IN THE SPOTLIGHT: Amy McCandless, the lady behind the Facebook persona of Fugate’s during the storm
If a book were to be written about surviving a hurricane from a mental health or spiritual standpoint, Amy McCandless could be the author. As the general manager of Fugate’s, she has not only kept her own sanity in the aftermath of the hurricane which she refers to as “he who shall not be named,” but has helped thousands of other people keep theirs, as well. Amy believes if you do not name something, it does not exist, and she refuses to acknowledge the existence or give respect to the storm, so she will not use the name assigned to it. This article will follow suit, in deference to her.
Amy decided early on, in the aftermath of the big storm, to turn the Fugate’s Facebook page into a medium of help and solace, commentary and encouragement for herself, as well as the people she holds dear – which is anyone and everyone connected to Boca Grande. She was able to get onto the island early, so she saw the devastation firsthand from the beginning. When she opened Fugate’s for the first time after the storm, she was relieved to find the main part of the store had no damage. There were some problems in the back, but operations could go on fairly normally.
“When we put the sign out that we were open,” she said. “It was not because we thought we could make some money. It was a sign that things were going to be OK. It was a sign of hope.” She started hearing a few golf cart horns honking and knew the sign was having its intended effect.
With cell phones, land lines and internet all being down Amy needed to find a way to communicate to her team (she does not like calling them employees, since they are really family to her) and let them know they were open for business … even if that was only the business of giving hope.
She found spots at the little Publix on Placida Road, the South Gulf Cove Publix, Winn Dixie and Wal-Mart where she could get cell service and discovered people were calling her from far and wide to see how things were in Boca Grande.
“A lot of people have my cell phone number, since we send things to their homes or contact them about new merchandise. Many of them were calling me, asking me to check on their house or let them know about what was happening on the island.”
Amy has lived in the area all her life, and her roots here go back even farther. She grew up in Arcadia and Boca Grande was where she came to go to the beach. She lives on Little Gasparilla Island and has been there about five years.
Island living is her thing. She and her husband Don sold everything they had a number of years ago, bought a boat and planned to see the world from the deck of that boat. They ended up in the Keys when a big hurricane hit (her name starts with “I,” but we will not name her, either). It sunk the boat. The two adventurers returned to Little Gasparilla and have found generous friends whose homes have become their own.
“I live on an island and I work on an island,” Amy said with awe in her voice, “and I never take it for granted. I love it. I love it.” She feels sorry for people who do not have what she has and she said she is thankful every single day – twice a day – as she goes back and forth between the two islands she feels so close to.
Her standard ritual after a busy day at Fugate’s is to come home, get her dog Pearl and walk on the beach. There she decompresses and watches the sunset, and the world is ok again.
This sense of gratitude for the island life permeates everything Amy does – you can feel it as you walk into Fugate’s. There are not customers but friends, whether she is meeting them for the first time or for the hundredth time.
“There were so many people in Florida who could not get here, who had houses on the island,” she said. “They were in Arcadia, in Wauchula, in Polk County, but there were roads flooded, I-75 was flooded and you couldn’t get on the island without a pass, so they couldn’t get here to see what was happening. Then, when I would be at the little Publix, people would stop me and ask what was going on, what does it look like.”
So around the first week after the storm she decided to use the Facebook page to answer the questions so many people were asking. Fugate’s already had a Facebook page, Amy explained, which she normally used to tell about new merchandise or sales or a new trunk show. Facebook seemed to be working when little else did, so it seemed an ideal medium.
“At first it was just in general, what it looked like on the island,” she said, “because nobody knew. All the news was about Fort Myers and Sanibel, and a lot of people thought that because we didn’t get the storm surge we didn’t have damage.” She started telling her Facebook friends what she was seeing and what was happening.
“And I am just me, so I’m driving down the road and saying ‘It’s a hot mess. This a hot mess expressway.’”
She felt good about being able to give people an idea of what the reality was, while still protecting the island and its people, both of which Amy regards as “sacred.” She felt she was being respectful of their need to know, while not being overly dramatic.
This feeling of protection also extended to her sense of obligation to let people know that, as Amy said, “no matter how much money someone had or did not have, the suffering is the same. Everyone’s having to take their belonging and put them out on the curb, or maybe they don’t have a home.” She wanted to make it clear that people on the island were suffering as deeply as in other areas of Southwest Florida.
Amy said there was one view she had every day coming to work. It reminded her graphically of the silent suffering. She could see into a condo at Boca Grande North where there was a bed, an end table and a picture frame.
“None of that moved,” she said. “But there wasn’t a wall and there wasn’t a roof. And every time I would drive in I would think, ‘Those poor people,’ but if you weren’t here, you couldn’t see it.”
So she decided to do her best to let people know what was going on. It was simple; until Facebook notified her they were going to shut her page down because of “unusual activity.” It turned out that almost overnight her page started getting thousands of “interactions” and Facebook did not understand. At first Amy thought this was some kind of scam, but came to realize her posts were of interest to people all over the country and the world. Facebook relented and the posts continue even today.
Amy is not a big fan of social media, but Facebook has been a blessing, she said. “I didn’t realize how many people are so connected to Boca Grande. Even if they’ve only been here one time, they love it as much as we do.”
She was surprised by some of the places people were from and wondered how they even knew where Boca Grande was. “It is a tiny island in Southwest Florida. How are they so connected to it?” When she asked them, she was reminded of how small a world it is.
The blessing of Facebook led her to expound a bit on blessings – another thing she has strong feelings about. She believes there is always a blessing hidden in every crisis or difficulty. Once of those blessing was hidden the lack of communication on the island.
“We didn’t see everything that was going on in Fort Myers,” she said. “We were protected from that. There was so much going on here, we couldn’t take knowing their trouble, too. I don’t know if we would have been able to handle that.”
A blessing inside a curse, in Amy’s eyes.
Another blessing was having the privacy, of sorts, afforded by having the bridge closed so that immediate needs could be attended to without the rest of the world in the way. Still, this privacy brought its own issues, ones that Amy felt needed to be addressed.
She was in the grocery store one day and a man in line behind her was voicing his opinion about why the bridge was closed and what was happening on the island. He felt this was the opportunity islanders were looking for to keep people away and keep the island to the wealthy. He believed there was no damage on the island. She kept her cool, but that night’s Facebook post was all about “those people,” as this man referred to the islanders, and what level of suffering was going on beyond the toll booths.
“I try not to be offended, but I was,” she admitted. “As I said, this is sacred ground to me and I had to say something … the people here were dealing with the same things everybody else was dealing with. If someone does not know all of the history and the generations and the heritage, they can’t know what makes it so special. This is such a giving and loving community, and the people who have the means and have the ability have never done anything but to step up and help other people. To suggest otherwise, I was offended.”
“That’s how the island survived,” she continued, “By everybody pulling together. Again, if there’s a blessing in it, it’s that the unity was already on the island, but the hurricane made it more obvious. What makes the island so special is the people. I mean, the beach is pretty good too, and the banyans aren’t bad, but it’s the people, and so much of that community goes on every day. It really does.”
She hoped people would learn not only how severe the storm was, but also how strong the community was.
“For every bad there’s an equal good. It has never failed me. I guarantee you, for every single bad, there is an equal or better good. We had the hurricane, but what was even better and stronger was the community. I didn’t want people to lose that. I hope that message got conveyed. That’s probably the most important thing.”
With Amy on the island, the message is loud and clear.
