A Non-Millennial New Millennium St. Pete Transplant
Barbara Riddle-Dvorak. Photo by Brian Brakebill.
Reposted from Green Bench Monthly
By Tina Stewart Brakebill
We all know the history: Our once-ubiquitous green benches offered ready perches for retirees’ biding their time in “God’s Waiting Room.” Today, people of all ages fill our streets. Regardless of age, they have this in common. They don’t come here to die; they come here to flourish. Barbara Riddle-Dvorak is a fantastic example of today’s kind of transplant to St. Petersburg.
She’s Living, Not Waiting
Simply finding a time when Barbara could meet and talk proved a challenge. She works four days and at least one night each week at the Tomlinson Adult Learning Center. As the career lab counselor, she helps both GED and ESL students connect with potential jobs or further schooling. Despite being of retirement age, she has no plans to stop any time soon. The work is fulfilling for both counselor and student.
When she’s not at Tomlinson, you might find Barbara at home with her cat Lakey (named after Mirror Lake) or at Banyan Café or Locale Market. More than likely, she’ll have her laptop, writing short stories, poetry and essays covering a wide range of topics. She recently finished her second novel, Too Many Countries, and has plans for a third. Her passionate commitment to her writing has been a guiding light on the path that led her to St. Petersburg.
Not Your Stereotypical 1950s Teeny Bopper or 1960s Suburban Housewife
Where did that road begin? Barbara grew up in in the West Village of New York City. Her Bohemian and fascinating childhood started a journey that was far from typical. In 1960, with no immediate desire to join the ranks of suburban housewives, Barbara left New York at age sixteen to study chemistry and European literature at Oregon’s Reed College. From there, she went on to earn her Ph.D. in biochemistry at Brandeis University. Bucking the expected path again, she chose writing instead of science or suburbia. Over the next several decades, she lived in London, then San Francisco and Prague before returning to New York. She raised a daughter, sold real estate and continued to write. Her devotion to her craft resulted in the publication of her first book, The Girl Pretending to Read Rilke.
Why Does a New Yorker Move to Florida?
An article in the New York Times inspired Barbara to visit St. Petersburg, but relocation was not originally part of the plan. As she describes it, after dinner at Moon Under Water and a walk under the twinkling lights along Beach Drive, she was hooked. This was a writer’s city; she could feel it. The next day, she purchased a condominium in the former St. Petersburg High School. For five years, she split her time between New York and the historic Mirror Lake neighborhood in St. Petersburg before arriving to stay in 2012.
A Non-Millennial New Millennium St. Pete Transplant
Once here, she threw herself into life in St. Petersburg. She had witnessed the remarkable downtown transformation each time she visited. It was exciting, but she didn’t want the city’s magic to be completely buried under mindless growth. Full-time residency gave her an opportunity to have a voice on several boards, including that of the Downtown Neighborhood Association. She volunteered as a docent for the Florida Holocaust Museum and taught memoir classes for Keep St Pete Lit. And, of course, she kept writing.
Today, Barbara pours energy into Tomlinson and her writing and enjoys all that downtown St. Petersburg has to offer, from coffee shops, museums and art galleries to happy hours and improvisation acting classes. St. Petersburg continues to nourish her artistic and progressive soul, and she loves it here. Barbara’s choice to make the Sunshine City her forever home reminds us that it’s not just millennials swelling the area’s ranks. The over-60 crowd is still here. And they too are here to flourish.