First Lady’s Spring Tea returns to Markland House

Donning brightly-colored spring dresses and in-between sips of hibiscus tea, local ladies at Flagler College’s “First Lady’s Spring Tea” tipped their plumed hats to an elegant throwback on Tuesday.

Those things were the clinking of tea cups, a menagerie of assorted desserts arranged on silver platters and high-heeled shoes of women that mingled, from room to room, in the historic Markland House.

“There’s something so fancy about seeing lovely ladies in tea dresses and hats and gloves,” said Michelle Vijgen, Flagler alum and owner of St. Augustine’s Spanish Dutch Convoy shop. “You never see this anymore. It’s interesting to think that this was probably normal at one point — at this house, this kind of thing happened.”

As Henry Flagler — featured in a large portrait in one of the main rooms — appeared to overlook the fanfare, exquisite floral bouquets, homemade macaroons and ladies dressed to the nines competed for his attention. A pianist played the song “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles,” and for a moment, the past was present.

Time travel is partly what the tea is about.

“These lovely ladies and friends of the college give us their support all year,” Flagler’s first lady Susan Abare said. “One thing we can do is give back to them. The tea is an opportunity to be in this lovely old house in some of the traditional ways.”

Abare co-hosted the social event with her granddaughter, Julie Owensby, a freshman at Pedro Menendez High School, and Kris Kelly, wife of Dr. Yvan Kelly, associate vice president of Academic Affairs.

After having been in the newly-renovated Solarium in Ponce Hall the past two years, the event returned to its original home this time around.

Good friends, alums and retired St. Johns County schoolteachers Lila Sleeper and Deborah Coates have enjoyed coming to the spring tea for approximately seven years. Both graduated from Flagler in the early 1970s and recall the excitement of joining the Flagler community.

“I came to St. Augustine (from West Virginia) with my family one spring break,” Coates said. “Oh my gosh, I can’t imagine going to college here, I thought. I applied, got accepted and loved it, and it is here where I’ve met some of my best friends.”

Sleeper, a Pittsburgh native, discovered the college differently.

“Flagler was in an ad in the back of Seventeen magazine,” she said. The education major graduated in 1974 and has lived in St. Augustine ever since. She also noted the coincidence that her parents once stayed in the Ponce de Leon Hotel, now Ponce Hall, just after World War II, right down the hall from Dr. Abare’s office.

It is those kind of exchanges — reminiscing about the past and catching up on the latest happenings in each other’s lives — that marked the event. Many of the attendees were alums, local residents and leaders in the community.

“I think it’s just a nice time to see old friends and meet new friends,” Sleeper said. “It’s a generational thing, too — for the older ladies who have been coming forever and for the rest of us to kind of continue that tradition.”