Want to Claim Your Day to Save the Day at the Historical Society, but you’re too selfless to choose your birthday or your anniversary?

How about one of these notable Sarasota County dates?

* If you choose November 6, you just LOVE phone calls. That’s the day, in 1899, that Harry Higel received Sarasota’s first phone call via wires strung up on pine trees. We assume it wasn’t a robocall.

We doubt Harry’s phone looked like this, but this was just way too cool to pass up.

* Grab October 28 if you love baseball and Payne Park. That’s the day Lew Brudette, the hero of the 1957 World Series, came home to a motorcade to the park and was feted with a key to the city and a 16′ cabin cruiser.

The man, the myth, the cabin cruiser.

* Then there’s Sarasota Memorial Hospital, where you or your kids might have been born? It opened November 1 1925 with 32 beds. It actually opened on November 2, but that day’s been Claimed by an HSoSC supporter, so we’ll use November 1, if you want to make someone’s Sarasota debut your day!

To exit the hospital through those sturdy columns? You were a true Sarasotan!

* One of my personal faves? Royalty arrives in Sarasota, Nov 30 1910. Bertha Palmer’s niece and nephew-in-law, Princess and Prince Cantacuzene, come to see what this whole real estate venture of Aunt Bertha is all about. They stayed at the Belle Haven.

The Princess wasn’t along on this tromp through the wilds of Sarasota.

* Prefer to remain low-key but still help HSoSC survive the pandemic? Just tell Linda, note on your PayPal donation, or drop an email letting us choose a day to dedicate to YOU (Hint: My birthday is July 18.)