Get ready for Navarre’s only 10K! The 2013 American Cancer Society Man Up 5K/10K is at 4:30 p.m. on September 14 on Navarre Beach. Runners are encouraged to dress in the lightest blue and/or wear the funniest beard! There is an after party at Juana’s. You can register now at active.com. See their ad in this week’s issue for more details.
Monday is Labor Day, which means that summer is coming to an end. We have had relatively cool mornings with low humidity this week and the days without rain seem brutally bright and hot. I haven’t looked at my July 2012 power bill as compared to July 2013, but I’m sure it is a lot lower due to the rain and cloudy days. So, there is something good to say about all of the rain we had this summer. However, the rain brought to light the fact that many neighborhoods in Navarre are lacking in stormwater protection. The handling of stormwater is not a new topic. In fact, the ancient Greeks collected storm water. However, if you bring it up around here, the concept of taking care of stormwater and the fact that it should be part of basic infrastructure is “Greek” to some. The City of Tampa actually has a “Stormwater Division.” They have 600 miles of stormwater pipe, more than 250 miles of ditches and culverts, and more than 100 treatment ponds. And get this…the staff annually cleans 21,000 miles of curbed roadway with a fleet of street sweepers to reduce flooding by preventing sediment and debris from entering the drainage system. And, I bet they have a vacuum truck that sucks up standing water so that it doesn’t “muck-up” the culverts and swales that do exist. I know Tampa is a lot bigger than Santa Rosa County, but the basics are the basics. Panama City is close by and they own a vacuum truck. We need a vacuum truck for times like these. There is still standing water and we haven’t had an extended hard rain in more than a week. The reason there is still standing water is because of the muck that will never perk water again, and because a lot of the holding ponds are full to the brim. Have you seen the ponds to the side of High School Road? It almost looks like the water is standing higher than the road. We need to be praying that we don’t get any more tropical moisture this season — and heaven forbid the “H” word.
Sometimes less is more. In business, supply and demand is a key factor in making money and paying bills – two issues that seem to a major problem for the Santa Rosa Bay Bridge, aka the Garcon Point Bridge, aka Bo’s Bridge (in reference to former Florida House Speaker Bolley “Bo” Johnson, a Milton politician who spearheaded the effort to build the bridge and then later went to federal prison for tax evasion).
Inside this issue, we have a story on page 9B about the founder of Navarre from a perspective which I’ve never heard before — and I have heard the story from a lot of people, some of which are no longer with us. I heard that Wyman’s wife, Noelle, who named Navarre, came on Wyman’s land to tend to the pet cemetery when she was shot. I had not heard that she had trespassed before. I had also not heard that she was carrying a gun when she was shot. I wonder if there are police reports around from the early 1930s. Regardless….marrying and divorcing that many women in the early 1900s was almost unheard of. Also, I heard that the Roberts brothers that killed his parents were hanged in Crestview, but then there is another account that their sentence was commuted to life in prison because they were young and brothers. Someone should write the real biography of Col. Guy Wyman – with the backup documentation. The story is interesting no matter how it is told. However, it is too bad that we have this sordid history to point back to as the founding of Navarre. Regardless, it isn’t where you have been, but where you are going. Navarre is going places — good places, and we aren’t going to let the past taint our future. However… there is the makings of at least a made for TV movie. Someone should start working on that script.
Sinking ships take on water – it’s what they do. The half-sunken boat in the Sound near Juana’s Pagodas has been taking on water for well over a month now, but the boat isn’t the only one going down. The story and details of the owner are seemingly sinking as well.
Reason #530 to be a subscriber…a recent subscriber from New York was visiting Navarre and left her wallet at a local store. The store saw her press pass card in her wallet and called us on Saturday to see if we had any contact information. We emailed the subscriber and the wallet was successfully recovered that day.
We live in a beautiful place and it is easy to take it for granted because we see it so often. I’m talking, of course about what it looks like when you cross the bridge over onto Navarre Beach. If we didn’t have that beach, we would just have a messy, dirty, littered, faded-sign stretch along Highway 98. You would think that having such a beautiful beach would inspire people to clean up their acts, but it is just taken for granted. Anyway…back to the beach. Deep sigh. We have a beautiful beach and water and it has been made even more beautiful by the efforts of the Marine Sanctuary Committee – which is the signature committee of the Navarre Beach Area Chamber of Commerce Foundation. Full disclosure: I sit on that board. However, the efforts of the Marine Sanctuary Committee were well into play before I was on the foundation board. Because of the sanctuary’s efforts, Navarre had artificial reefs placed in the Gulf in September and they are already showing phenomenal growth of biomass in less than a year. And, today, thanks to scuba diver and foundation board member, Mike Sandler, we have awesome video of an octopus on one of the artificial reefs. It is a “common octopus,” but it isn’t really all that common.
While classrooms might not have yet been filled with students, school was most definitely in session last week. Shots rang out, smoke filled the air and fire alarms pierced the quiet that usually fills the halls of schools this time of year. First responders busted through the doors to find they had left the world of what they know and entered into a world where they have to rely on each other just as much as rely upon their training. The shots were, of course, blanks and the smoke from a machine rather than a fire. The “injured” were covered in makeup rather than blood, but don’t tell that to the first responders…they had those injured out of the building quicker than this reporter could snap more than a handful of photos.
Colonel Bud Day passed away Saturday, and I’m going to borrow from Senator Don Gaetz’s release that he sent out on Tuesday because Gaetz said it perfectly. “Col. Day was a modern day war hero and was the nation’s most highly decorated veteran since General Douglas MacArthur, earning more than 70 medals during his service in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, including the Medal of Honor. After escaping his captors in Korea and again being held captive in Vietnam for more than five years as a cell mate to and lifeline for U.S. Senator John McCain, Colonel Day returned home, retiring in Fort Walton Beach where he continued to fight for his soldiers as a tireless advocate for Veterans’ benefits to ensure all those who served to protect our precious freedom receive the care and compensation they deserve.”
