What's now the city of Dania Beach was a giant tomato field when Marion Jeanette Frost Eby grew up there in the 1920s and '30s.

The Frost family lived in a Dade County pine house at 400 South Federal Hwy. with a second story that offered her father, Dania pioneer Martin Christian Frost, a panoramic view of his 300-acre holdings.

The ``family tree'' still stands next to the old house. The tree is a stately mango that three generations of Frosts climbed as kids. Jeanette would harvest the fruit from that tree -- and others on the property, which stayed in the family until 2000 -- to make mango ice cream in a hand-cranked freezer.

The girl everyone called Jeanette was born in 1921: the sixth of nine siblings. She died of heart failure on Sept. 27 at age 88, and was buried in Davie.

President of Dania High School's class of 1938, she married banker Frank Eby in 1942 after graduating from Florida Southern College. He served on the Dania City Commission from 1951 to 1961, and as mayor in '57 and '58. They divorced in 1970 after having three daughters.

The Frosts were a founding family of Dania Beach. Jeanette's grandfather, A.C. Frost, a Wisconsin state legislator, became resident agent for the company building the Intracoastal Waterway in 1898.

``In April 1902, Grandpa moved his family to Dania,'' Jeanette wrote in the 1950s. That year, he built the first Frost House, at 300 NE Second St.

``At this time, the inhabitants of Dania were. . .the remnants of a group of Danes from Chicago,'' several other whites, and ``a group of four colored people,'' she wrote.

GREW TOMATOES

Everyone grew tomatoes.

``Tomatoes went by local freight to Jacksonville and by boat from there to New York. . . .The local group, headed by my grandfather . . . built the first packing house on the east side of the Florida East Coast Railroad tracks.''

He also built the town's first school and founded Dania Bank, where son-in-law Frank later worked.

In the 1940s, her father helped develop Dania's beachfront. In the 1950s, after saltwater intrusions had wiped out the tomato industry, he donated some of his land to the city for what's now Frost Park, and turned much of the rest into a golf course, country club, a driving range and the Dania Jai-Alai fronton.

Jeanette ``never had to work,'' daughter Helen Gosset said, but was active in community affairs. She was especially dedicated to the Dania Methodist Church, which she helped found and where she sang in the choir.

``She had a lovely soprano,'' said longtime friend Betty Hanna of Hollywood.

She also loved making people laugh, and once showed up for choir practice in what Hanna described as ``an old, ratty brown wig.''

Helen said that if couples ``couldn't afford wedding receptions, she would do them at the church and they were quite elegant,'' Helen said.

An accomplished baker, ``she cooked for all the men's prayer breakfasts. She was a giver and doer and took care of everybody else.''

Helen said her mother was so political, ``most family conversations could end up very heated.''

But publicly, Eby was quiet -- until a city audit released in April 1988 showed Dania was running a $670,000 deficit and would have to borrow $1.9 million. ``That says to me someone has done some very poor planning,'' she told The Miami Herald at the time.

HELPED POLICE

She used to ride with police officers rounding up prostitutes, Helen said, and fought hard when the Broward Sheriff's Office took over the Dania Police Department.

Eby contended the city charter established the police department, and changing the charter required either a vote by or the commissioners' unanimous approval after proper public advertising.

She filed a lawsuit, which The Herald reported as ``the latest shot in Eby's battle to keep police bearing the city's crest patrolling the streets of the 84-year-old city, Broward's oldest. A group she leads is also gathering petitions to put the question on the Nov. 8 ballot.''

Her efforts failed.

Still, Eby was proud of her hometown: ``This is a great community,'' she told The Miami Herald. ``I'll do anything to promote it.''

In addition to Helen, of Dania Beach, Eby is survived by daughters Kathy Kay of Sylva, N.C., and Diana Nagele of Reddick, Fla.