Back in late February, my mom sent the following text to “The Fam” chat: “We sold our beloved family home in Key West yesterday. The couple that bought it are delightful people and love the house. But I had a hard time going to sleep last night – 49 years of memories flying through my head. My parents are most alive to me there.”
I knew this day was coming. My mom’s parents, Jane and Herbert Trammell, had bought the house in 1977 for what would buy you a bedroom in today’s Key West.
The house is two blocks from Higgs Beach and across from The Casa Marina. It was built in the 1950s in white brick (“slump stone,” Granny would correct), with a Key lime tree in the backyard and thick St. Augustine grass that the neighbors envied. My grandfather said he wanted a house somewhere that was hot year-round but still in the U.S. They drove to the end of the U.S. 1 and bought a house that was a stone’s throw from the Atlantic Ocean.
I first visited in 1983, at 2 months old. There were multiple beds in every bedroom, so we would “all be together.” Granny Jane insisted there was enough room for all of us, and if anyone argued, she would sleep in the garage.
As a child growing up in Washington, D.C., Christmases in flip flops felt unnatural at first. There was never the possibility of snow, but at least it was one of the only houses on the island with a chimney, so Santa could find us.
By the time I spent my first summer on the island, at 10, I was a convert. I dreamed of living there someday and installing a pool in the backyard. When my granddad passed away in 2008, he continued to be an invisible presence in the garden – his later years were spent nourishing the tropical flora on the property: hibiscus, bougainvillea, shrimp plants and so many others that still remind me of him. Characteristically unsentimental, that Christmas Granny Jane wheeled out all of Granddad’s Hawaiian shirts on a wardrobe and said: pick what you want, the rest are going to the Salvation Army.
Herb Trammell with his flowers in the back garden. CONTRIBUTED 
Herb and Jane Trammell on the front porch of 901 Johnson St. CONTRIBUTED 
The Trammell family during one of many back patio jam sessions in the 1990s. CONTRIBUTED 
The Cuene-Rios family on the front porch of 901 Johnson St. in 2026. From left: Pablo, David, Jairo and Duke. CONTRIBUTED
When I called Granny Jane from New York in the summer of 2015 and told her I was considering moving to Key West, she said I better hurry up, because she was about to turn 90 and might die soon. The next year, we celebrated our birthdays together – 91 and 33. Looking back, I realize it was a sacred time, one in which I got to know my grandmother as a friend and became a better writer (thanks in a large part to working at the Keys Weekly). I often walked through the front yard barefoot, searching for the rough place where the frangipani used to be that my cousins and I had loved to climb in the ’80s and ’90s, which had been lost in Hurricane Wilma in 2005.
Granny Jane continued to play tennis at the Higgs Beach courts well into her 90s. She often visited me when I tended bar at Salute! and made friends with the waitstaff. Jane was known in the neighborhood for sitting on the front porch sipping tea, shouting “Hotty Toddy!” to fellow Ole Miss alumni or chatting with passersby. She traveled all over the island on her bike, and when she was “Citizen of the Day” in 2018, she said: “I like it because it’s flat here.”
Around that same time, David Cuene came to Key West for a business meeting at the Casa Marina. He and his partner Jairo Rios saw the town not just as a vacation destination, but a potential future hometown.
“We kind of fell in love with the city,” David says. During the visit, he noticed the white house on the corner lot across the street from the hotel.
“We loved the architecture — it’s got some great old trees, and it has a nice sense of presence,” he says. He even saw Granny Jane in the yard, though he never met her. After that trip, the couple got more serious about calling Key West home. Their sons, 20-year-old twins Duke and Pablo, loved the idea.
When Jane died in 2024 at the age of 98, our family debated about what to do with the house, and we were strongly divided into “sell it” and “keep it” camps. But as is often the case with inherited property, the financial and logistical challenges proved overwhelming for heirs who lived over a thousand miles away.
Finally, the decision was made to sell in late 2025. When the time came to work with a real estate agent, the family was perfectly situated: longtime neighbors Lynn and son Jackson Kaufelt were happy to take on the job.
“The sale of 901 Johnson St. felt more personal than most,” Jackson Kaufelt said. “I grew up in the Casa Marina neighborhood as a teenager, so I had known the property for years.” He recalls his mom and Jane chatting in the front yard.
“When a house carries that much family history, it requires an understanding of what makes the home emotionally and architecturally important,” Jackson said.
Fortunately, he had some buyers in mind. Jackson had been working with David and Jairo, who sought a house with enough space for their kids, their jobs and the ability to eventually make it their primary residence.
“The last part mattered to the sellers. … They did not want the home to lose its soul,” Jackson Kaufelt said.
When he took the couple to 901 Johnson St., Jairo said: “This is the one.”
While the buyers will keep the original footprint and many features of the house, including the parquet floors, they also have a vision for its new chapter. They will move the kitchen into the open living space to make room for another bedroom. Otherwise, the renovations will be modernizing and putting their personal stamp on a home that hasn’t seen many changes in 50 years. And the house will finally get a pool.
When Pablo and Duke visited with friends from college, the boys hauled all the mattresses from the garage and studio into the second bedroom in the main house.
“We want to all be together,” they said, not knowing how much they were evoking the spirit of the previous owner.
I smile, imagining the new traditions that will unfold within the walls of 901 Johnson St., hearing the different laughter that will fill its rooms, the splashes in the swimming pool when the kids come to visit.
“Change in life is inevitable,” wrote Mom wisely in The Fam chat later that day in February.
When I’m ending my phone call with David, I say I hope to meet them someday when my family is in Key West. David doesn’t hesitate: “Just knock on the door.”
Maybe we’ll have tea on the front porch.
