Out and About

I had worked at General Dynamics in Fort Worth, Texas and was laid off when Dick Cheney cancelled the A-12 contract and GD went from 30,000 employees down to around 12,000. I decided not to work for anyone else after that and worked on medical directories in Fort Worth with a fellow entrepreneur. I also designed seismic recorder manuals due to my previous experience working on manuals for a laser guided missile for Martin Marietta in Orlando, and how to maintain an F-16 in Fort Worth. I decided I could work on medical directories here, and I pitched the idea to the Escambia County Medical Society, and they loved it. I ended up working on medical directories for Bay County as well. I sold ads and hired a friend of mine from church to do the graphic design for the ads and lay out the book. We worked out of my dining room. I gave birth to my daughter Claire in September – in San Antonio, TX at Lackland, AFB because during all of this they thought she might have difficulties when she was born. Thankfully, after a lot of prayer, the doctor’s said that if they hadn’t seen what they saw on the sonograms – they wouldn’t never have known she had a problem. They did end up removing a portion of her left lung when she was eight days old. She is 100% find and I told her she can’t smoke, that is the only “downfall” of her surgery. And, she believed me.  Eventually, I graduated from my dining room to an office unit in the building behind the gas station at the entrance to Holley by the Sea. I gave birth to Emily during the time I had an office in that building and remember having her one day and in my office the next day with her right by my side.  We were “Computer Publishing Group” but later became “Sandpaper Marketing.” I started a monthly publication titled, “The Insider Magazine” and the tag line was, “Flavors, Sights and Sounds of the Emerald Coast” I have pictures taking by children with me in a mini van from Destin to Pensacola distributing them. I asked the owners of Navarre News if they needed help with the newspaper, and they said no thank you. I was originally talking to them because I was on the cover of an issue for helping design the Navarre Beach Area Chamber Logo and it ended up on a water tank. Definitely front-page news. Then, my husband got orders to go to Korea for a year without me, and while he was gone, I decided to start a newspaper. When he got home in April of 2000, I told him we had a newspaper coming out in May and I was buying a building. Also, that May, my biological mom passed away and I went down to Naples to speak at her funeral, and we still had a newspaper in May. Later that year, 9/11 happened. I remember we thought having a newspaper was going to be easy to do – but it was the hardest thing we ever did – ever.  Thankfully, no one told me it was one of the most difficult jobs you can ever attempt, and there are very few people that start a newspaper from the ground up. I sit on a board with all of the heads of all the largest newspapers in the state of Florida and most of them couldn’t fathom starting a newspaper. They consider me a real oddity – which is why they have kept me on the board for 20 years. I think they get their best ideas from us. I used to think that when they called me “scrappy” it was a cut down, but now I own it.  I could never do this alone and thankfully we have very good people that have chosen to share their talents with us and our community.  So why newspapers? Because today’s news is tomorrow’s history. We have a chance to learn for a living, meet lots of people, and contribute to an important public service. We have the privilege and the responsibility to inform the public on important issues. Journalism is the only profession mentioned in the constitution, “Freedom of the Press.”  And most of all, we really care – and we care enough to get it right – purposefully the first time, but if not – we will get it right. I appreciate our community for supporting us for the past twenty-five years and we are looking forward to being your go-to local news source (and marketing company) for many more years to come.

“Were it left to me to decide if we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
Thomas Jefferson

“This is what really happened, reported by a free press to a free people.  It is the raw material of history; it is the story of our own times.”
Henry Steel Commager

“A good newspaper is a nation talking to itself.”
Arthur Miller

“The newspaper is a greater treasure to the people than uncounted millions of gold.”
Henry Ward Beecher

“Most of us probably feel we couldn’t be free without newspapers, and that is the real reason we want newspapers to be free.”
Edward R. Murrow

“People don’t actually read newspapers.  They step into them every morning like a hot bath.”
Marshall McLuhan

“Every time a newspaper dies, even a bad one, the country moves a little closer to authoritarianism…”
Richard Kluger

“I’d love to rise from the grave every ten years or so and go buy a few newspapers.”
Luis Bunuel

“All I know is what I read in the papers.”
Will Rogers