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June 23, 2002
By Wendy Fullerton, Staff
News-Press Newspaper
Carol Sellars lives a simple life on the sparsely populated island, spending her days searching for treasures from the deep and watching soap operas. It is an existence she wouldn't have any other way.
Carol Sellars rises before the sun on the remote, unspoiled barrier island of Cayo Costa.
She clicks on the television to check the weather report. On most mornings, she heads to the beach in search of untouched shells, a present from the pounding surf.
Angel wings. Her prized junonia. Purple semele.
The miles she has walked are evident in the thousands of shells scattered throughout her small circular home.
It's no wonder that Sellars, 88, is known as the shell lady of Cayo Costa.
"If she can't tell you the name of a shell or flower on Cayo Costa, it doesn't exist,'' said longtime friend Charles Foster, 88, of Alva.
Even more remarkable is this widow's simple way of living. She powers the TV with a generator. The refrigerator and stove run off propane.
There's no telephone or running water. Until recently, she relied on rain for drinking water. The favored eau de toilette is an aerosol can of bug spray to fend off the hungry saltwater marsh mosquitoes.
Her closest neighbors are a 12-foot alligator and the feral pigs that chew through the lattice under her house.
"She's one of the toughest people I've ever met,'' said island neighbor Dan Trescott, of Fort Myers. "It's not an easy life.''
To Sellars, it's paradise.
FATHER'S DAUGHTER
Sellars was born in Maine, raised in Massachusetts. Her father, an avid sheller, sparked her interest spending summers along the Maine coast.
Sellars attended Middlebury College in Vermont and married before graduation. It would be the first of five marriages.
She spent time overseas with the American Red Cross during World War II.
After the war, she moved to Central Florida in 1948 and finished her degree at Rollins College in 1950.
Her teaching career took her to Winter Park, Key West, Pompano Beach and finally to Sanibel in the early 1960s.
One trip to Cayo Costa in 1974 sold Sellars on the island north of Captiva Island and south of Boca Grande.
She'd found a reason to flee the throngs of visitors that were crowding Sanibel.
"This is for me,'' she thought.
Only a handful of people live on the island. Ninety percent of it is state park.
It took some convincing, but she and her husband, Max, ultimately bought a lot on the island for $25,000. They ordered a wooden prefab home from North Carolina. The 10-sided house with big windows was brought in by boat in pieces and assembled on concrete blocks.
It was supposed to take three to four days to erect. It took about three weeks.
Max died in 1994 of emphysema, but Sellars never considered leaving the island.
SIMPLE LIVING
Sellars now shares her home with her two cats, Maggie, a Siamese named after a character in Tennessee Williams' play, "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof,'' and Tabby, a wild feline that wandered to her house one day.
Her house is cluttered with shells - in the dresser drawers, on the tabletops, stuffed in bowls and plastic bags.
"I just have too many of everything,'' she said.
A small piano against one wall is testament to the ear for music she inherited from her father. She doesn't play as often as she used to and plans to give it to her neighbors for the children.
She passes time reading. Emily Dickinson poetry is her passion but nowadays, it's limited to magazines like TV Guide, Consumer Reports and Audubon Magazine, put out by the National Audubon Society.
She survives the summer heat with an air-conditioning wall unit and some whirring ceiling fans.
But most of her day is spent outside, evident by her sun-beaten skin. She covers herself in clothing from head to toe a hat protects her white curls that were once brown and keeps the glare out of her marble-like hazel eyes.
She protects her hands and some recently removed skin cancers by wearing gloves with the fingers cut out.
She makes the mile trek to the beach "as soon as it's light.''
She walks the beach for hours but she has to be home by 12:30 p.m.
It's time for her soaps. There are times when she can't remember the day of the week, but her watch never fails her on her soaps.
"The Young and the Restless,'' and "Guiding Light" are two of her favorites.
WEEKLY ROUTINE
Sellars lives on a poverty-level income of $1,200 a month with her Florida retirement and Social Security, "but it's enough for me,'' she said. Her expenses are about $100 a week.
Capt. Larry Lopez, 57, has known Sellars for almost 30 years. As a commercial fisherman, he would stop to give her fish. Sellars doesn't like to fish, but she does enjoy eating it occasionally.
Everyone who meets her "takes a liking to her,'' he said. "She's a pretty tough cracker. I call her a cracker because she's lived here long enough.''
The Sellars had a 13-foot Boston Whaler but after Max died, and as she grew older, she didn't want to make the journey across Pine Island Sound by herself.
Lopez now shuttles her back and forth to Pine Island at least once a week and his company gives her a discount on what normally would be a $100 trip. They charge her about $30.
She drives her light green Mercury station wagon to Winn- Dixie. On the weekly shopping list: cereal, bananas, grapefruit, coffee, bottled water, bread, chicken, vegetables and some Nips candies. She fills up with about 10 gallons of fuel for her propane tank.
Next stop is the liquor store for some Old Milwaukee and Early Times bourbon for her Manhattans.
She stops at her post office box in Bokeelia, where she sorts through the piles of mail, many letters from strangers she met shelling on the island.
"I'm a happy person and lucky.''
Next week, Carol Sellars turns 89. She proudly refers to it as her 90th year. "I'm so excited about it, I just don't feel that old.''
