Families celebrate Easter with Anna Maria Island beach picnics

HOLMES BEACH -- A picnic at the beach is nice any Sunday of the month, but having a beach picnic on Easter Sunday seems different.

For instance, at the Manatee County Public Beach on Sunday there was a feeling of reverence among the members of a dozen or so big family picnics. Adults and children who lugged their bags and coolers to picnic tables around 10 a.m. for the long day did it in a quieter fashion, keeping their voices to just above a whisper. It was as if they all knew it was a special day.

Each family group talked about the special significance of being at the beach on Easter on a warm morning.

"We are out having a family picnic on this Easter day," said Simone Avery from Seffner. "We decided not to go to church because we just wanted to do something different."

Wisconsin natives Gil and Sheila Kettner from Hazelhurst, not far from Lake Tomahawk and just down the road from Rantz, felt the same way. They had never had Easter at the beach. They sat on beach chairs in their bathing suits and just smiled at the surf.

"It's around 30 degrees in Hazelhurst this morning," Gil Kettner said.

But of all the stories at the beach on Easter, perhaps none could top the story of the Sullivan family from Palmetto by way of Chicago.

The Sullivan family celebrates every Easter at the Manatee County Public Beach because for years the family members were "stuck" in Illinois cold for Easter, but, one by one, they broke free and relocated to Palmetto.

Now, the family tradition is that all the "unstuck" family members have to show up at the public beach for a whole day of board games, food, chit-chat, swimming and stud poker. Aunt Donna Nirva, who drove a school bus for 39 years, is the only one who is still "stuck." But Aunt Donna, who is also the only woman in the Sullivan family who actually knows the rules of stud poker, is allowed to go to anything she wants at any time. No one argues with Aunt Donna, by the way.

Audrey Wilson started it all by coming to Palmetto from Chicago 14 years

ago. She is well known as being the "jewelry lady" who works at the Walmart in Palmetto.

"I just started working on getting everyone down here," Wilson said.

Of Wilson, everyone in the family agrees on one thing.

"She's the instigator in the family," said Jacci Sullivan, Wilson's sister, who also was convinced by Wilson to move to Palmetto from Chicago. "She was and always will be."

Wilson got her mother, Christine Sullivan, to move down from Illinois 18 months ago. Wilson went to work on her mother's three sisters, Irene Tessmer, Kibby Kauppila and Aunt Donna. Tessmer and Kauppila moved to Palmetto. But not Aunt Donna. She's still stuck.

"Whenever I cross the Green Bridge from Palmetto to Bradenton and see that beautiful water, I am in awe," Tessmer said.

Of course, all the menfolk had to come to Palmetto, too, to follow their better halves.

Aunt Donna is going to be the toughest nut for Wilson to crack.

"My husband is up there and my two boys, and my boys have good-paying jobs up there," Aunt Donna said. "I would move in a minute, but they won't."

But there was a gleam in Wilson's eye.

"I'm working on it," Wilson said.

Richard Dymond, Herald reporter, can be reached at 941-745-7072 or contact him via Twitter@RichardDymond.

This story was originally published March 27, 2016 at 11:28 PM with the headline "Families celebrate Easter with Anna Maria Island beach picnics."