On an island that hosts the only shell museum in the United States, it goes without saying that — from the Sanibel Stoop to the Captiva Crouch — you’ll find a lot of shell lovers. However, there’s only one person passionate enough to have conceived and created an automobile completely covered in shells, as well as perfected and published her own dictionary of “shell speak.” Meet Pam Rambo. As Southwest Florida’s unofficial spokesperson of shells, Rambo and her daily walks on the beach are simply following in the footsteps that her mother set out for her, years ago as a child growing up near the shores of Virginia Beach and vacationing the beaches of North Carolina. “Our house was full of shells,” she recalls. “It was our kind of way of life. It’s what I knew growing up.” Rambo’s way of life took an unusual twist (pardon the pun) in 1994, upon her first visit to Captiva Island. There, while wading in the low surf searching for shells with her soon-to-be husband Clark, the two were playfully jostling for position when his foot stuck in the sand — and he toppled over, breaking his leg. “We had rented a house on Captiva for a month, and he winds up having surgery and a cast. That’s how our love of shelling started,” she laughs today. Following marriage and five years in Miami for his job — interspersed with regular vacations to Sanibel and Captiva — the couple decided to permanently relocate to the islands in 2001. Always an artist and a lover of art,
Her passion is shelling, and thus the website iLoveShelling.comwas born. “I felt like I had foundmy calling. I started writing and it just took off. It’s a community of people who love what I love. It reaches somany people around the world, for somany different reasons.” —PamRambo
COASTE | personalities 29
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