LIVING HISTORY
Busy with Bees
Industrious longtime St. Lucie family
BY WILLI MILLER
28
lives on honey
he Treasure Coast was a very different
place in the 1950s, when Orville and
Gracie Gruwell, their son, Carroll, and his
wife, Betty, came to Florida for the winter
sunshine, a reprieve from the bitter cold of
Ottumwa, Iowa.
Florida was a place that welcomed entrepreneurs, an
apt description of the Gruwell family. When temperatures
dropped up north, they left their Ford dealership and a few
honeybee hives and headed south, setting up a traveling
roller-skating rink from a modified tractor-trailer.
Melissa Gruwell, a fourth-generation beekeeper and the
family historian and spokesperson, says, “Carroll and Orville
would set up the skating rink by hand. ... They covered the
ED DRONDOSKI PHOTOS
skating area with a giant canvas tent and installed overhead
lights and speakers. Bright mercury vapor lights were added
... to add excitement to the late evening skating experience.
A travel trailer was converted into a concession stand and a
skate rental area.
“My dad (Larry) would help his grandpa (Orville) sell RC
Cola and Snickers candy bars for five cents each. On long
skating evenings Orville would play checkers
and cards with Larry in the back while
manning the stand. Great-grandma Gracie
and Grandma Betty manned the entrance,
collecting the entry fee. Carroll and Betty
taught patrons how to roller skate. .... To this
day we have had people tell us they remember
skating at Gruwell Roller Rink and couldn’t
wait for our family to come back to town.”
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Honey bees gather pollen from Treasure Coast blossoms to make the honey in the Gruwell Apiary’s hives.
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