We just watched the massive Hurricane Irma rake over Marco Island on Florida’s west coast.  We’re worried.

Chuck and I were dating when he first told me about this special room he had had at the Marco Island Marriott. I stayed at that hotel about twelve years earlier when it was newer. I wondered if the hotel still had the charm I found back in 1976 when I was a 22-year old executive secretary working for a flash in the pan lobbying and association management firm called Pulse, Inc.  By Chuck’s description, it was.

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> He described the room as a two-bedroom suite overlooking a wide beach with its stairs leading down to a restaurant nearby. I tried to picture it in my mind, but my room while there in the mid-70s was called a Villa, and I didn’t remember any second floors in that part of the hotel.

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> Chuck and I continued to date, married and spent the next twenty-five years coming to this room at the Marco Island Marriott. Our children grew up coming with us to Lanai Suite 193, and now they are bringing their children.   The hotel later named it the Bora Bora Suite.

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> There are so many stories and so many memories, like the day I decided to send a load of clothes to the laundry and they billed us $79. I was afraid to tell Chuck how stupid I had been.  Or the time our son figured out that his room key was a blank check to anything he wanted to do at the resort.  That bill included an ice cream party for him and some of his buddies at the little ice cream shop on the premises.  He said, “just order what you like, the hotel is free for my family”.  It wasn’t; we were just on an expense account.  He obviously didn’t realize that only Chuck’s carefully weighed expenses were reimbursed.

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> Chuck’s mother came frequently over the years, and we were floored one day when she showed up after being missed for over an hour with a picture of her dangling from a para-sail. She was 78 years old, wore the room’s clear shower cap to keep her beautiful gray, quaffed hairdo from getting wet, and charged the $75 to our room.  I guess she thought it was free, like our son.  Chuck, also known as the wallet by our kids, paid the tab anyway, overjoyed by the spontaneity of his mom.

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>The last year we were there my sister and her two daughters came, and my other sister’s daughter made the trip several times, too. The room is bigger than some people’s homes.  It has two very large bedrooms, and you could parallel park a semi in its long living room with its wall of windows overlooking the beach.  There is a large conference size dining room table that will seat 10 to 12 comfortably,  The suite even has its own gym with a treadmill that we never use, because why would you run on that thing when a walk on the beach is right out your door.

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> Our bath attached to the master bedroom is bigger than most RVs. The jacuzzi tub is too big for just one person, and you can shower five giggling girls at one time in the walk in shower with its six jets and overhead rain shower.

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> The kitchen is in a room by itself with a microwave and frig. We bring lots of soft drinks, snacks, and quick foods for the kids who dine in mostly throughout the week.  We even bring a blender and make our own piña coladas using fresh pineapple, milk, coconut extract, bananas, ice, and rum.  We usually have at least one dinner there with colleagues who have been coming to this conference as long as we have.  Like ours, all their kids grew up meeting each summer at the Marco Marriott.

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> We have been through three renovations and redecorations. When we first started coming here, the room was decorated in tropical greens and blues with a limestone floor. Now it is British colonial island with golds and navy and muted orange and a yellow marble floor,

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> We’ve slept much more than the six that the beds sleep, with kids on the floor everywhere in sleeping bags. Last year all three kids came with their spouses and our six grandchildren and my sisters and her girls.  We had to finally break down and get another room for the overflow.

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> 2014 was special, though, because the unthinkable happened. After 28 years of staying in this room, the Marriott told us that the hotel would go through a full renovation of the lanais and the meeting rooms.  We would have to have our conference somewhere else in Florida.  We chose another Marriott in Orlando, but that wasn’t the biggest program.

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> From their description of what would happen during the renovation, we thought that Lanai Room 193 may no longer exist, or at least in its current form. It looked as if they might tear the building down and put in a multi-story building.  If it is like the other suites in the hotel, it might become a penthouse higher in the air.  They asked us for years if we would like to stay in one of the penthouses in the two towers, but I’ve seen them and this room because of its location is the pick of the litter.

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>I remember our last week there, and it was one filled with much nostalgia.

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> All those years, all those meetings, all those friends, all those family members, some of which have since passed. Chuck’s mom passed over five years ago, as have both of my parents.  One of the nieces passed away.  Now Chuck and I are 73 and 63 respectively and are both gray.

Then we found out that the room would exist when we returned only renovated. We were thrilled.  It was good news indeed.

We were supposed to return to Marco last July for the conference, but the meetings rooms were unfinished. It will be 2018’before we return, and now Hurricane Irma’s eye crossed the island.  We’re wondering how the room did.

The Marco Marriott is on its west coast, on a beautiful wide beach. But the Bora Bora suite is right at beach level. I’m sure Irma has filled it with beach water and sand.

Like everything else, I guess Linai 193 must pass, too. Then again it might get totally renovated. We’ll know next July at the conference which is planned again for the Marco Marriott.

I wish all our friends who work there all the best in this ugly storm.