Forty-nine years ago today — at 8:30 a.m. Sept. 10, 1960 — the fifth-strongest hurricane on record in the United States hit Southwest Florida. The eye of Hurricane Donna went directly over Bonita Springs and left three people there dead in its wake; winds were clocked at 168 mph in Naples and 123 mph in Fort Myers.

“How can I be sure? In a world that’s constantly changing. How can I be sure? Where I stand with you?”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said, “Lives of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime; and, departing, leave behind us, footprints on the sands of time.” He must have been talking about those mighty unsung heroes who came to Naples between 1930 and 1960 — those giants who not only made Naples a better place to live, but our country as well.

A chicken in every pot and a car in every garage was good enough for Herbert Hoover in 1928, but two years later the Walker men — Forest and his sons, R.L. and Lorenzo — had a new and improved slogan: “A car in every garage – a boat in every back yard.” Now that was the American dream in Naples.