I have been a firearms dealer for 46 years, the last 39 years in Santa Rosa County.
I have always strived to facilitate the sale and transfer of firearms to law abiding citizens and keep accurate records. I have had a good relationship with the federal ATF and a clean record. However, ATF has recently changed their rules and enacted a “zero tolerance” policy, resulting in ATF aggressively putting gun store owners, including myself, out of business.
I recently attended the graduation ceremony for my son-in-law, Jon Crider, who graduated with his Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Mississippi, otherwise known as Ole Miss.
He also wrote for Navarre Press for a year before he married my daughter in 2016 and left for Mississippi to pursue his doctorate degree. You may see his byline in the coming weeks. He starts teaching at Belmont University in the fall and will be working on data driven stories as a data journalist this summer.
Today is the official start of the Atlantic hurricane season.
Forecasters are finding this year’s hurricane season hard to predict. They have said the current warmer ocean temperatures would normally be expected to increase tropical storm and hurricane activity, but we also have an El Nino event brewing, which usually has the opposite effect.
“He’s going home,” we both pronounced with confidence. My wife and I have been binge-watching the History Channel’s reality show “Forged in Fire.”
After watching an entire season’s worth of shows, we noticed a trend: the contestant who boasts the most in their introductory clip tends to be the first one eliminated. The moment a contestant begins his boast, we make our pronouncement. We are correct more times than not.
It was the middle of March. The day of my birthday to be exact. And the Navarre Raider softball team won a game that kind of sent a message that it was on its way to having a pretty good year.
I was there to witness the Raiders hammer Niceville 16-6. The same Eagles who have long been a thorn in the side of Navarre over the years. Until that night, the Raiders had never beaten the Eagles in run-rule fashion.
When I was younger, this was my favorite time of the year.
School was just letting out, I had the summer ahead of me to go to the pool, play outside, go to summer camp and enjoy the weather. I’m grateful to have the winter weather behind me, but summer doesn’t have the same appeal to me now as it did back then.
Our high school seniors are about to celebrate a huge accomplishment in their life and dip their toe into the adult end of the life pool.
We are excited for you as you realize your whole life is ahead of you. You have barely begun to scratch the surface of what you can accomplish. The past twelve years have all been for this moment – mostly.
Graduation for Navarre High School is Saturday, and our seniors will be walking across the stage to get their diplomas. This is the accomplishment they have been working toward for 12 years.
It is the culmination of their high school education before they move on to college. To all the seniors, we hope you enjoy and make the most of graduation and the days that follow. We wish you all the successes in the coming years and can’t wait to see what you achieve (we will be here to report on it).
“God comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others.”
Those words of Scripture were of particular assurance for my wife and me as we made the long drive home from Indianapolis after having laid her brother to rest.
