“Life is short. Enjoy it. Have a good time. Live in the now.”

Dave Netterstrom, 48

Realtor and City of Cocoa Beach mayor

Dave Netterstrom, Cocoa Beach’s mayor, is ready to revive his town’s glory days. He recalls the space race in the 1960s, when rocket scientists and celebrities mingled there.

“The whole world was watching Cocoa Beach,
and that was exciting,” he says. “It would be fun to kind of get that coolness and excitement back into Cocoa Beach.”

Netterstrom, 48, graduated from Cocoa Beach High School. He studied engineering at Purdue, got a master’s in business at Florida Atlantic University and worked several years in the cellphone industry in Miami, Virginia and North Carolina. After a family vote about a decade ago, he and wife Sherri and their daughter
and two sons — now grown — moved back to
his hometown.

On the Space Coast, he works in real estate, but he has time and devotion to give to his part-time job as mayor. “I just felt like it was my turn to kind of step up and offer my
services to the city,” he says.

He loves the happy events he gets to attend, as well as mingling with the diverse citizens of his town. And his personal philosophy fits right into the beach atmosphere: