Finding Mrs. Post — A Journey Into Our Club’s History

2024-2025 Executive Committee. L to R, Alicia San Pedro (Corresponding Secretary), Laura Armesto (Recording Secretary), Nancy Davis (Treasurer), Inge "Cookie" Lange (2nd VP), Milly Perez-Crespo (1st VP), Eileen McDonough (President), Ruth Martinez (GFWC FL, District 11 Director)

In May of 2024, I proudly accepted the role of First Vice President of the GFWC Miami Springs Woman's Club. Like many new officers, I looked forward to learning the ropes and easing into my duties over the coming year.

That August, my family and I vacationed at our timeshare in Key Largo. On the last day of our trip, my daughter Meris and I dropped off my husband, Fabian, and our son, Fabian Jr., at the Sea Base Scout facility in Islamorada. The boys were headed off for a week-long scouting adventure aboard a catamaran.

Miami Springs Scout Troop 334, August 2024

As Meris and I began the drive home, my phone rang with the kind of call no one expects: our beloved President, Dr. Eileen McDonough, had entered hospice care. I was stunned. How? When? What did this mean? I wasn't ready to take on the duties of President just yet. There was still so much I had hoped to learn. But life doesn't always give us the time we think we need. Eileen passed on August 27th, and with her loss, I stepped into the role of President.

My husband, Fabian, serves as the club's historian, a passion we both share. Together, we've been working to preserve and digitize the club's historical records, with the goal of making them accessible to our members, headquarters, and even the public libraries. I've been helping him by uploading the documents he scans into an archival AI program built just for the club. I knew that by reading these historical documents, I would become a better President because studying the past is the pathway to a better and more informed future.

Scan of original minutes of the first meeting to establish the Miami Springs Woman's Club May 2nd, 1939.

As we pored over the old typed minutes and records, I found myself becoming curious about a particular name that kept appearing: Mrs. Harry E. Post. We discussed how challenging it can be to uncover the actual first names of women from that era, often hidden behind their husbands' identities. So, I set off on a research rabbit hole, a place where I'm perfectly happy to fall. My goal was simple: to find out more about Mrs. Post or, as I soon learned, Imogene "Gene" Post. 

I came across a book titled A Man Named BUDD: The Life and Times of Howard Malvern "Budd" Post, Founder of PBS&J Corporation. Through its pages, I discovered that Imogene Areson Nichols married Harry Eugene Post on March 5, 1921. Three years later, they welcomed their only child, Howard, known to the family as Budd.

After Harry's accounting firm closed during the Depression, the family moved to Florida in 1934. They first lived in an apartment across from Miami Jackson High School in Allapattah. Harry worked as an accountant for a stationary company, and later he secured a job as head accountant at Jackson Memorial Hospital. He was the first non-physician administrator. Soon after, they bought a lakefront lot in Miami Springs, where they built a house at 871 Lake Drive.

When I read that address, I did what all Alice's do, yes...I Google Mapped it, and I gasped. I've been inside her house; it now belongs to our friends, the Scavuzzos. Though the property has since been expanded, the original structure remains a fact that absolutely delighted me.

Then came my favorite find: a photo of the O.G. herself taken in August 1938 by her lakeside property, Mrs. Post, shotgun in one hand, a giant snake in the other. Who was this woman?

According to her grandson Jim's writings, Mrs. Post helped establish two churches in Miami Springs: the First Methodist Church and, later, the First Presbyterian Church. She was, as he described her, a "go-to-church-on-Sunday kind of gal,". She collected stamps, silver coins, cast-iron pans, dog figurines, newspaper clippings, and blue-and-white Wedgwood dishes.

I thought about one person I knew who would devour this book, our historian, Ken Wilde, so I gifted him my copy and ordered another. I encourage you to get a copy because it's a wonderful snapshot of those times, painting a beautiful, detailed picture of our city and its development, down to gas prices.

And so began my deep dive into the life of our club's very first President and founder — Imogene "Gene" Post. I know there's much more to uncover, and I plan to share every discovery as this journey continues. Are you coming with me?