By: Sharon Aron Baron
Residents have a chance to meet the founder of the City of Tamarac at a book signing event hosted by the Historical Society of Tamarac on Friday afternoon.
Behring, now 86, moved to Fort Lauderdale at the age of 28 back in 1956 and started the Behring Construction Company. Growing up poor in Wisconsin, he first earned money delivering newspapers, cutting lawns, caddying, and as a teenager, working in a lumberyard and in a retail store. After high school, he sold used cars and eventually opened his own new and used car dealerships. He was a millionaire at age 27 when he moved to Florida to begin a second career as a real estate developer.
Behring helped build Tamarac Lakes, but his largest communities were the Mainlands, where homes started at $8,900, and the Woodlands Country Club where homes started at $20,000.
Behring lived in the Woodlands for several years with his wife and his children. His custom home still stands today in the Estates section off of Woodlands Boulevard.
Behring’s company eventually became the largest builder of single-family homes in Florida, and the tenth largest in the United States.
Behring moved to California in 1972 where he would develop the Blackhawk development near San Francisco. He said if he would have stayed in Tamarac, he would have continued building single family homes. “I still think that (it)was the finest living that people from the North could get at that time, ” he told Tamarac Talk in 2012.
Behring enjoys looking back not only on the homes that he built but on the relationships that he created by bringing people together. He describes his communities as “…a place where they could communicate with people that all had the same problems. But they became friends. They all had the same interests.”
In 2004, Behring published a memoir called Road to Purpose: One Man’s Journey Bringing Hope to Millions and Finding Purpose Along the Way. In 2013, he published a revised edition of the memoir titled The Road to Leadership: Finding a Life of Purpose.
If you would like to meet Behring and have your previously purchased book signed, or if you purchase the Tamarac Historical Society Book about Tamarac, you will receive a free autographed copy of Behring’s book. The event will take place Friday, March 13, 2015 2 p.m. – 4 p.m. at the Tamarac Community Center.
