Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
THE DAY THE ECLIPSE CROSSED S. FLORIDA
Thousands of us looked to the sky, where celestial history amazed us
For thousands of South Florida residents, Monday was a holiday: Eclipse Day.
Parents took their kids out of school early. Groups gathered at restaurants, bars, libraries, museums and backyards with good views of the sky. They spent hours searching for the last available safety glasses.
As the moon gradually obscured about 80 percent of the sun, South Florida viewers tried to describe what they saw — a Pac-Man, a crescent moon, a dime-sized hole, a bite taken out of the sun and, inevitably, a banana.
“The nerd in me is like freaking out,” said Jennifer Leong, 43, of Delray Beach, peering at the sun through safety glasses from the parking lot of The Nak kava bar, an easygoing outpost of bohemia in Boca Raton. “It was definitely worth it. Just the whole community experience.”
On Federal Highway, cars whizzed past as usual, with no one stopping to take in the spectacle. At maximum darkness, it was still sunny, if not as bright as usual, like looking at the world through decent but not particularly dark sunglasses.
Unlike the 70-mile-wide strip of the United States that experienced a total eclipse, there was no sense in South Florida of an eerie, unearthly darkness descending in the middle of the day.
Although many people had expected it to get darker, the experience was still thrilling.
“I thought it was great,” said Nicole Washburn, of Boca Raton, who
brought her twin 17-year-old sons to the event. “I was blown away.”
The total eclipse corridor, which astronomers call the “path of totality,” ran from Oregon to South Carolina. But in South Florida, by 3 p.m., the moon blocked only 78 to 82 percent of the sun.
More than 400 people bought tickets to eclipse events at the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Discovery and Science, where they watched a live NASA feed in its IMAX theater or experienced the eclipse for themselves on the museum’s second-floor balcony.
“It’s getting smaller!” Xander Mealey, 12, of Pembroke Pines, exclaimed as he looked through his glasses.
At the Broward County Public Library in Fort Lauderdale, a line of two dozen formed in front of Twanna Smith, who was willing to share her safety glasses.
“Don’t look up until I tell you to,” said Colette Black, who works at the library, assisting the younger gazers, as she fixed the glasses firmly in front of their eyes. “OK, look up.”
Each small face lit up with wonder.
“It’s like the sun and the moon kiss,” said Larah Silva, 8, of Pompano Beach.
“Wow!” exclaimed Katherine Sanderfur, 12, of Fort Lauderdale, who then put the lens over her cellphone camera. “This is amazing.”
But the disappointment was audible when the sun ducked behind some clouds just before the magic minute of the eclipse.
“Damn, we’re getting cloud coverage,” said Jennifer Machado, 35, of Chicago, who was in downtown Fort Lauderdale with her nieces.
In Miami, more than 9,000 visitors went to the Phillip and Patricia Frost Science Museum.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime event,” said Diana Bernal, 22, a tourist from China.
“We wanted to see it in the planetarium,” she said. “We wanted to find out why it happens and to really understand it. We are very excited.”
As visitors grabbed their glasses and caught glimpses of the sun in the museum’s open walkways, others cooled off from the sweltering heat with free iced coffee.
Standing near the entrance of the planetarium, Raquel Ramirez quickly grabbed a pair of eclipse glasses and checked out the view above.
“Oh, wow. That’s so cool,” said the real estate broker who met up with friend and real estate attorney Cristina Ortiz at the Frost museum for a work meeting.
“It looks like a mini PacMan,” Ortiz said as she looked through her glasses.
At S3, a clubby beach restaurant attached to the Hilton Fort Lauderdale Beach Resort, eclipse watchers assembled around the bar’s fire pit. Diners who reserved a table at S3 were handed free pairs of solar specs, which resembled cardboard 3-D glasses. Table reservations sold out last week, with dozens of bespectacled guests filling the seats around the bar.
Seated at a dining table with a group of friends, family and her granddaughter, 10-year-old Simone, Ann Landry took the day off to watch the partial solar eclipse.
“It looks like Pac-Man now,” Simone says, gazing up through a yellow pair of glasses.
Landry, a retired biochemist for NASA who worked on the Gemini, Titan and Apollo missions in the 1960s and 1970s, hopes that Simone is inspired enough by the eclipse to become an astronaut.
“She’s going to be the first one on Mars one of these days,” Landry said.
Eclipse watchers even brought improvised solar glasses, staring through cardboard pinhole projectors between sips of midday coffee and cocktails. Real estate agents Michael Clouston, of Fort Lauderdale, and his co-worker, Patty Sagastume, peered through a pinhole camera built from a Lucky Charms cereal box.
“This is crazy. It actually works, look!” says Clouston, 51, of Fort Lauderdale, handing the cereal box to Sagastume.
On the beach across the street, newlywed tourists Abe Assad, 53, and Fadia Haik watched those gawking at the eclipse. They picked Fort Lauderdale’s beach for their honeymoon but said they were “too lazy” to order glasses and make reservations.
A beach vendor selling coconuts briefly handed Assad his pair of cardboard glasses. He also whipped out his smartphone to snap a picture of the sun through the solar specs. He fumbled and dropped the glasses twice.
“Wow, that is amazing,” Assad, 53, said. “This was one of our honeymoon goals: to see the eclipse with glasses. Mission accomplished.”
Although it was the first day of school in Broward County, many students stayed home or left early. At Pines Middle in Pembroke Pines, about 150 students out of 900 stayed home, principal Carlton Campbell said. About a dozen parents arrived about 1 p.m. to pick up their children.
Stacey Kotzen withdrew her two children early from Beachside Montessori in Hollywood.
“We wanted to experience the eclipse, and when I heard the school was to going to take them out, we decided to watch in our backyard.”
Palm Beach County Schools Superintendent Robert Avossa estimated that more than half of the district’s students stayed home or left early Monday as a result of the eclipse. The district counted them as excused absences.
Avossa said many were attending public events at science centers and universities to watch the eclipse, while others stayed home because their parents had safety concerns.
“I think the newspapers did a good job of sharing the dangers of looking at the sun, and what the consequences can be,” he said. “We gave parents the choice and many felt staying home was the best decisions for their kids.”
He said a number of schools and teachers bought glasses for kids to watch the eclipse, and some classes turned into watch parties.
“It’s like the sun and the moon kiss.” Larah Silva, 8, of Pompano Beach