Notable People From Vero Beach — Vero Beach, Florida

The figures most often tied to Vero Beach fall into a few groups: the pioneers and land promoters who laid out the town before its 1919 incorporation, the builders of its mid-century attractions, a nationally known poet and a pioneering aircraft engineer who did their later work here, and the public officials whose names now mark Indian River County landmarks. This page covers people with documented public roles, drawn from City of Vero Beach records, Florida Department of State historical markers and published accounts.

Several of them are remembered in place names. Holman Stadium at Dodgertown, the Alma Lee Loy Bridge on 17th Street, the Merrill P. Barber Bridge and McKee Botanical Garden all carry the names of people described below, and the community of Gifford north of the city shares the surname of the area's first documented settler family.

Henry T. Gifford is the pioneer the city itself names first. The City of Vero Beach historic preservation page calls him one of Vero's most notable early settlers: in 1887 he built a house, now located near present day City Hall, ran a citrus grove and established Vero's first mercantile store. The same page says the settlement's name is often attributed to his wife Sarah, who suggested it for its Latin meaning, to speak the truth. Florida historical marker 375 adds that a post office named Vero was established at Gifford's home in 1891.

The town plan came from a Midwestern land company. Marker 375 records that Herman Zeuch of Davenport, Iowa visited the Vero area in 1909, saw land that could be drained and sold to citrus growers and cattle raisers, and that the Indian River Farms Company was chartered in 1912 with stockholders chiefly from his home town. The city page calls him Herman J. Zeuch, later president of the company, credits him with an important role in the town's design after the 1913 plat, and dates the company's City Beautiful Campaign to 1915.

Vero's first elected leader is also on record. When the city opened its centennial in October 2018, Vero News identified A.W. Young as the man elected in 1919 as Vero's first mayor; his grandson Tony Young served on the Vero Beach City Council a century later and co-chaired the Vero 100 celebration.

Two land developers created the attraction that put Vero Beach on Florida tourist maps. According to McKee Botanical Garden, Arthur McKee and Waldo Sexton purchased an 80-acre tropical hammock in 1922 intending to plant citrus, then decided to keep its native character and hired landscape architect William Lyman Phillips, an associate of the Olmsted Brothers firm, to lay out streams, ponds and trails. By the 1940s more than 100,000 tourists a year visited McKee Jungle Gardens. The attraction closed in 1976, and the surviving 18 acres were rededicated as McKee Botanical Garden on November 18, 2001.

Baseball arrived through a local businessman. State marker 841 at Dodgertown states that local business leader Bud Holman convinced the Brooklyn Dodgers to set up a spring training facility in Vero Beach in 1948, on part of the former World War II Naval Air Station. Dodger President Branch Rickey shaped the camp, and in 1953 Dodger President Walter O'Malley privately built the 6,500-seat Holman Stadium there. The marker notes that Hall of Fame players Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella were among the first African American players to train at Dodgertown, the South's first racially integrated spring training camp.

Laura (Riding) Jackson is the area's best known literary figure. State marker 1107, placed in 2020, states that Laura Reichenthal (1901 to 1991) became a renowned author under the pen name Laura Riding in the 1920s and 1930s, produced 27 books of poetry, fiction, criticism and commentary while working in Europe, and after returning to the United States in 1939 abandoned poetry for a study of language. She and her husband, poetry critic Schuyler Jackson, settled in Wabasso in Indian River County in 1943. In 2019 the Laura (Riding) Jackson Foundation, active since 1992, moved their circa 1910 Florida pine house to the Indian River State College Mueller Campus in Vero Beach, where it is open to visitors on set days.

Aviation brought Fred Weick. The U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission describes him as one of the nation's earliest aviation pioneers, winner of the 1929 Collier Trophy for the NACA engine cowling and designer of the Ercoupe. The American Aviation Historical Society reports that he joined Piper in 1957 as director and chief engineer of its development center in Vero Beach, co-designed the Cherokee line of light aircraft with John Thorpe and Karl Bergey, and retired in 1969 at age 70. Weick died in Vero Beach on July 8, 1993.

Alma Lee Loy is the official most closely identified with the city. Born in Vero Beach on June 10, 1929, she served on the Indian River County Board of County Commissioners from 1968 to 1980, including terms as chairman and vice chairman, according to remarks by Rep. Bill Posey in the Congressional Record. The Florida Women's Hall of Fame lists her as the first woman elected to that commission and the first woman elected chairman of the Indian River County Chamber of Commerce. She died on April 10, 2020, and the 17th Street bridge has carried her name since 2012.

A state senator gave his name to the city's other bridge. Florida marker 374, placed at Royal Palm Pointe in 2018, states that in the 1950s, after successful lobbying from Florida State Senator Merrill P. Barber, a new bridge to Orchid Island was built from the old Vero causeway; the Merrill P. Barber Bridge name was kept when that span was replaced in the 1990s.

Civil rights leadership in Gifford is also documented. In a 2020 report, WQCS identified Victor Hart Sr. as the founder of the Gifford NAACP chapter and its president for 46 years, and described his work with Commissioner Loy on improvements in the Gifford community during her years on the Indian River County Commission.

Vero Beach institutions keep these names in circulation. The nonprofit that runs the Heritage Center holds an annual Pioneer Family Recognition Dinner, and Vero News reported in 2012 that earlier honorees included the Sexton, Schumann, Michael, MacWilliam, Graves, Helseth, Vocelle, Zeuch, Cox, Gifford, Holman, Carter and Schlitt families. State markers placed between 1975 and 2020 at City Hall, Dodgertown, Royal Palm Pointe and the IRSC Mueller Campus record the roles of Gifford, Zeuch, Holman, Barber and Laura (Riding) Jackson, and the Vero Beach city historic preservation pages trace the town plan back to the Indian River Farms Company.