The Estero Island Historic Society will pay tribute at noon April 8 to founding member Fran Santini, a Southwest Florida treasure who passed away over the weekend.
Santini, 94, was widely regarded as one of the most important living links to Fort Myers Beach’s early 20th‑century past in Lee County, a role she embraced not through formal titles but through storytelling, memory and a lifelong commitment to preserving the island’s history for future generations.
Her recollections, preserved through newspaper coverage, the historic society and recorded oral history, provide an account of life on the Beach and coastal Southwest Florida spanning more than nine decades.
Born just before her family settled on the island in the mid‑1930s, Santini arrived during a period when the town was still largely undeveloped, accessible by limited infrastructure and shaped by fishing, farming and extended pioneer families.
This made her part of a generation that grew up before electricity was widespread, before bridges transformed access and before tourism reshaped the local economy.
Throughout her life, Santini described herself simply as a “beach kid,” a term that came to carry deeper meaning as the decades passed and fewer people remained who could remember Fort Myers Beach before modern development.
Her memories included attending the island’s earliest schoolhouse, navigating sandy roads long before Estero Boulevard became a commercial corridor and witnessing the evolution of the island’s identity. Some of the growth came due to her father’s brother, Leonard Santini, whose developments included Santini Plaza on the island’s south end.
In a 2008 News-Press interview ― then 77 ― she remembered fondly how the island had been a vacation escape for young families through the 1960s.
“That’s how the beach got to be known, through families coming here,” she said. “They didn’t have the condos. It was homes that people rented out. It just brought a different feeling. It was just like the town sort of shut down when the sun went down because it was a family beach. That’s the way it should have stayed.”
A prolific bowler known as “Fabulous Fran” in the pages of the News-Press and described as a “rugged guard” in her Fort Myers High basketball team days, Santini later became deeply involved with the historical society, where she helped shape the group into the island’s primary steward of local history.
Over the years, she served in leadership roles, including treasurer, and became one of the society’s most relied‑upon historical resources. Staff, volunteers, researchers and visitors routinely relied on her to clarify timelines, identify faces in old photographs and resolve questions that could not be answered by documents alone.
The historic society put it this way in a statement this week: Santini offered “steady leadership, dedication and a genuine love for preserving the history of our island. Her family’s roots on Estero Island run deep and her commitment to honoring that heritage has left a lasting impact on our community. (Her) legacy will continue to shape the work of the Estero Island Historic Society for years to come.”
Her recollections filled gaps created by lost documents, erased landmarks and the disruptions caused by hurricanes — particularly Hurricane Ian, which destroyed her longtime home and scattered much of the island’s historic fabric.
Within the Estero Island Historic Society, Santini was frequently described as irreplaceable, one of the last remaining residents who grew up in Fort Myers Beach before World War II on what’s now a rapidly changing coastal community.
Through decades of quiet service and historic preservation, Santini ensured that the story of Fort Myers Beach remained accessible. Her legacy endures in the archives of the historic society and in the collective memory of the community she helped define.
Even before next week’s historic society event, memories of Santini were already being shared this week..
“What a beautiful soul ― there will never be another person like her,” said Iona artist Keri Marie Hendry, with ties to the Hendry pioneer family of Fort Myers. “How many hours I used to sit with her and listen to her stories of the early days of island life, She was good friends with my great aunt Sara Nell Hendry Gran.”
The historic society asks that those interested in attending Wednesday’s event at St. Raphael’s Comfort Hall, 5601 Williams Drive, to RSVP at its esteroislandhistoricsociety.org site.
Writing In the Know for the USA TODAY Network, Columnist Phil Fernandez (pfernandez@gannett.com) grew up in Southwest Florida and has led Pulitzer Prize-winning efforts. Sign up for our free Breaking Ground growth and development newsletter. Subscribe to our News-Press and Naples Daily News apps.
This article originally appeared on Naples Daily News: Fran Santini, Fort Myers Beach’s ‘beach kid’ historian, dies at 94
Reporting by Phil Fernandez, Fort Myers News-Press & Naples Daily News / Naples Daily News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
