WHAT IS PAST IS PROLOGUE

Hi all,
Following is a bit of CV History.
Dave Israel
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REF: http://www.jewishmuseum.com/current301text.html
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“In 1968, Bob Rapaport, Aaron Schecter and Irwin Levy built the first community geared to retirees of all ages, Century Village, in West Palm Beach”
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REF:
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/palm-beach/fl-century-village-founder-20100501-4,0,7402160.story?page=1



BY ELINOR J. BRECHER, Miami Herald

6:12 p.m. EDT, May 1, 2010

 Aaron Schecter, a visionary developer who built the first Century Village in then-remote western Palm Beach County in the 1960s – revolutionizing the concept of retirement for millions of working-class Americans – has died at 94.


In excellent health until late last year, he succumbed to congestive heart failure on Tuesday at the home of daughter Laurie Schecter in Hollywood.


Among the early developers to embrace the concept after Florida passed its first condominium law in 1960, Schecter built Hampshire Gardens in Boynton Beach, then the nearby Sterling Village, and Kings Point in Delray Beach.


But he hedged against real-estate downturns by branching out into unrelated businesses, including a cable television franchise in Kendall, shopping plazas, hotels and motels in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, Orlando and St. Petersburg.


Longtime partner Robert D. Rapaport said Schecter never really retired.


"We stayed in the hotel field until last year, when we sold the Holiday Inn Fort Lauderdale on 17th Street," he said.


He said Schecter was a ‘‘confident, engaging personality. Ego was never an issue."


In business negotiations, he was "considerate and congenial. He had good relationships with people. He was respected and beloved."


Aaron Schecter was born Sept. 6, 1915, in Mobile, Ala., to Romanian immigrants in the dry goods trade. He grew up in the New York metropolitan area, graduated from high school in Brooklyn, and earned a certificate in architecture from the Mechanical Institute of New York.


His parents split during the Depression, said daughter Julie Schecter, of Bolton, Mass. He and four siblings ‘‘all worked. Dad would sell ice cream on Coney Island."


Fiercely protective of his mother, Schecter "was a very responsible person all his life," she said. "He lost a brother in [World War II] which made him the youngest in the family. That's one of the things that made him hyper-responsible."


Before the United States entered the war, Schecter worked for the Army Corps of Engineers in Washington, D.C. He enlisted in the Army Air Force in 1942, then served in Korea as a captain, Julie said.


After the service, Schecter went into business with his older brother building modest houses in Fairfield, Conn., where he met his future wife, Martha Spector. They married in 1947 and moved to Hollywood seven years later.


A founding family of Hollywood's Temple Beth-El, and underwriters of a women's health center at Memorial Regional Hospital, the Schecters lived in Hollywood Hills from 1956-1990.


Then her father "built his dream home on North Lake Drive," Julie said.


Initially, Schecter constructed small houses and the Entrada Resort and Motel on U.S. 1, near Young Circle. For a time, he owned part of the operation, which remains in business.


That's where Rapaport met him, and the two formed a partnership that lasted more than a half century – without any formal partnership agreement, said Rapaport, of Palm Beach.


"Not even a handshake," he said. "Incredible."


Schecter, 20 years older than his associate, nonetheless insisted on equal investment in their projects. Rapaport recalls how Schecter noticed "a two-story co-op that was perpendicular to the Intracoastal in Hallandale that sold like hotcakes," and developed his formula for future success: "low-cost housing on the water in a prominent location."


They found that land in Boynton Beach, "which was not well known at the time," Rapaport said


Despite Schecter's worry that "people didn't want to live near all that traffic," they built Hampshire Gardens on U.S. 1. They soon sold out to East Coast retirees.


"Then we went out west and began Century Village," Rapaport recalled. They bought 680 acres and briefly ‘‘experimented with the concept of mobile-home units."


Instead, they adapted their successful Sterling Village design of "every unit a corner with a walkway down the middle between apartments."


They dug a lake and installed a golf course, and the first of 7,800 residents began moving in in 1966. They sold their interest in the project and were not involved in subsequent Century Villages.


Ironically, her father ‘‘hated the notion of a retirement home'' for himself, Julie said, because " ‘they were all old there.' He very rarely talked about the past. He only liked to talk about the future."


She believes he never thought of himself as a wealthy man, despite "amazing vacations'' like French luxury river-barge trips and a home in the Berkshires.


Schecter moved to Aventura shortly after his wife, an accountant, died unexpectedly of what daughter Julie called "a mysterious lung ailment'' in 2001.


In addition to his daugthers, he is survived by Ruth Greenfield, his companion of several years.


Loved ones will gather at 11 a.m. Sunday to celebrate Aaron Schecter's life, at the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, 1650 Harrison St.


The body was cremated.


In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations to the New Israel Fund, The Nation Associates -- which supports the progressive magazine, The Nation -- or The Hollywood Florida Scholarship Foundation, which supports students who are the first in their families to go to college.