Most longtime residents of Vero Beach already know at least a little bit about Waldo Sexton, the itinerant farm equipment salesman who took one look at Indian River County and decided to stay. Over the years, he left his colorful imprint on the citrus, cattle and tourism industries here.
The owners of the Rowdy Rooster, which opened in August in the former Patio Restaurant – one of Sexton’s quirky but charming local creations – want to share his story, along with other local lore, in a series of History Dinner events beginning later this month.
Sexton’s other locally famous building projects include The Ocean Grill and The Driftwood Inn and Resort on the barrier island, and the Turf Club on 43rd Street near State Road 60, which most recently was the Szechuan Palace Chinese Restaurant.
He also co-founded McKee Jungle Gardens, a hugely popular tourist attraction on U.S. 1 south of town that continues as a smaller botanical garden today, and left behind a large family that remains prominent in Vero Beach.
The original Patio Restaurant, opened by Waldo Sexton in 1945, was a favorite hangout of Brooklyn/L.A. Dodgers players during most of the 60 years the team held spring training in Vero Beach.
“That unique character is the reason we chose to open our business at the historic Patio building,” said Nichole McDevitt, who runs the Rowdy Rooster restaurant and country music venue with her sons, Michael and Matt Burns, and her daughter, Brittany Aquaviva.
“With all of the recent growth in the area, I’m sure a lot of new people are interested to know the history,” McDevitt said. “People sometimes see these old buildings and at first glance think they need to be torn down. But they don’t realize their importance to this town.”
Sexton’s buildings were distinct and interesting in part because he incorporated beautiful tile work, wrought iron, statuary, cypress beams and other prime building materials salvaged from luxury hotels and mansions torn down in South Florida during hard times.
The Patio included a tile bar imported from Spain and light fixtures from the Rockefeller, Mizner and Dodge estates, along with hundreds of other historical items.
The previous tenant of McDevitt’s historical building, the short-lived 19th Hole Virtual Golf Bar & Grill, removed and auctioned off many of the antiques and artifacts that made the 5,000-square-foot restaurant so unique, and covered up vintage wood features with drywall, McDevitt said.
“We were sad to see that stuff go. A lot of people were upset with the changes the last tenants made,” McDevitt said. “We’re trying to bring warmth back into our building.”
Since opening, the Rowdy Rooster has focused on its lunch business along with country music and line dancing at night. Now, they are expanding the dinner menu and moving the music and dancing to a later hour, so diners will have quieter surroundings, McDevitt said.
The History Dinners will be presented on Thursday or Saturday nights and will feature local historians and others who have stories to share about Vero Beach’s colorful past. The events will be ticketed, and the price will include a meal, drinks, the lecture, and even the tax and tip. The menu will include prime rib, baby back ribs, and chicken and dumplings, along with old-time local dishes like swamp cabbage, McDevitt said. Local farms will be invited to provide ingredients for “farm-to-table” dinners, too.
“We’re very excited about this,” McDevitt said. “Clearly, from the response on our social media accounts, people are just as excited.”
Even though she and her family live here, McDevitt stays several times a year at The Driftwood Inn and Resort, another quirky structure created by Waldo Sexton, to enjoy the historic atmosphere. “We’ve always loved these buildings,” she said.
Lee Olsen, who has been general manager of The Driftwood and Sexton’s namesake restaurant, Waldo’s, for 19 years, was the manager of The Patio for 12 years prior to that. He says he hopes to be among the speakers at the History Dinners.
“It’s one of those things where I said to myself, ‘why didn’t I think of that?’” Olsen told Vero Beach 32963. Ralph Sexton, Waldo’s oldest son and a prominent rancher and community figure himself, came into The Patio nearly every day for lunch, Olsen recalls. “As long as I wasn’t too busy, I would sit with Ralph and listen to his stories,” Olsen said. Ralph Sexton died in 2014.
Another local historian who has pledged to speak in the series is Larry Lawson, author of “Haunted Indian River County,” published by History Press in 2024. Known as “The Ghost Guy,” he offers guided haunted history explorations and lectures, with past events at the Environmental Learning Center and The Emerson Center.
Olsen said Waldo Sexton used to give visitors tours of the Driftwood property and regale them with fanciful tales. When a magazine reporter returned the next day for a second tour, she noticed the stories had changed, Olsen said.
“When she asked him why the stories were different, Waldo said, ‘I’d rather be a liar than a bore any day,’” said Olsen, who sits on the Vero Beach Historic Preservation Commission. The Breezeway building and Waldo’s restaurant building are both listed on the National Register of Historic Places, Olsen said – a distinction that saved the Breezeway from being demolished after the 2004 hurricanes.
“It always amazed me that The Patio wasn’t nominated for the registry,” Olsen said. If the building had been registered, the golf bar and grill owners would not have been allowed to make such drastic renovations, he said.
Waldo Sexton, who was born in Shelbyville, Indiana, was passing through Vero Beach on one of his sales trips in 1914 when he decided to stay. He took a job with Indian River Farms Company, and within just a few years he became an independent citrus farmer, planting 10,000 orange trees his first year. Later, he became a cattle rancher and established Vero Beach Dairy, the first dairy farm in Indian River County, and became a real estate developer as a partner in the McKee Sexton Land Company.
The original Patio closed during the 1990s but reopened in 2012 for a brief, one-year run. Several other tenants tried to make a go in the location after that, with a seafood tavern hanging on for five years.
Photos by Joshua Kodis
