Venice is a Home Town, our home town. It is what makes a home town that inwardly drives individuals to want to be a part of one. A home town is big enough to sustain the bulk of your daily needs yet small enough for one to get acquainted with many of your neighbors. You know the shop and restaurant owners, the waitresses in your favorite restaurants, the mechanics in your favorite garage, your mailman, postmaster, banker, newspaper editor, barber and hairdresser and most important of all the elected officials you have entrusted the stewardship of your home town. It is a place where you have interest in your school and pride in it’s academic and sports achievements and a pride of ownership of the entire town. A day downtown is then enriched by courteous exchanges with neighbors and business associates while you handle your ordinary chores. What a great quaint place to live.

It is this home town spirit that brought us to Venice some 14 years ago. We began seasonally staying with the McCormick’s at the Banyan House B&B on Harbor Dr. We walked to church and shopping, played sports at the local facilities, bicycled the shoreline, were greeted by local people and soaked up the sunshine at the beach. We could take a cup of coffee evenings and go to a nearby ball field and watch little kids learning baseball. What a wonderful experience! This routine went on for 9 years until on our last trip back north we asked each other, “Why are we doing this, let’s just move to Venice!” We did!

With a good knowledge of the area, we settled in Waterford, a place which was always attractive to us. What we found there was a hometown within a home town. We are so thankful to have settled there and here in Venice.