of the truck with no kind of alligator.

And they let me ride up front.

But, you know, we, we got along real well, you know.

The Gavins also traded food with the Woodrings, another early family on the island.

They would kill a hog and they'd tell us, you know, were gonna kill a hog, come out there and be with us.

So we went, and ah, we'd always try to take them some fish.

Sometimes we had more fish than we knew what to do with we'd figure out a way to get it to them.

Because think about it, there was no damn telephone.

There was no road from here.

My dad was a fisherman, ah, fishing guide and a bootlegger.

and ah, mean as a damn horned toad.

Ralph's father, Sam Woodring, was a character.

His mother, Esperanza, was a legend.

She worked many jobs after Ralph's father died, and was revered as one of the best fishing guides around, at a time when she was the only woman guiding.

If she liked you, you could get in her boat, and she'd put up with you all day long.

Or if she didn't like you, she wouldnt take you at all.

There was a lawyer from Minnesota, had a big loud mouth.

And so she took him out a time or two and she had him up in the creek there, in the mangroves.

He had hooked his lure, I think, stood up, was scrambling out there trying to get it.

She jumped up Wait a minute, wait a minute.

And he fell the hell overboard.

[splashing] So he come back and he told all his friends, you know, she pushed him in the water.

And she said, you know, if I ever get him in my boat again, Im gonna hit him with my poling oar.

The respected angler fished barefoot, even as her doctor begged her to slow down.

She said, man, just as long as I can crawl down on my G-d damn boat, I'm going fishing, now, don't give me all that.

And she did.

While residents worked the sea and land, they often ended up at Bailey's General Store.

My mother used to, every day, she would go Baileys store.

He closed at five and shed show up 10, 15 minutes after five.

Bailey knew she was coming, and hed hang around and wait for her and let her come in and get what she wanted, and then hed close and leave.

By then, Francis Bailey, the eldest of the second generation, was in charge of the general store.

His path to grocery man wasn't direct.

Francis had left the island for prep school, then headed to college.

After World War II broke out, he joined the Army.

In the late 1940s, Francis returned to Sanibel to discover that the store was in turmoil.

His father, Frank, was considering selling.

After a little nudge, Francis stepped up.

And ah, he thought he had it made for a while, he fiddle diddled around, you know, this and that and the other.

And then one day, one morning, the old man got in there with a baseball bat and rammed him, and he jumped out of bed and he said, time to quit playing, get off your butt and earn your pay and from that day on, he's been running the store.

[laughter] It was under Francis that Bailey's General Store became a beloved destination for residents like Deb McQuade Gleason.

Her family moved to the island in the 50s and started a motel.

The island was very buggy.

We had alligators in our pond, and we spent almost every daylight hour on the beach.

We went to a school with about 28, 29 kids and we had friends, but it was, it was very limited as to how many friends you could have because the island was over 12 miles long.

And so there was only so far you could go on your bike.

Bailey's, its penny candy, and waterfront location was a magnet for island children.

We would come to the store in the summer every day.

There was the county dock out front where the mail order came in, and when the mail boat wasn't there or any other boats, it was our playground.

We would go flying off that dock which sent us out into the deepest part of the bay for us to reach.

And we always had a great time out there.

Deb's twin brother, Mark McQuaid, worked at the general store as a kid.

You saw the same people all the time.

They came the same day, they bought the same stuff.

And you just knew them all.

In that bunch were some colorful ones, like Dessa Rosse from nearby Captiva Island, who drove up in a big ‘ole station wagon.

Yeah, I'd see it pull in the parking lot and Id go, Oh boy, Dessa is here.

[laughter] And I think she was the type that would walk around talking with a cigarette hanging out her mouth and she's pointing, she needs this, she needs that.

Bailey's was a place to connect on the sparsely- populated island.

You know, you just pass people in a car on on, you know, a two-lane highway, dirt roads, and wave, and that was about it.

The only communication was around Baileys store.

That's where you caught up on the news and that's where all the, all the, the of the buzz was, you know, and there was no other place.

There was no shortage of buzzing ... from mosquitoes.

Leaders like Francis Bailey put a dent in the pest population by starting mosquito control.

When we first started out with the fogging, we had two different kinds of little, ah, portable foggers that we put on the back of a truck.

One of them was a Dyno-Fog, which was really like a, ah jet engine.

It made one heck of a racket.

[buzzing] Francis wore several hats around the island, even volunteer fireman.

Residents fought fires with shovels and palmetto fronds until they got their first truck.

Francis was a caretaker to many.

In 1960, he opened his home to islanders as Hurricane Donna threatened Sanibel.

I'm sure Francis would have said, well, this thing's coming at us, you guys, you know, let's all stay at my house.

By then, Francis and his wife were living at the Bailey homestead.

If you were mid-island for the hurricane, you stayed.

But for the rest of us that were out on the Gulf, we went to Francis Bailey's house, just a safer spot.

The Baileys took in dozens of people and their dogs.

Francis fed his guests hamburger from the store as the group hunkered down.

Bailey survived that Category 4, and luckily so.

In the aftermath, Francis worked around the clock to keep the store open to feed residents as they cleaned up debris.

Francis knew how to deal with hurricanes.

He was more concerned about another threat: overdevelopment of his island.

I love of people but ah, you can get too many sometimes.

Like other islanders, he feared losing his sanctuary to a proposed bridge linking Sanibel to the mainland.

I was opposed to it.

Fought it tooth and nail.

Ill give you a good example.

Originally the bridge was supposed to come across right here and I own that land, my two brothers and I, and I wouldn't give it to ‘em so they moved it down there.

I thought it would stall ‘em but it didnt.

The Sanibel Causeway opened in 1963, priming the island for development and ending the ferry service.

Without the ferry, Bailey's was essentially on a dead-end road.

So, a few years later, the store moved to its third location on Periwinkle Way.

It was a busy time for Francis.

His children would go to the store just to see him.

My dad, he wasn't at home a lot, So wed just ride our bikes up and it was a place to go and hang out and just to see him pretty much.

Francis and his wife Pauline adopted four children, including Mead.

And then the fifth child came along as a surprise.

So there were five of us, and I'm exactly in the middle.

The youngest was still a baby when Pauline died.

Francis relied on island mothers as he juggled the store with fatherhood.

We had a couple of nannies that we quickly ran off.

Esperanza Woodring is like a grandmother to us, and we'd go to her house out on the bay and just have a great time.

She cooked on a wood stove.

I mean, just back in the day, no air conditioning and um, nice breeze off the bay.

The historic Woodring homestead is rich in nature.

The island has long attracted nature lovers.

The first times Ive ever really heard about Sanibel was from shell collectors, said oh yeah, oh, no you need to go to Sanibel Island and look for Junonias and other shells.

Its a wonderful place.

It was wonderful because islanders were preserving it.

In 1945, the federal government established the Sanibel National Wildlife Refuge.

The preserve was later renamed for J.N.

“Ding” Darling a political cartoonist and part-time resident.

Darling was instrumental in starting the more than 6000-acre refuge that provides critical habitat for hundreds of bird species.

There's a Bailey link to the refuge, too.

We're here at the Bailey tract, which is a part of the “Ding” Darling Refuge.

And what's very unique about it is it's a freshwater area in the middle of a barrier island.

“Ding” Darling bought the first acre from Frank Bailey in 1950.

The federal government bought the other 99.

Early conservation efforts also extended to the islands sea turtles.

Residents began monitoring turtles in the 1950s.

Very early on, my husband, Jim, ah, got involved with Charles LeBuff, who had founded Caretta Research, ah, which was all about the loggerhead sea turtle.

Islanders were still figuring out the best way to save the turtles.

One practice, now prohibited, was to relocate vulnerable eggs from their nests.

Betty and her husband stored those eggs in buckets with sand off the beach until they were ready to hatch.

My kids were out playing and, and warned me that turtles were escaping.

Theres usually in a nest approximately 100 turtles.

So, you know, they were all over the place.

We ran halfway to the beach, about a half mile or so, be, picking up turtles, including we called the Sanibel police and they came out and helped us pick up turtles got them all safe and to the beach.

However, in the 1960s and early 70s, the overriding impulse in Florida was to sell paradise, rather than preserve it.

Around that time, Porter Goss and his young family settled on Sanibel.

He came to recover from a mysterious illness contracted during his time with the CIA.

I was overseas working in the Cold War.

But it was very life- threatening and it required that I not continue to work in that business.

He left the CIA with a hole in his resume.

And I said, OK, what do I say?

They said, you can't ever say you worked here.

And I said, well, never mind.

I'm going to Florida.

He and his wife became part of the community where the same question kept coming up ... how to manage growth on this beautiful island.

At the time, the island counted a few thousand people, and Sanibel was governed by Lee County.

But county plans called for far more development than what many islanders wanted to see.

The commissioners seemed to be co-opted, led by people who were, you know, Sanibel is our golden egg and we are going to exploit it.

And we don't really care what the people out there think.

Never underestimate Sanibel residents, nor ex-CIA.

Porter Goss and two fellow CIA retirees sought to mobilize the community through journalism.

They banded with other residents to form the Island Reporter in 1973.

Islanders lined up for the local paper.

People would be waiting for them.

I mean, it was, it was really almost the event of the week during the high drama of the incorporation era.

That drama drew headlines beyond Sanibel.

In those days it was national news, the fight down here.

I mean, can this little bunch of environmentalists survive against the big bad development fraternity, you know?

Yet not everyone was pro-city.

Wary of taxes and bureaucracy, Francis Bailey was also skeptical of the newcomers.

He was just what he should have been, hes standing back and looking at who are these Yankees from CIA coming down here trying to tell us what to do with our community?

He wasn't sure he wanted government, but on the other hand, he sure didn't want Lee County government.

And it was, it was a case of back and forth with him as it was with a number of us.

In the end, Francis and other islanders decided incorporation was the best way to save the Sanibel they loved.

In 1974, more than 60% of island voters chose to become the City of Sanibel, independent from Lee County.

Porter Goss became Sanibels first mayor.

Yes, I was the mayor, but ah, Francis is the leader.

Francis was elected to the new city council.

He later officially served as mayor and became the city's longest serving elected official.

He wasn't a politician.

He was ah, advocate for the island.

The first council got to work.

They put a moratorium on growth as they developed what became the Sanibel Plan.

The landmark document prioritized the environment and capped growth at a level more in line with a small town.

As Francis poured his time into the new city, his younger brother Sam returned to help with the store.

I would say when Sam came into the picture he was always out front.

He was a lot more gregarious than Francis was.

You know, like, Francis would be there for a while, but he always thought he had to get back to the office for something.

Together, the brothers became island icons, their identities intertwined with Bailey's General Store.

You didn't have Bailey's without Francis Bailey and Sam.

Under the second generation, Bailey's grew from a humble store to an expansive shopping center.

Tourists flocked to Sanibel's famous beaches and Bailey's.

Francis worried about ceding control of the growing business.

His big thing was first generation starts it, second generation builds it, and third generation loses it.

And that was, that's how he felt.

But his attitude would change in 2004, after yet another storm.

So, I'm watching Hurricane Charley enter the Gulf of Mexico and move towards the state of Florida.

So I, I literally see it make that, that hook and head right straight for Sanibel the islands of Sanibel and Captiva.

By then, Francis was in his early 80s.

Richard knew that Francis and Sam would stay on their island despite an evacuation order.

I called my father-in-law, and I said, Francis, um are you ready for this?

And he said, yeah, it's just going to be a bad thunderstorm.

We have those all the time.

We'll be fine.

It's not that he didn't take hurricanes seriously, it's that he preferred being surrounded by family and friends.

Hurricane Charley hit as a small but powerful Category 4.

In the aftermath, Bailey's was once again a stabilizing force.

The Bailey family would feed people out of their parking lot with hot food.

They would bring ice over to the island and give it away in bags and, and they were where you can go for a cold drink and you could meet up with friends, you can meet up with with other business owners and, and just have some sense of normalcy during that, that difficult time.

Richard traveled to the island to help his in-laws.

I worked with Sam and Francis to get the store back in operation.

And I was getting ready to go back to my career in Jacksonville.

I said to the two brothers, What's your business continuation plan?

I said, I want to be respectful, but at the same time you guys are getting old.

And that's when his brother, Sam Bailey, looked at me and made the statement: We're happy that you asked because we were hoping that you might be interested.

Francis had warmed up to the idea of the third generation taking over.

You know, Publix offered to buy him out a long time ago and you know, he was very adamant that it would stay in the family.

Yet, he also valued treating his children fairly.

If Richard and Mead wanted Bailey's ... How you doing today?

What can I help you find?

... they would have to buy it.

We actually purchased the business from Sam and Francis in 2006, but we didn't tell anybody.

The family knew, and that was it.

That was a way to, to, um honor the two brothers.

They soon discovered that Francis was keeping Bailey's afloat.

Francis had been propping up the business for a number of years financially, because he didn't want to see it close.

Richard and Mead began shoring up the business, though it had been decades since Bailey's was the only store on the island.

The second generation's era was coming to a close.

Sam Bailey died in 2010.

Francis kept working until he physically could not.

He got to a point he couldn't get up and down the stairs and we offered to put an elevator and he wouldn't have any part of it.

In his final days, Bailey's General Store was still at the forefront of his mind.

For real, on his deathbed, he was like, you know, take care of the store, just take care of the store.

And I think he felt comfortable and was able to leave this earth feeling comfortable that his legacy would live on.

Francis died on his island in 2013, the last of the second generation of Bailey brothers.

When we left this house, wed all said goodbye.

And my wife and I were headed home I looked over ... the flag was flying at half-staff.

That was to acknowledge Francis Bailey's passing.

That's how important he was to the family and the community.

The Bailey family legacy marks the island.

Francis and his brothers donated land for the Bailey-Matthews National Shell Museum and Aquarium, and Francis sold the 28-acre Bailey homestead to the Sanibel Captiva Conservation Foundation, which is preserving it.

Along with the Bailey Tract, there's also Bailey's Beach Park, Bailey Road, and the visitor center, named in Francis' honor.

He could not have been a more kind man.

He wanted you to, to be treated like family.

The younger generations adopted his dedication to serving and fighting for the island.

We want to make sure that we preserve and manage that charge that nature has given us.

Meanwhile, Sanibel faced new but familiar challenges.

In 2017, Hurricane Irma swept through Southwest Florida.

Though the island was without power, the family quickly reopened Bailey's.

It was literally the five of us in the store making sandwiches, first responders, um you know, every electric company in Florida was here.

A year later, Sanibel suffered from another disaster.

Persistent red tide killed massive quantities of sea life and scared away tourists.

[Red tide blooms are continuing to make their way north up Florida's Gulf Coast ...] [Toxic tide blooms have increased ...] [Also, fish kills suspected to be related to red tide were recorded from the...] Nutrients, including pollution from development and agriculture, fueled the water quality crisis.

Sanibel sits right in the catcher's mitt of the Gulf of Mexico, and everything hits us on that side.

So we are ground zero for that.

The crisis was a wake-up call.

The environment could not sustain status quo.

At Bailey's, the family wove a conservation ethic deeper into the store, phasing out plastic bags and installing solar panels.

Dane Johnson was the first of the fourth generation to join the family business.

Richard and Mead's other two children, Bailie and Calli, followed, to some degree unexpectedly.

I didn't dream of groceries [chuckles] or taking out the trash or, you know, putting the eggs in the right spot.

There's a huge family legacy there that as the oldest daughter, I feel obliged to support, but also take joy in being able to do that.

Somehow, we've managed to all work together this long and nobody's killed each other.

So, I definitely plan to continue what I'm doing as long as the community will have us.

That community is still small, with less than 7000 residents and no traffic lights.

Thanks to the founding vision that prioritized preservation, nearly 70% of the island is conservation land.

The Sanibel Plan seeks to preserve local businesses too.

So we're fortunate in that way because if we went up against name your grocery store on the mainland, we, we wouldn't have a chance.

The third and fourth generation sought to redevelop the center which still carried a vibe from the 60s.

By mid-September 2022, the permits were ready.

In late September, another storm was on the horizon.

So with that, we're going to shift the entirety of our focus to newly formed Tropical Storm Ian here in the Caribbean Sea...

Within a few days, Sanibel and the rest of Lee County were in the crosshairs.

And we now find ourselves in a position of ah, great peril in Lee County.

During evacuations, Eugene Gavin stopped by the Sanibel Police Department and spoke to the chief.

And ah, he asked me Mr. Gavin, are you've gonna, when you gonna to leave?

I said Im not leaving, We gonna stay.

And he didn't say nothing.

He just looked at me.

And I said chief I'm not staying, I'm just trying to get you to smile and say bye.

[chuckles] The Johnson family had planned to stay until forecasts projected storm surge would essentially swallow their homes.

I havent seen numbers like this many times in my career.

12 to 18 feet ... And we all met at the store to make sure the store was secure.

Everything was going to operate as it should.

Little did we know there was no need to bother.

Part of doing business or living in this area is hurricanes.

How it always has been, how it's always going to be.

But at the end of the day, Mother Nature will do whatever Mother Nature wants to do.

Sometimes you lose.

[Fastest Ive ever gone down Periwinkle, Ill tell you what.]

[meow] The third and fourth generations were now facing their worst storm.

Hurricane Ian rapidly intensified before hitting Florida on September 28, 2022.

It was the fourth strongest hurricane to make landfall in state history.

On Sanibel, the large, slow Category 4 was considered the worst storm to hit the island since 1926.

[They gotta see it.

You got to see it to believe it.]

The apocalypse isn't so bad.

This was the G-d damnedest hurricane that hit here in my time and anybody else's time that's around and knows anything about it.

It was wicked.

When it hit, it just tore hell out of everything.

[And did you stay during the hurricane?]

Oh, hell yes.

Ralph Woodring and his wife rode out the storm on the family's homestead.

Their bayfront home bore the force of the sea.

It was hard to judge just how high the water got.

Theres three kinds of damn waters.

OK, there's the water that comes whistling in, there's the waves on top of that.

And then the damn breakers come.

So you know which one you want to know about?

I don't know.

I can't tell you.

Ah, there's an old song said, ah, Johnny Cash sings it I guess, five feet high and rising and that's about the way it was.

It was all the damn water we wanted and then some more so.

As the hurricane churned, Ralph left his house to save his boat.

He became trapped outside for hours, eventually taking refuge in a truck.

His wife, Jean assumed the worst.

About just before daylight I got back in the house and the stairs had washed away so Jeannie could not get down.

But I hollered at her and said, oh ... thought I was dead, but I wasnt.

Life or death moments unfolded across the island.

Residents recalled them at a town forum.

Storm surge is no joke.

It was like a raging river.

By that point, the whole house started shaking.

I told my mom to hold on to the rafters.

And I said, at that point, mom, I think we're going to die.

And she said, sweetie, God has a plan.

Just keep your faith going.

That night I called my brother, Dick, and I said, you have to leave.

But he didnt.

He had to stand on his couch for two hours with water up to his neck.

His brother was among the thousands rescued across the region.

[helicopter] [We're going to get.

There's a whole bunch of people just like y'all.

Thousands of em, take, take you to a shelter.

You'll be all right.

You'll have food, water and everything.]

[helicopter] The island was a disaster zone.

Thousands of structures were unstable, dangerous or had completely collapsed.

Whole sections of the causeway washed out, cutting off road access to Sanibel.

Eugene Gavin returned by boat to check on his home.

And I come through the front mud was about this thick.

You slide, you can slide on in here if you can balance yourself.

And I said the front aint too bad but all these windows gone.

[chuckles] When he saw the broken glass scattered inside, he thought of his wife, Velma.

But it done blown in, just exploded like bunch of little glass in here.

All over.

Some was in there and Im looking and I say, boy, Velmas got a lotta diamonds now.

[chuckles] The Johnson family waited a few days for rescuers to finish their searches.

So we came out here with plywood on a skiff and rode our bikes to the store with chainsaws in the basket because we weren't sure what what we might need to get through.

The hurricane-rated doors, the sliding glass doors, entry doors were completely ripped off their hinges, their tracks, and kind of just laying there in disarray.

And when I looked inside the store, I was, my jaw dropped.

That was a low point business for generation three or four.

[You can see ...] After prior storms, the family prided themselves on reopening quickly.

For Ian, they had a generator ready.

We thought for sure we were,would be firing that right back up right after the storm, and have the doors open, just like we always have in the past, for residents looking for that sense of normalcy on the island.

There is nothing normal about Ian.

Neither was the chaos it left behind.

after the rubble was cleared, the family decided to demolish the store and center.

While it was the end of that Bailey's, it would not be the end of Bailey's General Store.

There was never a moment that we considered not rebuilding.

Well, the decision for them to rebuild is a huge morale boost to our community.

And, and so the idea, man, Ive not thought about that until this question so little emotion, but the fact that they're coming back is what's getting us through where we are today.

There was a pervasive sense of uncertainty in the community.

Something like this really causes you to wonder what your future is.

It, it shakes a lot of what you think.

And you know, plans still being made.

[Yeah, I think that's all of us.]

For many islanders, the decision to stay or go was rooted in questions of cost, insurance, risk and their age.

There were also people like Ralph Woodring who was not going anywhere.

Still, it took 449 days for him and his wife to return home after Ian.

Anything that we did in the way of, of ah, repairs or whatever was only tried to get back to the way it originally was, because ah, there's damn little of that on the island left.

Eugene Gavin chose to stay too.

I feel at home, I know I'm home, because I have some roots over here.

And I'm comfortable here.

Other islanders left for good.

New people were there to replace them.

A lot of these ground level houses sold.

You know, the people took the insurance check.

They just sold what was left.

And here comes new people throw all the money in.

And finally, great, we're on Sanibel.

We'll take our chances here.

Sanibel holds a sacred space in the hearts of many.

And that's the thing about Sanibel.

It's such a wonderful community, is that you do get part of it in your blood.

And sure, there are mosquitoes and no-see-ums, but it was still the best place we'd ever been.

And, um, it still is.

Seeing the island change after Hurricane Ian has stoked anxiety and grief.

It's really hard because you can feel the change, you can feel the change.

I'm in real estate, so I see all of the for sale signs and I know what businesses have, have failed.

I know what families have moved and I'm on historic preservation.

And so I came out and saw all of our historic register buildings, how many of them had had been beat up so bad that they had to be torn down.

And it's very depressing, very depressing.

While the iconic lighthouse survived with some damage, the keeper cottages did not.

The chamber slogan after Ian ... Not perfect, but still paradise, is on point.

We're seeing our restaurants and our retailers and our attractions come back little by little, um.

But we all know that without critical mass for hotel room nights, it's going to be a very difficult go at it.

Yet there has been progress.

Several hotels have reopened.

The lighthouse was restored.

There's excitement about how the future Sanibel will look.

We're going to build back every hotel room to a level that, that is unlike any that we've had on this island before, they're going to be beautiful.

But for some, the outlook is clouded by climate change.

Many islanders are well versed in the vulnerabilities of life on a barrier island.

It's unclear where newcomers stand.

I could throw in there that, Everybody just says I'm just going to sell my house to a climate denier and move on.

[chuckles] While Ian was a storm of the century for the island, the next monster hurricane could come sooner.

[Forecasters say Hurricane Helene will likely make landfall later today on Florida's Gulf Coast ...] [Again, the key messages here for Helene as head into whats going to be a very dangerous...] [First it was Hurricane Helene.

Then it was Hurricane Milton.

In just two weeks, Florida was battered by two devastating storms ...] Climate change is real.

It is not political.

It is science and we know storms are getting stronger, more frequent.

Even without a hurricane, rising seas could bring water over most of the island.

In the next century, if studies prevail as they look, there could be multiple feet of water on Periwinkle.

How can we build sustainably on a barrier island that will probably be affected again.

I mean, I get choked up just thinking of this because I don't want to live through this again?

It was a common feeling.

A citizen-led coalition from Sanibel and neighboring Captiva Island formed to promote a more resilient recovery.

As a barrier island community, we're on the front lines of these issues.

And you know, people didn't want to give up on this place.

As San-Cap resilience hashed out its goals, the threat of extreme weather loomed in the background.

Gather your input and make sure that the direction of this resilience group is, is responding to the community.

we wrestled with, you know, using a word like forever.

And we thought it was wiser to say long into the future because we really don't know what our future holds.

We're very vulnerable.

Some islanders are thinking mostly about cost as they rebuild.

Others are elevating and strengthening structures.

The coalition has asked the city to integrate resiliency into its plans.

When the Sanibel Plan was written, um, it recognized overdevelopment as an existential risk and we think it's time to recognize climate change as a second existential risk.

The Johnson family considered that risk as they planned to rebuild.

Now is the time if we're going to elevate to do so.

Um, because if I have kids and they choose to be part of the store, I don't want them to have to deal with this.

The new Bailey Center will align with current more resilience- focused codes and be elevated ten feet from the ground to account for flooding.

We're we're looking forward to the future, I mean, you can stay where you are, or you can build it better.

So, youll have to look at the plans, because it's pretty nice.

In 2024, the blueprints were finally ready to go before the city's planning commission.

Among the complicating factors was Richard Johnson's position.

He was the mayor.

His children, Dane and Bailie, spoke to avoid undue influence.

The barrier islands are still recovering and we know and appreciate that we are a big part of Sanibel returning back to normalcy.

Plans called for modernizing the center, making it bigger.

You know, and you don't see much to this scale going on, on this island, and we're basically, you know, we're in the tunnel looking at the light.

The approval was unanimous.

Um, with gratitude to the Johnson family, yes.

So proud.

Dane had me choked up too.

I really am, um, you did, you you both did fantastic.

Your grandad's super proud too.

I know hes up there watching us Yeah, yeah.

Yes he is.

Yeah.

So, good job.

Thanks.

Now let's get this thing done ... team.

Yeah.

Whoo!

[laughter] The next step was going before city council.

Richard recused himself from the vote and sat with his children.

Again, the approval was unanimous.

The family could start planning construction, projected to start in 2025.

Bailie understood why it took a while to get through the city's hoops.

There's a real fear in losing what we have here.

And we're appreciative that everybody wants to keep things the same as much as they can.

But in order to not go through this again, we have to change some things.

It, it's emotional.

It's taxing.

But it's one that, um, this investment in our community is, is well worth the investment.

I miss the old Bailey's.

I do too.

We'll be back.

A worthy investment.

But as, as the bean counter, it's physically painful.

Like, I don't even think it will be paid in our kids lifetime.

And yet, the fourth generation is keenly aware that this iteration of Bailey's may not be the last.

I don't think that building will be the last Baileys destroyed by a hurricane.

In reality, this island will be underwater eventually.

And that ten feet that we're going to build under the building won't always be there.

I'm not sure what the, within the next 500 years what the island's going to look like.

In my head, Baileys will be there and you might have to go by boat in, in the very distant future.

[chuckles] Why have so many generations of the Bailey family stayed on Sanibel despite nature's threats?

We're stubborn as hell.

We're determined.

And there's a lot of us in this community that are very determined because we are the caretakers for, something that is very precious.

[What is it like being a Bailey on this island?]

For me, it's like having several hundred extra sets of grandparents, and that can go either way sometimes.

And they missed the ferry and they said no Christmas presents, this year, Santa Claus fell on an electric wire.

I remember that tale.

No, that's the truth.

Well, it may be the truth.

Coming from mothers mouth ... And the truth is that CIA never owned more than about 30% of this island.

That, of course, is not true.

[chuckles] Um ... Support for this program provided by Howard K. and Nancy B. Cohen, the Jack Forté Foundation, and the following: