Every week Sandpaper Publishing, which includes Navarre Press, Santa Rosa Press Gazette, and the Crestview News Bulletin and Sandpaper Marketing have a meeting.  There are sometimes up to 17 of us meeting from all over Northwest Florida.  Part of that meeting includes shout outs to team members that went over and above. It is awesome to hear the team give each other well-deserved kudos. I’ve noticed quite a few selfless and thoughtful displays of awesomeness while out and about in our awesome community and I’m going to highlight a few of them this week. I’d like to do this more often and we are going to start “Shout Outs” that will be featured each week in the paper…and I decided that while typing this column.  I know our awesome team will be able to pull this off by the time you read this column and by the time my column is written today (Monday,) there will be a QR Code at the end of the column that will direct you to a page on our website – just for “Shout-Outs.”  This is specifically for good awesome displays of great customer service and just being a great citizen of our community.

I’ve had the privilege of meeting a lot of people in the 24 years of working at Navarre Press, and I wouldn’t make a list in order of importance because it isn’t something you can quantify. However, I’d have to say that Pat Quinn would be very, very close to the top. He was an awesome man in so many ways. He was fun to be with because he was funny, honest, observant, wise, and so many other adjectives. To say that he had led an interesting life would be an understatement. Let’s just say he couldn’t have gotten another ounce out of life because – he lived it – to the fullest. And, in doing so, he contributed greatly to every community and person that he was close to. The Gulf Breeze Zoo celebrated its 40th anniversary last month, and I asked our team to pull the pages and pages of stories we have written about the zoo over the years and a sampling of the results can be found on pages C6 and 7. One of the stories was about “Remembering Colossus” which was written by our reporter John Richardson, who passed away last year and who is another person that I had the privilege of calling my friend. This is an awesome story and will give you a taste of what Pat Quinn was like and how fortunate we are to have the Zoo in our community.

If you miss an issue of Navarre Press, you miss a lot. This week is no exception. We have a story on the Mariott Residence at the foot of the Navarre Beach Bridge where Tommy Sno Balls is located now – only in a larger footprint. There is a fundraiser gala scheduled for January 26, 2024, for Set Free Refuge. Read all about it on page 3A.