Tom's Life Bits

Orlando Sentinel; Orlando, Fla.; Jul 31, 1988; Cory Jo Lancaster of The Sentinel Staff;

Abstract: [Jean Basiley] Jean Basiley basks in the sun outside her Melbourne Beach shop. STEPHANIE JAMES ELY/SENTINEL Gift shop owner says her life is entwined with the seashore. (Jean Basiley) STEPHANIE JAMES ELY/SENTINEL BOX: Jean Basiley Age: 68 Occupation: Owner of the Sea Chest Gift Shop in south Melbourne Beach. Background: Basiley first moved to the south Brevard beaches in 1951 and seven years later, she and her mother opened the shell shop. She also worked as a receptionist in the Air Force Missile Test Center Laboratory at what is now Patrick Air Force Base from 1955 to 1970. Family: She has three grown children, ages 36 to 43, and four grandchildren.

Full Text: (Copyright 1988 by The Orlando Sentinel)

Before the sun rises on an isolated strip of south Melbourne Beach, Jean Basiley has put in her 3-mile daily walk combing the sand for natural wares to peddle in her shell shop.

At 68, Basiley walks three miles every morning and a half mile each evening. Up until a year ago, she jogged that distance but stopped on the advice of her doctor.

On this morning, Basiley shows off her latest find – a dead crab, the type of that when compressed and stretched looks just like a figure of a skinny devil. About a dozen of them hang from the ceiling and from the walls of her shop, the Sea Chest Gift Shop on State Road A1A in south Melbourne Beach.

There are no fancy displays with trick lighting, glass cases or mauve backgrounds in the Sea Chest. Both inside and out, the store looks just as a tourist would have seen it 20 years ago when Basiley and her mother added a room on their front of their oceanfront home to open a shell shop.

“I pick up a lot of junk of the beach and sell it,” said Basiley, who has run the shop alone since her mother died four years ago. “I've found all sorts of stuff on the beach. I even found something worth one hundred thousand dollars once, but I turned it into the sheriff's department.”

Besides that kilo of cocaine, Basiley also has found two bales of marijuana along her stretch of beach.

Basiley and her shop appear untouched by time. She prides herself on her youthful appearance, which is maintained by a strict regimen of exercise, eating well and 65 vitamins a day, although she still indulges in an occasional glass of wine and a half pack of cigarettes a day, she said.

Over the years, the one-room shop has become more of a second living room than a business. Pictures of family members are tacked up around shells and other marine displays. Several turtle shells and the backbone of a dolphin lean against the wall next to dusty shelves with shells, shell jewelry and knickknacks.

Behind an old desk in the back corner, Basiley passes her days cleaning and shellacking her latest finds.

A dust-covered radio lolls out tunes from a different era, one that is neatly tucked away in a yellowing scrapbook in the desk. The photos show a beautiful young Basiley modeling for the Saturday Evening Post and with friends at a party as World War II was coming to a close.

After seven years of marriage, she threw out her husband, a World War II flier, an airline pilot and the hand somest man she had ever met. That was the curse, she says, adding that a woman shouldn't marry the handsomest man around because he most likely will cheat on her.

With her marriage over and three children under her wing, Basiley and her mother moved to Indialantic from Fort Lauderdale in 1951. She began working as a receptionist at the U.S. Air Force Missile Test Center Laboratory at what is now Patrick Air Force Base.

While working there, she meet Jerome Keuper and offered to work as a volunteer registrar when he first started classes at Brevard Engineering College. The school later changed its name to the Florida Institute of Technology.

“The first student that walked through the door at FIT – it was called BEC then – was greeted by me,” she said. “That's one of the firsts in my life.”

Another favorite tale happened in Havana in 1959. She and her young daughter were flying home from a vacation in Guatemala when the plane was rerouted to Cuba to pick up Americans before Fidel Castro seized power.

“Castro was heading toward Havana to capture the town,” she recalled. “They were trying to get all the spies and Americans out of Havana before Castro got there . . . I was on that last plane out.”

Basiley also was the first woman to run for town council in Indialantic, where she served as a member of the planning and zoning board. She lost by 20 votes in the Nov. 3, 1960, election at a time when there were 634 registered voters.

“She has loved the beach since we were little children,” said Basiley's brother, John Wright, 66, a math professor at Brevard Community College. “We came to Florida from Indiana in 1933 and we stopped and lived in Palm Bay for a little while. Of course, Palm Bay was just a dot on the map then. Ever since then, she's liked the beach.”

The Florida coast was not new to the family. Basiley's grandfather had invested thousands of dollars in land along south Brevard beaches and around Roseland during the 1920s. He lost it all after the 1929 crash because he could not even pay the property taxes, she said.

“I remember when I was a little girl and my grandfather would sit me on his lap and whisper in my ear that when I grow up I should go to Florida and buy all the land I could find,” Basiley recalled.

Since her family moved to Florida, Basiley has walked on the beach almost every day, combing for shells and other goodies.

“I love the ocean,” she said. “I'll never live west of A1A. I'll stay here forever and ever.”

[Illustration] PHOTO: Jean Basiley PHOTO: (Jean) Basiley basks in the sun outside her Melbourne Beach shop. STEPHANIE JAMES ELY/SENTINEL PHOTO: Gift shop owner says her life is entwined with the seashore. (Jean Basiley) STEPHANIE JAMES ELY/SENTINEL BOX: Jean Basiley Age: 68 Occupation: Owner of the Sea Chest Gift Shop in south Melbourne Beach. Background: Basiley first moved to the south Brevard beaches in 1951 and seven years later, she and her mother opened the shell shop. She also worked as a receptionist in the Air Force Missile Test Center Laboratory at what is now Patrick Air Force Base from 1955 to 1970. Family: She has three grown children, ages 36 to 43, and four grandchildren.