An American Beach
In northeastern Florida, a former opera singer
keeps a unique community intact.
BY ALAN HUFFMAN
"Come on in, baby!" MaVynee
Betsch calls from the back of her apartment, where
she is trying to find a news clipping on one of the
dozens of environmental and historical causes she
supports. The stairway to Betsch's apartment—which
occupies the second floor of an otherwise abandoned
cinderblock building in American Beach, Fla.—serves
as overflow shelf space for her ever-expanding archive
of documents and memorabilia. It offers a telling
introduction to her world, though nothing can fully
prepare a visitor for Betsch herself, whose persona
is every bit as dramatic as the characters she played
in Madama Butterfly and Salome, as an opera star in
1950s Europe.
When Betsch (whose first name is pronounced "MAH-veen")
appears at the top of the stairs, it is as if she
has burst onto a stage, and in a way she has. She
smiles broadly, arms outstretched, wearing colorful,
flowing fabrics and oversized jewelry. Her gray dreadlocks,
seven feet long, curl like heavy ropes of Spanish
moss from her head to the floor, and form a pillow-sized,
Medusan mass that she sometimes carries in the crook
of her arm.
Now 70, Betsch has fought to save the world's
rain forests and the site of the Florida plantation
on which her ancestors were slaves. But she has achieved
most as the protector of American Beach, a small community
on Amelia Island in northeastern Florida, founded
by her great-grandfather in 1935 (the year she was
born) as a resort for African Americans banned from
public beaches during the Jim Crow era. The dunes
and maritime forests of American Beach, now surrounded
by encroaching development, have provided the most
meaningful backdrop of MaVynee Betsch's life,
and she gave up her stage career in 1965 to return.
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Betsch, a veteran of many activist causes,
has lobbied for years to preserve the heritage of American Beach, the African American resort that her great-grandfather founded.
( A. Murray) |
Jangling her bracelets of shells strung on discarded
fishing line, Betsch begins pulling photos from stacks
of papers organized under Day-Glo green headings:
beachgoers in front of American Beach's now-shuttered
Evans' Rendezvous nightclub; her great-grandfather's
sprawling arts-and-crafts mansion in the ritzy Sugar
Hill neighborhood of Jacksonville, Fla., about 40
miles to the south; and herself, striking a pose atop
the 60-foot dune that dominates the beach and that
she named NaNa. Betsch's crowded apartment is essentially
her clearinghouse, her base of operations. There is
no place to sit. The bed, illuminated by light from
windows opening to the Atlantic view, becomes a work-table
during the day. Despite a three-year battle with cancer,
Betsch pauses only long enough to rifle through a
few more newspaper articles before clasping her hands
and saying, "Let's go, baby! I want to show you around!"
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