Category: Florida State Historical Marker

Diana Nyad’s Historical Marker: How Fort Lauderdale Struggled To Find The Right Words To Honor A Fraud

Fort Lauderdale City officials approved five versions of the Diana Nyad Florida State Historical Marker text. Nyad’s admirers worked to include her exaggerations and lies while others sought to remove them.

 

Above: Diana Nyad models false equivalence. She posed for this photo in 2017 at her marker’s proposed location, across the Las Olas Beach entrance from the Wade-Ins marker. That marker commemorates the 1961 protests against Fort Lauderdale’s segregated beaches. Image via Dr. Lynette Long’s “Proposed Marker Location Request,” 21 Jun 2017.

In 2018, Fort Lauderdale’s Parks, Recreation and Beaches Board voted on a resolution to place a Diana Nyad Historical Marker at Las Olas Beach. Chairperson Debby Eisinger and all but one other board member voted against the resolution. The marker died, or so I thought.

When the Nyad biopic opened five years later, Nyad’s supporters began a crusade to resurrect the marker. Eisinger led the battle. Though she no longer sat on the Parks, Recreation and Beaches Board, the former mayor of Cooper City, Florida, she retained (and retains) clout at Fort Lauderdale City Hall. She wanted the City Commission to vote on the marker last April 2, so they voted on and approved it last April 2. She demanded that they place the marker at the entrance to Las Olas Beach, so they agreed to place it at the entrance to Las Olas Beach.

Eisinger gave three reasons for that placement. Two of them are lies from Nyad’s core repertoire. According to Eisinger, Las Olas
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Diana Nyad’s Magic Marker

Last month, the Fort Lauderdale City Commissioners approved a Florida State Historical Marker for Diana Nyad. A close analysis of the text shows how a Nyad Marker will taint the Marker program and its legitimate honorees by celebrating a serial liar.

Background

When Equal Visibility Everywhere founder Dr. Lynette Long applied for a Nyad Marker in 2017, she intended it primarily to honor Diana Nyad’s 2013 Cuba-Florida crossing; the first two-thirds of the original marker text addressed the Cuba swim.

However, the Florida State Historical Marker Program has a regulation that states

No individual may be mentioned in a marker text until thirty years after the death of said person or thirty years after the significant event with which that person is associated . . .[1]

So, Dr. Long began changing the text to sidestep the 30-year rule. For example, the original text began: “On September 2, 2013, at the age of sixty ­four, Diana Nyad staggered onto Smathers Beach in Key West, Florida.” The text the Marker Council finally approved in 2018 begins: “As a child growing up in Fort Lauderdale, Diana Nyad was a champion pool swimmer.” Continue reading →