As far as I could tell, everyone had good time at the Centennial Ball Saturday. I want to give a shoutout to some people that made the event happen. I was just one person on the committee, and I started going to committee meetings regularly just a few months ago. The Centennial Ball was made possible by Frankie and Barbara Gibbs, Mike and Nancy Sandler, Andy Epstein and Craig Born. Also, shoutout to the volunteers from Risen Savior Lutheran Church that helped clean up after the event, and to St. Michael’s for making a commemorative beer named “1925” for this special year in Navarre.
I have been going through old issues of newspapers this past week and I wish I had more time. I should go through a volume of old newspapers a week, and I also should clean my house for one hour a week, but I don’t do either. What do I find the time to do? A lot! I have a huge number of priorities and interests. Someone told me this week they were worried about me and wondered how I find time to do everything.
You may have read the following before or in the paper, but it needs to be repeated because there are still tickets available to the party of the century, the Navarre Centennial Ball. If you miss it, there won’t be another one for one hundred years. The Centennial Committee is selling the tickets on the sales platform, Eventbrite, and Eventbrite let us know this morning that 61% of ticket sales are usually done in the last two weeks before an event. That might work for a fishing rodeo, but not an event with a plated dinner. We have about 56 tickets left to sell, but truth be told, we could add a few more if needed. I’ve heard from a few people that they don’t want to dress up. I didn’t pick the dress code, but there are people that like to dress up and there are those that do not. Feel free to wear whatever you would feel comfortable in going to a wedding or church. You don’t have to own a ballgown, but if you want to wear a tux or ballgown, you will not be in the minority. I do know a few men who have told me they are going to wear a tux with flip flops.
I’m starting to feel “up there” in age – but only because of events and not because of how I feel. As we discovered a few weeks ago, I founded this newspaper 25 years ago. Since that time, I’ve seen a lot, and when I talk about “I remember when,” I sound like people that looked much older when I was younger and sat around a picnic table and recounted times past. I noticed that Patrick Moore is on our cover this week and I remember when he owned my favorite sandwich shop 30 years ago – named Dagwoods. The fact that I know who Dagwood Bumstead is dates me. He had the cartoons with his wife Blondie, and the central theme was that he liked sandwiches piled high – taller than his head. The wife’s character really caught on and she later had her own strip called, “Blondie.” I remember when (here I go again) Patrick had to change the name of his shop because of possible “copyright infringement.” He decided to rename his sandwich shop, All-American Heroes. I think he gave the creators of the cartoon an idea because shortly after the name change, I saw a franchise called Dagwoods, named for the comic strip. Apparently, the creators started licensing the name and I believe (I could be wrong) that they got the idea from Patrick. My favorite sandwich that Patrick made was the Cashew Chicken and I could only eat half of it. We wish Patrick well on his next adventure in California.
As you can tell by the content of this issue, we are celebrating the Navarre High School Graduating Class of 2025. The transition into adulthood can sometimes be daunting for parents and their children. It is a time of excitement, the culmination of years of hard work on behalf of the students, teachers and parents alike. There is a lot of pressure put on everyone to have it all figured out by the time the graduate crosses the stage, but it is my experience and opinion that that is a false narrative and can lead to a lot of disappointment. Even after college – or at anytime in life, there is no way to know what the rest of your life is going to look like. It is best to have some very basic foundational principles and beliefs and move forward being open to the path that life/God has in store for you. Personally, I turn to the Bible and test that against the proven experience of others.
When I first came to Navarre in June of 1993, I was pregnant with our daughter, Claire. John was in Albuquerque, New Mexico receiving training and I moved us from Fort Worth, Texas to Navarre.
Every day, week and month is busy in the news business because news never sleeps. However, this month has been especially busy, and we are only halfway through. We have high school graduations to cover and a Visitor Guide to design, get to press and then distribute before Memorial Day Weekend. On top of that, we have staff taking vacations and going to graduations for their family members. And it is Navarre Press’s 25th Anniversary in a week and a half. We have known this milestone anniversary was coming for the last – 25 years, actually. However, we haven’t slowed down enough to even think about it. Maybe we will have something ready by the end of the year. Navarre Press began with the first graduating class of Navarre High School – so this is Navarre High School’s 25th graduating class which is set to graduate on Friday, May 30.
I can’t emphasize enough how important it is that you buy tickets to Navarre’s Centennial Celebration which will be held on June 21. The tickets are $100 each and almost every dollar of that ticket is being spent on the food, the decorations, the party favor of a commemorative coin, and the entertainment. You will enjoy learning about Navarre’s founding in 1925 and the recording history of this area dating back a century before that. You don’t have to be a history nerd to hear the stories that will be told. In fact, our history has every element of what makes a good story – fantastic, but true. You will hear stories of murder, sheriff’s politicking, love, lust, marriages, adoptions, divorce, more death (or was it murder) money, fame, fortune, and then losing it all again – all wrapped up in what was going on with the rest of the world and in Northwest Florida. You will be amazed at how busy our little unincorporated area of Santa Rosa County has been in the last 100 years. All that, and a phenomenal band, Six Piece Suits and scrumptious food.
Last week I was writing about my critics and this week I started scanning pages of one hundred-year-old copies of the Milton Gazette, which is now the Santa Rosa Press Gazette. I found the following printed on May 1, 1925 – which could have been my column last week – just said in a different way…
When we have mistakes in the paper, I not only hear about it from the general public, I also get called into the kitchen by my husband – usually about my column. A couple weeks ago, one of our writers called me to tell me there was something wrong with my explanation of what was going on with tariffs. It turned out I was correct. At least our team feels free to always look out for the paper’s integrity, even if they have to approach me about a mistake, or five. I’m not beyond making mistakes.
