- April 26, 2024
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The year is 2000, the beginning of a new millennium and a new City. Over 60% of the citizens voted to move into the future with a unique identity. Palm Coast, no longer the child of ITT, will grow into a beautiful City with a multi-ethnic population and 103,000+ residents at the time of this writing. The founding fathers, our first City Council, recognized the need to protect our environment, encourage business growth, and secure our future with sound financial decisions, control of our utilities, and among others, the collection of our history. Enter Art Dycke.
For the last 24 years, Art, with a team of volunteers, has collected, organized, written, and presented our history. His collation of material from the ITT years, the first 30 years of Palm Coast, resulted in a research library, a museum, two books and numerous Historian newsletters that narrate the stories, events, and people of our past.
Throughout that time there were good times and tentative times. For many years the Palm Coast Historical Society had no home. They vacated no less than seven locations before opening an office and museum in Holland Park. Still, the history was gathered and written for the future.
I've known Art for 14 years and became his Co-Historian in 2018. Watching Art, I realized there is a true sense of dedication when someone loyally performs a full-time volunteer job after their retirement. It's certainly not uncommon for this to happen in Palm Coast. Art's history began in New York. Art E. Dycke was born in the Bronx, New York, in 1934. He would teach in Ardsley, New York for 38 years, raise a beautiful family and retire to Palm Coast in 1993 with his lovely wife Louise. He was an adjunct faculty in history, economics, and government for Daytona Beach College on their Flagler Palm Coast Campus and he volunteered to be the City of Palm Coast Historian.
His historians can be found on the historical society website. https://palmcoasthistory.org/historiansnewsletters/.
Art began and ended his Historian commitment with a reliable Co-Historian. In 2000 it was Margaret Davie, a long-time citizen of Palm Coast, and in 2018 it was me. We have chosen to retire, again, together. We are grateful for the opportunity to serve, the people we met, the bonds forged, and the history documented. We'll see where our future takes us. Surely it will be historic! Thank you everyone for your dedication to our history and contributions to our city, our home.
