It Had To Be You:: A Florida Keys Story

Jack and Katharine “K” Wilkinson moved to an area of Key Largo in the 1930s that, at the turn of the century, had been a farming community known as Planter. The newlyweds squatted along the Atlantic coast in a make-shift tent and lived largely off of what the ocean could provide—including furniture that would occasionally wash ashore. In an effort to record what “K” remembered as the best years of her life, she reached out to the friends and family who had ventured down the “Tallahassee Road” to visit. What is revealed through this collection of memoirs, letters, and old photographs is both a love story and a peek into what it was like to live on this island chain before there was running water, electricity, and mosquito control. First locally published in 1996, “It Had To Be You” has been republished by the Florida Keys History & Discovery Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that operates Keys History & Discovery Center in Islamorada, Florida.