FIVE THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT: Catherine Luckner

1. LONGTIME RESIDENT. Catherine Luckner has lived full-time on Siesta Key since 1989.

2. HISTORY FANATIC. Property that once belonged to her family ended up in the hands of Harry Higel, for whom Higel Avenue is named. Luckner says she is researching how all that took place. Jeff LaHurd, the county’s historian, is helping her with that process.

3. BULL'S-EYE. Luckner had to learn to shoot a weapon when she was on staff at the federal prison in Tallahassee. “And I qualified on all weapons the first time around,” she says with a laugh. “I had a dead-on, bull’s-eye (shooting skill), which I was shocked by, actually.”

4. GOIN' CAMPING. Her father loved to take the family on camping trips when she was a child. While he was on U.S. Air Force duty in Germany, he took the family to Yugoslavia the first year its borders were opened to tourists, following its Communist takeover. Residents warmly welcomed the family after learning the Luckners were Americans. Moreover, when a hotel where her father had planned for the family to stay proved to be completely booked, people in that town found private residents willing to open their homes to the Luckners until the hotel could provide them rooms.

5. THE BIG BOOK. Luckner has been compiling information about all the SKA’s projects in one big book that she will be able to pass along to future presidents of the organization, so they will have a history of the board’s activities.

 Click here to read "Delve into 12: Catherine Luckner.