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Letter to the editor

'Mr. Coquina Key' kept the community shipshape

By STEPHANIE HAYES, Times Staff Writer
Published December 1, 2007

ADVERTISEMENT Joe Manko was called "Mr. Coquina Key" for his dedication to keeping the neighborhood in such good condition. [Handout]

ST. PETERSBURG - You didn't mess with Joe Manko's neighborhood.

Coquina Key, a residential island community in St. Petersburg, was his heart. It gave him an outlet for energy and a place to feel needed.

"It was the ability to be a somebody in a small area instead of being a number in a larger city," said his friend Walter Nendza. "People knew him there."

Friends called him "Mr. Coquina Key." When a lightbulb went out in the clubhouse, he'd screw in a new one. He'd clean the kitchen, wash the floors and string the American flag on the pole outside.

When the clubhouse was used as a polling place, he set up booths and tables. Every year, he dressed as Santa Claus and passed out gifts he'd purchased to neighborhood children.

He chased speeders down the street, and when delinquents jumped off the clubhouse roof into the pool, he shooed them away.

The other residents had a healthy respect for him, said his daughter, Susan Busch.

She remembered getting cat calls from guys - but when they got closer, they veered off, saying, "That's Joe Manko's daughter."

Every morning for 40 years, he cleaned debris and checked the chlorine levels in the community swimming pool. When a doctor told him that the reflection was making his macular degeneration worse, he didn't stop - just put on sunglasses.

In 2000, the Coquina Key Civic Association honored Mr. Manko by giving him a plaque and naming the pool after him.

"We didn't pay him or sponsor this through the property association," said his friend Spurgeon Hampton. "He just did this for years."

Why?

Well, he couldn't sit still, his daughter said.

Even when he was feeling weak, he went to CVS to shop with fists of coupons he'd clipped. He loved to socialize, and was known for his parties in the clubhouse - there were Las Vegas themes, magicians, costumed affairs.

But moreover, Busch said, her father wanted to make things good. He never knew his father, and his mother died when he was young. For years, he cared for his wife's mother, who suffered from schizophrenia.

In recent years, his daughter Karen suffered a stroke, and his wife, Lorayne, became ill - he cared for her until she died. Despite his own declining health, he kept up the home.

"To be able to maintain that, that's the thing I respect him for," said Nendza. "Being able to stand up under his own physical ailments."

Mr. Manko broke his hip recently. He died Sunday at age 85.

Stephanie Hayes can be reached at shayes@sptimes.com or 727 893-8857.

BIOGRAPHY

Joe Manko

Born: Jan. 27, 1923.

Died: Nov. 25, 2007.

Survivors: daughters, Susan Busch and Karen Manko, sister, Emily Bennis. Predeceased by wife, Lorayne Manko.

[Last modified November 30, 2007, 23:07:02]