IN THE SPOTLIGHT: From Pink to Temp, big challenge ahead … Terrie Smith
When Terrie Smith started waiting tables at The Pink Elephant back in 1988, it was just about season. She had come to the area after living in Fort Lauderdale with her son, Shawn. Her parents did not like her there.
“They wanted me out of there,” said Smith, who is now a waitress at The Temptation and has worked in many other restaurants over the last three decades.
She moved here and quickly got in touch with the late Steve Seidensticker, then general manager of The Gasparilla Inn. Seidensticker had an immediate idea.
“I think you need to go to the Pink Elephant,” she recalls him saying.
Smith already had a career in restaurants. She started her career working in Southfield, Mich., at the Restaurant Duglass, one of the biggest gourmet stops in the U.S., visited and profiled by Julia Child. There, Douglas Grech made a name for himself in the Detroit area for his French cuisine. In Fort Lauderdale, she worked at a number of restaurants, including the legendary Yesterday’s.
“I had a pretty good résumé,” Smith said. “At that point, I was only 31.”
Early on, she remembers taking her son Shawn to The Pink. “Bayard Sharp and Mary were sitting there,” Smith said. “Shawn went and shook every one of the men’s hands. My fate was sealed at The Pink.”
She remembers being there just after President George H.W. Bush lost his re-election bid, and they landed his helicopter on the lawn of The Gasparilla Inn for a recuperation visit. The Secret Service ran the room.
“They wouldn’t tell me beforehand,” Smith said. “The whole main dining room was cleared.”
Whenever the Bushes came to the restaurant, she would be out on the balcony to serve.
“My father was just over the moon,” Smith said. She recalls that Patrick (Seidensticker) and Shawn also got to greet the President and First Lady when they came.
“My son went streaking past them and chased their dog,” she said. “Barbara Bush was laughing her ass off.” She recalls Barbara saying something like, “That dog’s been on the plane a long time.”
She said that was the atmosphere at The Pink, where she recalls a lot of other famous guests, including Rob Lowe, whose aunt had thrown a party in the club room. There was also Harrison Ford, who came in late in a shift.
“I waited on Jason Robards, and that was my mom’s heartthrob,” she said. She told her, “Mom, he’s really got that voice.”
Smith left The Pink the year that Bayard Sharp died, in 2002, after working there for just over 15 years. She stayed off the island for a couple of years, including working at The Fishery, where she wanted to get a taste of working in an old Florida restaurant. She also worked for Kim Honey when he owned The Loose Caboose.
At that time, her son was an altar boy at Our Lady of Mercy, and the previous owners of The Loose Caboose had attended church there. She also worked at South Beach and joined The Temptation just before Ian hit.
“I said, I’ve got to walk up that street and go home to The Temp. I was walking up, and Jeff (Jeffrey Simmons) hired me. It was just like being at home.”
The world of restaurants in Boca Grande is a bit like a public living room, meeting people all the time. She is appreciative of the opportunity to have been a part of it.
She values the time she and her son Shawn lived on the island, at the Anchor Inn, calling it the “most unique place to go through my adult life and grow with my son.”
The island then was a safe community for a group she called “The Boca Boys.”
“It was a little fishing village,” Smith said. “It was like the lost place.”
Her son also worked at The Pink Elephant and later at Coral Creek. Shawn later moved up to work for Seidensticker when he opened Libby’s Restaurant in Sarasota, she said. Reflecting on Boca Grande, Smith is amazed at how people of all ages and incomes were and still are accepted on an equal basis.
“To be accepted there was a very big deal,” Smith said. “To live out there and be friends with the people who had been there for many generations was an honor.”
She said that having her son on the island, as an altar boy, helped to ground him. She said that while a lot of the old-timers are gone now, the children and grandchildren have continued the traditions of the island. Shawn has worked for a decade at The Temp, doing sauces and vegetables. At UCF, he fell into hospitality. He is carrying on the tradition. “Now, it’s ‘I’m Shawn’s mom,’” said Smith.
Her next challenge is dealing with cancer. When she came back to The Temp after the fall hurricanes, she had a pain in her left hip, what she called “screaming pain.”
“I tried to go to work Tuesday,” Smith said. “I couldn’t do it.”
She saw doctors locally, who did not want to prescribe anything serious for the pain. She was frustrated, but it turned out that the pain got her to visit another doctor, who diagnosed cancer. She made an appointment at Moffitt Cancer Center. Today, she is hopeful, of knocking ovarian cancer into remission. They still have not figured out what caused the pain in her hip, and the mystery pain helped get her into treatment when a cancer specialist at Englewood Hospital got her into Moffitt. After her first biopsy, they started chemotherapy.
“It has not moved into bones,” said Smith. “Finally, the (hip) pain let loose. As fast as it came on, it left.”
She is grateful to be a part of Boca Grande during this period in her life.
“It is the people that have made it the most unique place,” Smith said.
There is a Go Fund Me for Terri Smith’s cancer fight.
