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He's 87 but he has lived dozens of lives

Clyde "Andy" Taylor has packed a lot of living and a bushel of glamorous careers into his fourscore years and seven. And he doesn't mind sharing some memories.

By MARINA BROWN
Published May 22, 2005

Clyde "Andy" Taylor seems to have been everywhere, done everything, and done it on his own terms.

The 87-year-old's story dossier reaches out, grabs you by the neck and hauls you into his world. From trapeze artist to shoe salesman; vaudeville dancer to milkman; medic, Olympic hopeful, lens grinder, ballroom teacher, and finally, Treasure Island entrepreneur, Andy Taylor's life trajectory seems to rival Forrest Gump's.

His may be something of a rags to riches to rags story - to an outside observer. To Taylor, it's been about doing what his Texas daddy once told him, "Find your own talents, and if you don't love what you're doing, change!"

On a lazy afternoon at his home in the Crosswinds Mobile Home Park in St. Petersburg, Taylor flips through his scrapbook. He holds the book in an unsteady, but mammoth hand. He is animated, talking fast as his blue eyes flirt with a visitor. A movie star face atop a 6-foot-2-inch frame stares up from the photos.

It's 1945 and the young Merchant Marine is dashing in an officer's uniform. As a medic, the photo shows him receiving a plaque from the mayor of Modena, Italy, for Taylor's single-handed treating of scores of Italian civilians on his World War II off-duty time. "Medic," that is one of what Taylor says was a total of "73 or 74 different jobs" he has held during his lifetime.

Flip a page. Now it's 1947 and Taylor's touring the Midwest vaudeville circuit as "Mr. And Mrs. Adagio - Twinkle and Taylor." Another page and it's 1955.

He's doing his "signature" one arm chin-up at Treasure Island's Municipal Beach. The Treasure Island years. Those years, he says, were the best. But first he wants to think about how it all started, in Texas, in 1918, just at the end of one war.

By the time he was 13, young Clyde had already stumbled upon the Charles Atlas method for body-building. A tall, skinny kid, he ignored the skepticism of his buddies, memorized the regimen, and began to sculpt himself into a powerful specimen who could make a few bucks in feats of strength, a boxing match, or mimicking the tumbling he'd seen in traveling shows. Stints as a milkman, a sewer digger, and a lens grinder helped, but by 20, already married and with a new war on the horizon, the Merchant Marine service looked like opportunity.

Taylor's physical prowess was noticed immediately and he was put in charge of physical fitness training for young recruits. Stationed at Bayboro Harbor in downtown St. Petersburg, Taylor would drill his troops along St. Petersburg's waterfront in calisthenics and his own grueling version of the Charles Atlas system.

Later Taylor was trained as a ship's medic and sailed in the Mediterranean and to Japan. Photographs he has taken of Japanese single-man subs still make him shudder. Noticing how agile and strong Taylor was, that he was drawn to anything resembling a parallel bar or gymnastic rings, a ship's officer wrote a letter that gained the young seaman a chance at an Olympic trial in several events. It was 1947, and while he didn't make the cut, another gymnast saw him and invited the soon-to-be-discharged Taylor to try out for Ringling Brothers Circus.

Arriving back in Florida, he trained with the Great Wallendas and auditioned for catcher in a trapeze act. Though he was having the time of his life, he didn't get the catcher job. But a pyramid tumbling act liked him well enough to teach him the tricks of their trade. Taylor's natural strength made it all seem easy.

With the end of the war, Taylor's first marriage had finished as well. But a pretty young girl named Twinkle, whom he'd met on the beach while practicing his tumbling skills, became the second Mrs. Taylor.

Twinkle was small, eager, willing to take chances, and didn't mind heights. Soon, the two had developed a vaudeville "adagio" act which included straight arm lifts where the suspended Twinkle and Taylor would do a shtick reminiscent of Burns and Allen.

Henny Youngman, Judy Canova, and a host of venerable, now forgotten showmen, made the years rush by - and so did the money. Today, looking at the photos of Twinkle with her Betty Grable up-do and his fabulous physique, Taylor doesn't seem wistful. It's all part of the continuum. He and "Mrs. Adagio" parted, but not before, he says, he helped her find a rich second husband. As for him, he was on to find something else he loved.

For the tall Texan, he found it at an Arthur Murray studio in Birmingham. While teaching ballroom dancing, Taylor met his third wife. But in 1955, his yearning for the beach got the better of him, and with his wife and two children, he moved back to Florida - and to the place where, a son says, "his soul resides" - Treasure Island.

It was the early 1960s and from the moment he arrived, opportunities began to knock hard on Taylor's door. A friend who owned property on Central Avenue near the present Foxy's restaurant wanted to give him a couple of the lots to develop. But Taylor said "no" - it wasn't "his thing."

He bought a discounted lot on Isle of Palms' Eighth Street for $4,500 and then settled into what he thought was a temporary job as a lifeguard on Treasure Island's Municipal Beach.

But when Jack Puryear, then city recreational director, offered him the $60,000 per year job of managing the city's recreation centers, Taylor turned it down to stay at the beach. At last, he says, he'd found something he loved more than anything. The chance to be outdoors "on the most beautiful stretch of sand anywhere," make new friends with tourists and sun-worshiping locals, and to bring the joy he felt in life to everybody around him.

Taylor cleaned the beach like it was his own property; he says he has personally saved eight lives, and he has mentored scores of scrawny kids who would practice chin-ups for hours on bars that Taylor erected for them. And while sitting atop his lifeguard tower, watching the water for trouble, he noticed something else.

The cabanas.

For $1 a day, the cabanas' owner would rent the yellow canvas shelters to beachgoers. This time Taylor let opportunity in. He bought out the cabana owner, raised the prices, and threw his full personal charm into expanding cabanas across the barrier island beaches.

At one time Taylor had concessions on Fort De Soto, St. Pete Beach, and Treasure Island - tending to nearly 120 cabanas a day in a battered red Jeep. He would provide sunscreen if needed, an extra towel "just in case," and plenty of chances for laughter. A favorite riddle he'd pose to the sand-covered and sunburned: "How did archaeologists know they'd found the mummies of Adam and Eve? Answer: They didn't have navels!"

The years pass quickly on the beach. But Andy Taylor seemed to remain unchanged. Eating no meat, rarely a greasy carbohydrate, keeping his skin protected and his muscles toned, Taylor seemed the one constant in Treasure Island's expansion. His sons and now grandsons have all served their time servicing the cabanas. Greg Taylor, 48, says there's not a day that someone doesn't come up with a photo of his father, or a remembrances of his wit or strength.

Taylor married once more when he was 75. It lasted 10 years. But then two years ago, he decided he wasn't "loving it" anymore. He says he'd come to feel "out of place" at the condo near his beloved beach; he says he wanted his own place to devote his last years to writing down for his grandchildren the important things he's learned about life.

And he is content. A stroke has made walking difficult and he now spends his days circled by boxes and cartons of memorabilia, photo albums, and memories as thick as summer heat. The family stops in when they can; an old friend calls every other day; Meals on Wheels makes sure there's food to eat. Taylor's extravagant life has contracted to its essentials.

Does he miss the beach? He admits he does sometimes; he still advises his sons. But if he has one regret, he confides, it's that there wasn't time for just one more career.

"I would have liked to have been a medical missionary," he says with a sparkle in his eye that must have twinkled many times before. "Yes, that trapeze job - and a medical missionary."

[Last modified May 22, 2005, 01:07:21]