WELLINGTON SCHOOL NAMED AFTER MANGO PIONEER
As we approach the beginning of Palm Beach County’s school year — that’s Aug. 13 but no pressure, parents — it’s natural for people to start wondering more about their children’s schools.
One curious parent who asked to remain anonymous emailed me last week to inquire about the origin of the name of her son’s school. Elbridge Gale Elementary sits behind the library off Forest Hill Boulevard, nestled in the Eastwood neighborhood and surrounded by a lush preserve.
Why, this parent wondered, would the district name this school after someone who likely never set foot in Wellington?
While she makes an interesting point, the school is aptly named when you consider the man who was the Rev. Elbridge Gale.
Gale moved to a piece of land on West Palm Beach’s north end — now known as Northwood — in the 1880s. There he planted the country’s first grafted West Indian mango tree. Yes, we have the namesake of a Wellington elementary school to thank for those sweet, juicy fruits that sustain us through the summer months.
During that time, Gale was not just a mango farmer. He also was superintendent of Dade County’s schools, serving a region that stretched from Biscayne Bay through Martin County.
Gale’s daughter also chose a path of education. At age 16, Hattie Gale became the first teacher in the first schoolhouse in Southeast Florida. According to my colleague Eliot Kleinberg, who has written several times about Elbridge Gale, Hattie worked at what now is called the Little Red Schoolhouse for only three months before returning to her studies at Kansas State University. When she was 20, she and her husband returned to Palm Beach County to teach in the Mangonia area, named by her father for his mango trees.
Worth noting that aside from his educational ties, should Gale have wanted to visit Wellington he would not have been faced with the current welcome signs. Instead, it was wild Florida, with the Wellington we know only beginning to bud from the ground decades later.
Since opening in 2005, Elbridge Gale Elementary has been one of the top schools in the county. The school offers a slew of science programs, including a vast garden. There, students can get their hands dirty and learn about horticulture — a passion of the school’s namesake.
So while it may seem odd that a Wellington school is named after a person who stayed close to West Palm Beach, it was inevitable that a school would bear the name of one of our area’s pioneers.