Author: Chelsea Zukowski

Dean: There’s good news, bad news for education majors

Chelsea Zukowski People, St. Petersburg 0 Comment
Courtesy USFSP Education “has become a political football,” Heller says.
Courtesy USFSP
Education “has become a political football,” Heller says.

By JEFFREY ZANKER
USFSP Student Reporter

ST. PETERSBURG — Students who earn degrees in education at USF St. Petersburg don’t have to worry much about finding a teaching job after graduation.

But teaching these days is no school picnic.

That’s the assessment of Bill Heller, who as dean of the College of Education and a former state legislator has an insider’s perspective on the intersection of education and politics.

“If you want employment, you can have it in education,” said Heller, who predicted that most of the college’s 300 undergrads will land jobs. “But it’s a tough world in education right now.”

Virtually every lawmaker had “one bad teacher” growing up, Heller said, so many legislators believe they know what’s best in setting standards for curriculum, students and teachers.

As a result, teachers have lost professional development opportunities and job protection, he said. They are increasingly judged by their students’ standardized test scores, and the state’s “best and brightest” teacher scholarships are based in part on how teachers performed on their SAT or ACT tests.

“I’m not a fan of the best and brightest” program, said Heller, who said education “has become a political football.”

Heller traces his passion for education to his own upbringing in a series of rural, one-room schools in Illinois. Teachers “always made special efforts with my brother and me,” who were raised by their father – a poor farmer with a sixth-grade education – and grandparents, he said.

“Teaching is a part of me.”

He married his wife, Jeanne, in 1954. Her sister is deaf, he said, and that helped prompt his career-long interest in special education.

After a hitch as a paratrooper with the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, Heller earned a bachelor’s in elementary and special education at Southern Illinois University, a master’s in guidance and counseling from Northern Illinois and a doctorate in special education from Northern Colorado University.

In the years that followed, his career included stints as a special education teacher, an administrator in the U.S. Department of Education, superintendent of a psychiatric hospital and professor and administrator at Indian State University, the University of Alabama and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Heller served as dean of education for UNC Charlotte from 1979 to 1992, the year he became dean and executive officer of the St. Petersburg campus of USF.

Back then, the campus had 3,200 students, all juniors, seniors and graduate students –less than half of the student body today.

Under Heller’s leadership, the campus flourished and grew over the next decade, becoming an increasingly important player in the St. Petersburg community. And as it grew, Heller said, he pushed to make the campus a four-year institution with residence halls and its own accreditation.

“Who wouldn’t want to have four-year college program on a beautiful site like this?” he said.

In 2002, he abruptly resigned his post at the request of USF President Judy Genshaft – a move that rankled many people on campus and in the community – and returned to teaching.

Heller said he and Genshaft disagreed on the goals and direction for the campus, and since he “served at the mercy, the pleasure,” of the president, he stepped down as requested.

“She had a responsibility” as president, he said, and he respected that. He said Genshaft has been a good president and he counts her as a friend.

He also noted that his goals for the campus – including separate accreditation in 2006 – have been realized.

“Sometimes the messenger loses his arm,” he said.

At the encouragement of a former USF president, Betty Castor, Heller ran for a seat in the state House of Representatives in 2006. He served two two-year terms as a Democrat before being swept out of office in 2010 at the height of the tea party movement, “when everybody was to the right of Attila the Hun.”

That same year Heller became director of the Bishop Center for Ethical Leadership and Civic Engagement on campus, and in 2012 he became dean of the College of Education.

Heller, 80, and his wife have made donations to numerous campus programs. They have three children, three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Retirement is not in his immediate plans, Heller said.

“My wife doesn’t want me at home full time,” he quipped, and “I haven’t had a day yet that I didn’t want to come to work.”

He became a statistic in a struggling industry

Chelsea Zukowski People, Tampa Bay 1 Comment
Caitlin Ashworth | USFSP Caplan once thought of becoming an X-ray technician.
Caitlin Ashworth | USFSP
Caplan once thought of becoming an X-ray technician.

By CAITLIN ASHWORTH
USFSP Student Reporter

LUTZ – Andrew Caplan left his office earlier this month to cover a meeting of the Pasco County School Board for the Tampa Tribune.

When he got back, both his job and his newspaper were gone.

The Tribune had been sold to its longtime rival, the Tampa Bay Times, which closed the 121-year-old paper and laid off all but a handful of its news staff.

And just like that, Caplan, 27, became a casualty in the disruption that has convulsed the American newspaper industry over the last two decades.

Florida’s newspapers have had a major impact on the history and culture of the state. The Tribune was arguably the state’s most important newspaper in the 1940s and 1950s, and it was still Florida’s second largest paper.

However, the digital age, the Great Recession and self-inflicted wounds have greatly weakened once-prosperous papers, and readers’ habits and loyalties are changing.

Around the country, newspapers are cutting back or closing, and thousands of journalists like Caplan have lost their jobs. The future of the industry is uncertain.

Caplan, who grew up in Citrus County, was well into his 20s when he decided to pursue a career in journalism.

At first, he said, he thought he might become an X-Ray technician, but quickly changed his mind.

“I realized I don’t like blood and broken bones,” he said.

As he and his father kicked around career ideas one day, Caplan said there were two things he loved to do: watch sports and talk about sports.

“If curling was on TV, I would watch it,” he said.

After mulling over potential employment options in radio, commentary and journalism, he decided to become a sports reporter.

Going to games and talking with players and coaches seemed like the ultimate fan experience, Caplan said. And you get paid to do it.

Caitlin Ashworth | USFSP At the Chronicle, he said, he learned “how to write fast and on the fly.”
Caitlin Ashworth | USFSP
At the Chronicle, he said, he learned “how to write fast and on the fly.”

As he pursued an associate degree at the College of Central Florida in Ocala and then a bachelor’s at USF St. Petersburg, Caplan supported himself as a self-employed process server, delivering subpoenas to people who were behind on their child support, mortgage, rent and credit card payments.

The pay was good and the work was usually mundane – until the day he encountered a barefoot, bearded man with booze on his breath and a gun, which he pointed at Caplan.

“It is dangerous to constantly knock on strangers’ doors day in and day out,” Caplan wrote in a column for the USFSP student newspaper.

“After the event, I asked myself, ‘Is this what I want to do for the next 20-30 years?’

“Hell, no! I want to be a sports writer.”

At the student paper, he covered university and local sports. He created and co-hosted a weekly sports show on the USF student radio station, and he covered high school football games for the Times.

But he knew he needed to broaden his resume, “to do more than just sports.”

During the 2015 spring semester, Caplan interned at Equality Florida Action, an organization focused on equal rights and security of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

The ban on same-sex marriage was lifted in June 2015 and, through his internship, Caplan documented the effects it had on LGBT people.

A lesbian couple with two children tied the knot. A Sumter County clerk was honored to wed same-sex couples. And a teacher married her partner of 26 years and finally felt comfortable enough to share the news with co-workers.

Caplan said the internship gave him the opportunity to learn about things happening nationally and talk to local people whom it affected. It helped expand his breadth as a reporter and strengthened his skills as a feature writer, he said.

Over the summer of 2015, Caplan interned at his hometown paper, the Citrus County Chronicle, a daily with a circulation of 26,000, and graduated from USFSP.

The internship led to a full-time job with the paper as staff reporter on education, city government and anything else that needed covering, like a feature on actor Miles Teller, who grew up in Lecanto and frequently returns for visits.

“I learned how to write fast and on the fly,” Caplan said.

He also learned how to design pages using Adobe InDesign. On some Saturdays, he would design five or six pages for the Sunday section.

When the Tribune reached out to him about an open position in Pasco County, he jumped at the opportunity. He was hired in March.

He knew that the Tribune lagged far behind the Times in circulation and prestige, he said, but moving from a small-town daily to a big-city metro was too good to pass up.

Mainly working out of the Tribune’s office in a business park in Lutz, Caplan covered county schools, Dade City government and features for a Pasco news section that was distributed on Fridays and Sundays.

It was obvious that the Tribune was struggling. He was often the only journalist in the office, and his editor was there only once a week.

But the paper’s sudden demise was still a jolt, leaving Caplan and the paper’s other 265 employees at loose ends.

For now, Caplan is back at the Chronicle, covering his old beats. But he is only a stringer – paid per story – not a full-time staff member with salary and benefits.

He has applied to attend USFSP this fall to seek a master’s in digital journalism, which could “give me a leg up” in an industry where digital is supplanting print. He might apply for full-time jobs at other papers, might start a sports blog to get more experience.

After all, he still wants to be a sports reporter.

After bumpy debate, Gulfport gets a bike trail

Chelsea Zukowski Gulfport 0 Comment
City of Gulfport The bike trail will begin at the southern foot of Beach Boulevard and go north and west before ending at Quincy Street S just north of Clam Bayou. The portion in green follows existing roadway. The portion in yellow is a pathway that will be paved.
City of Gulfport
The bike trail will begin at the southern foot of Beach Boulevard and go north and west before ending at Quincy Street S just north of Clam Bayou. The portion in green follows existing roadway. The portion in yellow is a pathway that will be paved.

By JEFFREY ZANKER
USFSP Student Reporter

GULFPORT – After months of planning and sometimes raucous debate, Gulfport is getting a bike trail.

The trail will begin at the southern foot of Beach Boulevard and proceed northward to 28th Avenue S. Then it will wind its way east along 28th and then 26th avenues S, then jut northward to connect to the Skyway Trail at Quincy Street S just north of Clam Bayou.

Most of the 3.4-mile trail will be on existing streets, which will get green Bike Route signs and shared-lane markings, called sharrows, indicating that motorists and bicyclists share the roadway.

The final leg, which will run just north of Clam Bayou, will be paved. It will be named the Osgood Point Trail after a family that owned a boatyard business in Gulfport.

The Gulfport City Council voted unanimously April 5 to proceed with the plan, which will cost $243,701 and create what community development director Fred Metcalf called “a connectivity system with Pinellas.”

City of Gulfport Most of the trail will be on existing streets, which will get green Bike Route signs and shared-roadway markings.
City of Gulfport
Most of the trail will be on existing streets, which will get green Bike Route signs and shared-roadway markings.

Pinellas has a popular, 44-mile trail that starts in downtown St. Petersburg and ends east of Lake Tarpon. The Skyway Trail starts at the Pinellas Trail just north of the Childs Park neighborhood and runs southward before ending at the north Skyway fishing pier.

The Gulfport council vote was a long time coming.

When council members held a public hearing last September on a different bike trail proposal, dozens of protesters packed City Hall to voice their objections.

The room got so noisy that Mayor Sam Henderson had to shout for control. He later called it a “Wild West show.”

Chuck Broich, who lives in the Marina district, was among the critics. He said he worried that his neighborhood would be ruined by the path.

“I do not want to see bicyclists crossing through my yard,” he said.

Opponents of the bike trail also said it would be expensive to secure and maintain, would disrupt quiet streets and give criminals a quick escape route.

Jeffrey Zanker | USFSP Eric Kent, who cycles around Gulfport almost every day, thinks some of the opponents’ concerns are misplaced.
Jeffrey Zanker | USFSP
Eric Kent, who cycles around Gulfport almost every day, thinks some of the opponents’ concerns are misplaced.

But Eric Kent, 38, a St. Petersburg resident who said he rides his bicycle around Gulfport almost every day, said later he thought some of the concerns were misplaced.

“People ride for the enjoyment or for their health,” Kent said. “Not everyone riding bikes commits robberies.”

Kent also said he was disappointed that much of the new trail will be on existing roads with markings and Bike Route signs.

Vice Mayor Michael Fridovich has remarked that many residents have a not-in-my-back-yard attitude.

“Everybody wants progress, if not in their front or back yard,” he said.

“It’s hard to be a bicyclist in Gulfport,” said Crea Eagen, a resident who supports the plan.

Mayor Henderson agreed.

“I want to satisfy the needs of people who come to this town without cars,” he said after the council approved the bike trail. “We want the route and this is what we got.”

To him, running a library doesn’t feel like work

Chelsea Zukowski Gulfport, People 0 Comment
Marla Korenich | USFSP Mather has overseen the renovation and expansion of the popular facility.
Marla Korenich | USFSP
Mather has overseen the renovation and expansion of the popular facility.

By MARLA KORENICH
USFSP Student Reporter

GULFPORT – The only part of his job that David Mather doesn’t like is “managing the bathrooms.”

Mather, 39, is director of the Gulfport Public Library and IT director for the city.

A lot of changes have come since Mather became director in 2012.

“He has completely changed the library,” said Cathy Salustri, a writer and Gulfport resident. “Before, it was a foreboding, rules-oriented place. Today it’s more of a piazza.”

The Gulfport library has about 12,000 “active users,” Mather said. The library has a collection of 75,546 items, including books and movies, and a monthly schedule packed with activities for readers, writers, ukulele players, Alcoholic Anonymous members, movie buffs, yoga enthusiasts and more.

When the library got a large donation of lesbian materials, Mather said, he had to decide whether to sell them or create a collection.

The Circle of Friends, a support group that funds cultural programming, suggested an LGBTQ resource center, and it is the first one in a public library in Florida.

The library also hosts LGBTQ events each month that attract 50 to 100 people, according to Mather.

Marla Korenich | USFSP Youth librarian Cailey Klasson has brought more young people to the library, Mather says.
Marla Korenich | USFSP
Youth librarian Cailey Klasson has brought more young people to the library, Mather says.

Mather saw the need for an improvement in the children’s area of the library, so he hired a part-time youth librarian, Cailey Klasson, 29. It led to a full-time position. There are 10 times more children attending story time since she joined the library.

“She’s successful at getting younger people in here. There used to be two or three kids at story time. Now there are 20 to 30,” Mather said.

Before becoming library director in 2012, Mather was one of three administrators for the Pasco County library system, running seven libraries. He missed working in a city library and engaging with the community, he said, and that led him to Gulfport.

In 2013, the library received between more than $350,000 for renovations from the Pinellas Public Library Cooperative, donations and the city of Gulfport.

Mather said he developed a vision of what the library should look like, shared the plans with the City Council, his employees and community members, and was there nearly every day during the four months of renovations.

“It is important to ask everyone, especially in a small place,” Mather said.

While the library was closed, the staff moved operations to Scout Hall a few blocks away. According to Klasson, Mather handled the transition well.

“He did such a great job with the renovations. He heard everyone out, and he did it seamlessly,” Klasson said.

Earlier this year, Mather nominated the library for the state’s Library of the Year award. It didn’t win, but to his surprise, he was named Librarian of the Year by the Florida Library Association.

“Somehow the community nominated me for the award, and the panel must have really liked me,” Mather said.

Klasson was part of that community. When Mather was in the process of nominating the library, Klasson noticed she could nominate a librarian. And that’s what she and a few others did.

Mather received a master’s in American history at Villanova University and a master’s in library and information technology at Drexel University.He liked the research part of his history studies, he said, and he enjoyed working in customer service jobs while in college. That led to his career in libraries.

Mather still drives to work from New Port Richey so that his three children can remain in school there.

It helps, he said, that his job doesn’t even feel like work.

At her agency, digital marketing is like a symphony

Chelsea Zukowski People, St. Petersburg 0 Comment
Marla Korenich | USFSP Davenport (with Bella) started her business with four interns.
Marla Korenich | USFSP
Davenport (with Bella) started her business with four interns.

By MARLA KORENICH
USFSP Student Reporter

ST. PETERSBURG – You could say that the entrepreneur in Lauren Davenport began to emerge in middle school.

For 25 cents an item, she would iron clothes for her mother and some of the people in her neighborhood, all for the love of shoes.

“I definitely had the most shoes out of everyone in school,” she said. “It was fantastic.”

Davenport, 27, still likes shoes – more than 50 pairs, at last count. And as founder and CEO of a rapidly expanding digital marketing company in St. Petersburg, she can afford them.

Her Symphoni Media has more than 25 employees and a wide client base that includes companies like Marriott, American Strategic Insurance and Bryant Heating and Cooling Systems.

The St. Petersburg Area Chamber of Commerce named Davenport a finalist for its Entrepreneur Iconic Woman of the Year award in 2014. The next year, the Business Observer, a weekly magazine for business leaders from Tampa Bay to Naples, named her one of its “40 under 40” bright, young entrepreneurs to watch. She was the youngest person on the list.

Davenport said she chose the name Symphoni Media with help from her father because she likes to compare her agency to an orchestra, where everyone works together “to create something beautiful.”

Davenport got her start began in public relations in Nashville, her hometown.

While studying journalism at Middle Tennessee State University in nearby Murfreesboro, she began handling social media for the bar where she worked. Soon she was editing code and HTML for 15 businesses.

“I knew I would always be ‘the college kid’ if I stayed there,” Davenport said. “So to continue my business I had to move.”

She looked for a city with at least 200,000 people and more small businesses than corporations. St. Petersburg fit the bill, she said, and “it has a beach.”

Three days after arriving in 2011, Davenport took her dog out after a night with friends and tripped over another dog named Chance. It was a propitious encounter.

“I knew right then I wanted to marry her,” said Chance’s owner, Daniel Fernandez.

Their first date was skydiving.

“I had to set the bar as high as possible, and I did at 14,000 feet,” Fernandez said.

Davenport started Symphoni Media with four interns in an office on Central Avenue in downtown St. Petersburg.

Her staff – now 25 and growing – includes her husband as chief marketing officer and her father, Chris Davenport, as president and chief operating officer.

Her father, who flies back and forth from Nashville, handles human resources and legal issues and helps oversee operations. He is also a global security consultant for IBM.

Before marrying Davenport and joining her company, Fernandez was director of marketing at Florida Hospital Orlando.

He studied Davenport’s goals and realized they were passionate about the same things.

“I saw her vision and thought we could carve an etch for our own gig,” Fernandez said.

In a small-business setting, being married to the boss can be tricky for the couple and uncomfortable for employees.

“They are a power couple, and they work well together,” said Tyler Killette, who was a content creator there for seven months in 2014 and 2015. “It isn’t awkward.”

With a growing staff came the need for a bigger office. Symphoni Media now works in temporary quarters in an office park off Roosevelt Boulevard that is next door to the 7,000-square-foot office that will become home this summer.

According to Fernandez, the new office will have a common area, projectors, Mario Kart video games, computers, and a quiet room.

It will also be dog friendly. Davenport’s dog Bella is around almost every day.

She works on the other side of the camera now

Chelsea Zukowski People, St. Petersburg 0 Comment
Shawn Avery Speagle | USFSP Fernandez was a TV reporter and anchor for 30 years.
Shawn Avery Speagle | USFSP
Fernandez was a TV reporter and anchor for 30 years.

By SHAWN AVERY SPEAGLE
USFSP Student Reporter

ST. PETERSBURG – Yolanda Fernandez’s worst day on the job began one night at 1 a.m.

A man had dropped his 5-year-old daughter off a bridge to her death, St. Peterburg police said, and they needed her to handle what would become an avalanche of news media inquiries.

When the call came, Fernandez said, she jumped out of bed, dressed and rushed to the police station.

As the department’s spokeswoman, she had to verify the facts so she knew what to share with reporters without jeopardizing the investigation. She had to field inquiries about the death of little Phoebe Jonchuck from as far away as New York and Los Angeles.

“I was working for a day and a half straight before I was able to go home and sleep,” said Fernandez, 53. “I had a new appreciation for officers that work crazy hours.”

She had been on the job for only eight months.

Fernandez already knew a lot about deadlines and the news media, since she had been a television reporter and news anchor for 30 years, the last 25 at WFLA-News Channel 8.

That’s one of the reasons St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman hired her in May 2014 to be spokeswoman and community awareness manager for the Police Department.

“During my years as a news anchor, I had dealt with police agencies,” Fernandez said. “I know the ins and outs of both the media and the police.”

But many St. Petersburg officers – who generally view reporters with skepticism – were dubious.

“Officers were wary of her at first, including myself,” said Rick Shaw, a 33-year veteran who now works alongside Fernandez as a civilian in the public information office.

But he grew to respect her, he said, as he watched her handle the crush of responsibilities after the little girl was dropped off the Dick Misener Bridge at 12:10 a.m. on Jan. 8, 2015.

Since then, he said, he has seen her deal with the media, prep officers on how to respond to reporters, and use social media to spread positives about the department “that have never gotten out before.”

Police Chief Anthony Holloway, who was hired shortly after Fernandez’s arrival, said she has helped improve the department’s image and the sometimes uneasy relationship between police and the media.

“She has continuously helped me understand the media and its importance,” he said, “and the officers here owe her quite a bit of gratitude.”

Fernandez said she left News Channel 8 so she could take charge of her next step in life.

Anchor Gayle Sierens was the only woman older than she in the newsroom, and Fernandez – a former Miss Alabama and third runner-up in the 1982 Miss America pageant – assumed she might eventually be replaced by someone younger.

“Women have more pressure in the work force, especially when dealing with television,” she said. “Physical appearance is stressed more for women than men.”

So when Kriseman offered her the police job – which now pays $96,000 a year – she welcomed the change.

In recent years, the department’s public information office had been staffed by men who were retired police officers, so Fernandez became a trailblazer with a different perspective on things.

Fernandez said she coaches officers on dealing with the media and tries to help reporters get the information they need without too much difficulty on either side.

“It is better to have someone else deal with the media,” she said. “Let the officers focus on their jobs while I handle how they are portrayed in the media.”

Fernandez also has revamped the department’s social media accounts.

Before she arrived, she said, the department’s Facebook account had less than a thousand friends. Now it has about 20,000. The department’s Twitter account has over 7,000 followers, and Fernandez hopes to have about 10,000 by the end of the year.

Through social media, Fernandez puts out information that won’t make the 6 o’clock news, especially positive moments about police that people usually don’t see.

She said she is especially proud of her campaign on public safety, which featured a video about one of the department’s bomb squad dogs. The video was so popular online that news stations throughout Florida used it.

Fernandez said she always has “raw (video) footage” of events available for news media pickup. “My office has to understand what the media needs and how the media can help the department,” she said.

She said she sees major opportunities online for people who want to send tips and information to police without being seen.

Social media also helps the department keep up to date and relevant with younger people, she said.

“We have to be in touch with young people and show them that officers shouldn’t be associated with just bad news,” Fernandez said.  “They are human, too, and do a lot of good in the community.”

Fernandez grew up in north Pinellas and graduated from Troy State University in Alabama. She has been married for 30 years to John Walker, an assistant to the deans at Clearwater Central Catholic High School.

Their 20-year-old son goes to the University of Florida, and their 18-year-old daughter goes to Clearwater Central Catholic and plans to start at UF in the fall.

Council member lives with the history of Gulfport

Chelsea Zukowski Gulfport, People 0 Comment
Katherine Wilcox | USFSP Brown, daughter Elizabeth and husband Louis Worthington invest many hours in community volunteer work.
Katherine Wilcox | USFSP
Brown, daughter Elizabeth and husband Louis Worthington invest many hours in community volunteer work.

By KATHERINE WILCOX
USFSP Student Reporter

GULFPORT – Christine Brown lives in an 88-year-old house diagonally across the street from the Gulfport Historical Museum, which she helps run.

The memorabilia in her home includes two mullet boat replicas that were made by hand a hundred years ago, when Gulfport was a tiny fishing village.

She volunteers for committees, clubs and causes in the city and has served on the City Council since 2013.

But to some old-timers, the two-term council member is – relatively speaking – still a newcomer to Gulfport.

Take Brown’s husband, Louis Worthington, 72. He was born in Gulfport, a direct descendant of the family that founded the city, and remembers playing with the mullet boat replicas in flooded streets when he was a boy.

Or her brother-in-law, Bob Worthington, another Gulfport native, who fished for hours with his brother when they were boys and now helps him serve up fried mullet at his niece’s big birthday party and canned food drive every February.

Brown didn’t move to Gulfport until 1988, didn’t seek elective office until 2005 and didn’t win her council seat until 2013.

Serving on the council “was the next natural step and I was ready to give more,” said Brown, 55. “You need to have the city in your heart before you run for an election.”

As a girl, Brown said, she never had a city to embrace. She was born in Hawaii to a military family and “went to 13 different schools” before landing at St. Petersburg’s Lakewood High School.

After graduating in 1979, Brown said, she got a hairdresser’s license – which still comes in handy – moved to California and got married. The marriage didn’t last.

She returned to Florida to earn a bachelor’s degree in mathematics at Eckerd College, a teaching certificate at the University of South Florida in Tampa, and a master’s in curriculum and instruction at the University of Florida.

She has taught math at Boca Ciega High School since 1994.

Brown met Worthington in 1988 through friends. “We kept seeing each other because I fixed cars and she needed help,” he said.

Brown said she decided to keep her maiden name because “I was the last Brown in my family with no boys. I did it to honor my father, and besides it’s a royal pain to change your name.”

Their daughter, Elizabeth Brown-Worthington, 18, is a senior at Boca Ciega. She will enroll at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point this summer.

Katherine Wilcox | USFSP Brown says she is a “call-me-if-you-need-me kind” of public servant.
Katherine Wilcox | USFSP
Brown says she is a “call-me-if-you-need-me kind” of public servant.

Brown, Worthington and their daughter said they invest more than a thousand hours a year in volunteer work in their community, from the Gulfport Historical Society – where Brown is chairwoman – to the city’s Teen Council, where Elizabeth served for six years.

Brown and Worthington also helped start the Gulfport Fire Department’s Community Emergency Response Team, a group that is trained to help emergency responders in case of disaster.

Brown lost campaigns for the City Council in 2005 and 2007, but she won the Ward 2 seat in 2013 and was re-elected in 2015. She said she plans to run again next year.

Brown calls herself “a small government, call-me-if-you-need-me kind of person.”

“I think that 99.6 percent of the people don’t want you to bother them unless they need you.  Maybe I have a different attitude than some people, but I don’t feel like it’s my place to be in your home and in your life.”

But one Gulfport activist is critical of Brown’s style.

“I think she cares a lot about Gulfport,” said Margaret Tober of the Gulfport Neighbors service group.  “She’s doing a good job, but because of her quiet nature we don’t really know what she’s doing.”

Tober said Brown could be doing more than just waiting for problems to come to her.

“Maybe she could be more supportive of code enforcement and taking on more projects like restoring some of Gulfport’s historic brick streets,” she said.

Tober also criticized Brown for nominating her husband for the “Spirit of Gulfport” award. “That’s just something that you shouldn’t do.”

Brown dismissed the criticism.

She nominated her husband, she said, “because for years he single-handedly scrapped abandoned boats that were left derelict in the bay and sold the parts and gave the money to the city to pay for the city of Gulfport employee appreciation luncheon.”

Katherine Wilcox | USFSP When Gulfport was a tiny fishing village, mullet boats that looked like this hand-crafted replica were fixtures along the waterfront.
Katherine Wilcox | USFSP
When Gulfport was a tiny fishing village, mullet boats that looked like this hand-crafted replica were fixtures along the waterfront.

Asked what she would like to accomplish if she wins another term, Brown stressed the development of Gulfport’s waterfront and the importance of building a multi-room hotel to help the city attract more tourists.

When their daughter leaves for college this summer, a family and neighborhood tradition may end.

For years, the couple has hosted a combination fish fry and canned food drive to celebrate Elizabeth’s birthday in February. The exchange of gifts for donations was her daughter’s idea, Brown said, and this year an estimated 150 people attended the event.

“I can stand in line for dinner at my own home and not know some of the people in line with me,” said Worthington.

“I’d like to stop the whole thing since she’ll be going to college this year,” said Brown. “But I think people are going to show up anyway.  We even stopped sending out invitations, but everyone just knows when to show up.”

Her dogged reporting helped free a man from prison

Chelsea Zukowski People, Tampa Bay 0 Comment
Rachel S. O’Hara | Sarasota Herald-Tribune Johnson got into journalism when she was 14.
Rachel S. O’Hara | Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Johnson got into journalism when she was 14.

By TATIANA CUBAS
USFSP Student Reporter

SARASOTA – As an investigative reporter, Elizabeth Johnson searches for stories that otherwise would go untold.

For nine months, she pored over 1,400 pages of police and court records about a black man who was serving a 30-year sentence for the armed robbery of a white woman and her children.

Although prosecutors and then a jury concluded the case against Andre Bryant was solid, Johnson showed that it was full of holes. Her lengthy story in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune helped free him in October 2015, seven years after he began his sentence.

“It’s still shocking to think I played a part in getting an innocent man out of prison,” Johnson wrote three months later.

“As I began digging, more and more information pointed to Andre’s innocence – a witness recanted her statement, a juror told me that he never believed Andre was guilty and no one could explain how evidence found far from the route Andre took while fleeing police — a helicopter tracking him overhead — got there.”

In three years at the Herald-Tribune, Johnson, 25, has done some of the paper’s most distinctive work. But not all of it is so serious, and not all is for the print product.

Johnson contributes to unravel.us, a website that is billed as “an online news and entertainment platform for young professionals” in Sarasota and Bradenton. It appeals to the generation that grew up on Facebook, uses Instagram to post photos of food, and seems to have an opinion on almost everything.

“Like you, we’re not going to be bogged down with the traditional way our parents get the news,” it says.

While unravel.us is produced by the Herald-Tribune, readers and viewers would never know the traditional newspaper is involved.

“We did a focus group with young professionals who said they weren’t interested in getting news from the Herald-Tribune,” Johnson said. “They felt that the Herald-Tribune didn’t give them the news they want.”

Although unravel.us has a separate home, its stories are also posted to the newspaper’s website.

Johnson is also part of an online video feature called “Besties with Katy and Liz” with fellow reporter Katy Bergen.

Each video lasts five to 10 minutes, as the reporters – best friends, or “besties” – chat with guests and quickly dissect the news, giving viewers “just enough information to sound intelligent at happy hour.”

“Besties” is filmed in a window setting in the newsroom so viewers see a backdrop of downtown Sarasota and trees with bright green leaves – a view of city lifestyle with a tropical side.

When the videos feature a guest, there is an increase in viewers, Johnson said.

Johnson said she got her start in journalism at a radio station when she was 14. She graduated from Murray State University in far western Kentucky in 2012 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism.

At the student paper, she was a sports reporter as a freshman, sports editor as a sophomore and editor-in-chief as a junior and senior.

She came to Florida right after graduation for a job at the Bradenton Herald, then moved to the Herald-Tribune 10 months later, first as a cops reporter and then investigative reporter.

Nowadays reporters do a bit of everything in their work, reporting and shooting photos and video while bouncing from issue to issue. “Journalism is not a thriving industry,” Johnson said.

Her favorite story was the one that helped free Bryant from prison.

While she was investigating the case, she said, she talked with Bryant’s son, who was 6 months old when his father was arrested. When she asked him if he knew his father’s favorite color, he said he didn’t.

“I can’t imagine not knowing my mom’s favorite color,” Johnson said.

In her story, published Sept. 21, 2014, she wrote:

It took detectives four hours to book a suspect and the state of Florida just 10 months to try, convict and sentence a man to three decades behind bars.

The case was tidy. Open, shut; bad guy in prison.

But some of it – a lot of it, actually – didn’t add up.

After her story appeared, the Innocence Project of Florida took on Bryant’s case. The state attorney’s office agreed to review it and eventually asked the court to vacate Bryant’s conviction because of reasonable doubt. He was released from prison.

Johnson said her second favorite story was one she reported and wrote with Bergen.

Sarah Harnish had killed herself and her 17-month-old daughter. Many readers could assume the worst about Harnish, but the Herald-Tribune’s story revealed that she was silently suffering from mental illness.

Johnson’s project these days has her manually entering data from public records into a spreadsheet.

As people who’ve seen the movie “Spotlight” know, she said, that’s what Boston Globe reporters did in discovering that the Catholic Church had covered up years of systemic child abuse by priests.

Skating on the edge: Nobody wants a park nearby

Chelsea Zukowski Gulfport 0 Comment
Brigitta A. Shouppe | USFSP The skate park at Tomlinson Park was closed and padlocked in February.
Brigitta A. Shouppe | USFSP
The skate park at Tomlinson Park was closed and padlocked in February.

By BRIGITTA A. SHOUPPE
USFSP Student Reporter

GULFPORT – For as long as Pat Kidder can remember, there’s been a skate park in Gulfport.

First at the waterfront recreation center and then at the city’s Tomlinson Park complex, skateboarders could practice their flips, spins and grinds.

“I grew up with the old (park) and made a few friends, exercised, got outside, didn’t sit in front of the TV,” Kidder, 25, told the City Council last month. “It kept me out of trouble.”

In February, however, the city abruptly closed and padlocked the skate park, citing safety concerns about aging and broken equipment.

The City Council has applied for a $62,500 federal grant to help build a new park. But it seems unlikely that the city would put it at Tomlinson again, and people who live near a second proposed location near the Town Shores condominium community vow to oppose it there, too.

So where might a new skate park go?

In a city of just 2.8 square miles, every open space seems to border a neighborhood where at least some residents worry about crime and noise.

“There’s got to be a place we can put a skateboard park that doesn’t offend somebody,” said council member Michael Fridovich. “Now where that is, I don’t know.”

But Mayor Sam Henderson said he is “not entirely convinced that we need a skate park in Gulfport. We’ve had one here one block from my house (at Tomlinson), and it’s caused a lot of controversy.”

The city will learn in late May or early June whether it gets the grant. If it does and then decides to proceed on a new park, the council would have to put matching funds in its 2016-2017 budget, select a location and agree to pay for maintenance and repairs there for at least 25 years.

In the meantime, the debate seems likely to continue, pitting young people against older people, neighborhood against neighborhood and neighbor against neighbor.

* * *   * * *   * * *

Skateboarding has been around since the late 1950s, when California beach surfers began attaching roller skates to boards to entertain themselves when there were no waves. “Sidewalk Surfin’ ” was a hit tune in 1964.

The sport has exploded in popularity in recent years. ESPN’s X Games, which feature so-called extreme sports like skateboarding, bungee jumping and mountain biking, began in 1995, and many cities have built impressive skate parks.

Tampa’s new Perry Harvey Sr. Park, which opened April 3, includes a skate park. St. Petersburg plans to build a $1.6 million, 32,000-square-foot skate park at Campbell Park, across Interstate 275 from Tropicana Field.

Nick Nicks, 41, is president of the St. Pete Skatepark Alliance, which champions skateboarders and advocates for skate parks.

He lives in Gulfport, a few blocks from both Tomlinson Park – at the intersection of 19th Avenue S and 54th Street – and the second proposed location at the Michael J. Yakes Recreation Center at 5730 Shore Blvd. S, just east of the Town Shore condo community.

As a youth, Nicks said, skateboarding was an important outlet for him and helped keep him out of trouble.

“I think there’s more of a demand for it than (opponents) realize,” said Nicks.

Skateboarding is most popular among teenagers and young people in their twenties, but older adults have be spotted skating with their teens in Gulfport. Census data shows that the city of 12,100 has about 1,800 residents under 18.

* * *   * * *   * * *

Brigitta A. Shouppe | USFSP There were complaints that the now-closed skate park contributed to crime, but a 2014 survey by the Police Department found positives.
Brigitta A. Shouppe | USFSP
There were complaints that the now-closed skate park contributed to crime, but a 2014 survey by the Police Department found positives.

Shortly after the skate park at Tomlinson was closed in February, the City Council voted unanimously to apply for the federal grant. Since the city had to specify a location for a new skate park, it listed the Yakes recreation center.

But council members assured residents that the grant could be amended and the final location would remain open for discussion.

At Tomlinson, there were constant complaints that the skate park contributed to crime. Yet a 2014 survey by the Police Department found that more than half the 74 respondents had not observed crime at the park and believed it helped young people stay out of trouble.

“There is absolutely no data that there is a crime problem at the skate park,” said police Chief Robert Vincent.

He said the best way to combat potential crime at the skate park – wherever it goes – would be a full-time staff person on site.

That might not satisfy many residents at Town Shores, which lies just west of the Yakes recreation center.

Town Shores, a 55-and-older complex, has 1,327 units in 18 buildings. Many of the residents are original owners who are well over 55, and many are seasonal residents.

“The safety committee at Town Shores has taken the position that they are vehemently opposed, as am I, to the skate park being moved to the rec center,” said Jean Proach. As president of the Master Association of Town Shores, Proach oversees the boards of all 18 buildings in Town Shores.

Living near the rec center is already a problem, she said. Some of the youths who congregate there slip into Town Shores to steal bicycles and kayaks and break into cars.

If the city puts a skate park there, the problems would get worse, Proach said. Because some residents are frail, they fear the young people skating on their sidewalks would jeopardize safety.

A flyer posted around town shortly before the City Council’s April 5 meeting urged skate park opponents to attend and speak out.

Skateboarders pose risks to pets and people using walkers and wheelchairs, the flyer said. They are contribute to vandalism, trespassing and noise.

The flyer seemed to galvanize skate park supporters, too.

A dozen supporters of all ages urged the council to build a skate park somewhere in Gulfport.

One of them was a 76-year-old resident of Town Shores.

Carrie Angel said she and her husband run a sea scouts program for kids ages 14-20 out of the Boca Ciega Yacht Club. A program of Boy Scouts of America, they promote better citizenship and boating skills and knowledge through practical application.

“When kids have something to do, it keeps them out of trouble,” Angel said.

Brigitta A. Shouppe is a student journalist at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.

Undaunted by big challenges, he aims high

Chelsea Zukowski People, St. Petersburg 0 Comment
Nicole Carroll | USFSP Sims wants to serve in the state House of Representatives.
Nicole Carroll | USFSP
Sims wants to serve in the state House of Representatives.

By DEVIN RODRIGUEZ
USFSP Student Reporter

ST. PETERSBURG – Victor Sims was just 3 months old when the state removed him and two of his siblings from their unstable home and put them in foster care.

For the next 11 years, he bounced from foster home to foster home – eight altogether – before he landed in the home of a loving couple in Winter Haven who eventually adopted him. They provided stability and encouragement through his teenage years, he said.

Now 20, Sims is about to graduate from the University of South Florida St. Petersburg with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and an ambitious goal: He wants to serve in the state House of Representatives.

On March 3, he filed to run as a Democratic candidate in District 39, which covers parts of Polk and Osceola counties.

It’s a long shot. Rep. Neil Combee, 56, the Republican incumbent, is a Polk County native who has already served four years in the House, the last two as deputy majority whip.

According to his filings in the state Division of Elections, Combee has raised $53,905 for his campaign and spent $39,114. Sims has reported $1,082 in contributions and $39.50 in expenditures.

Combee, who has never met Sims, doesn’t sound worried about his young opponent.

“Well, I’m afraid that this isn’t the best district for him to run in,” said Combee, 56. “It has a strong history of voting conservative and I don’t see that changing any time soon.”

Courtesy of Victor Sims Sims (left), his biological sister, Victoria (behind him) and five foster siblings were adopted by Ronald and Violet Sims of Winter Haven.
Courtesy of Victor Sims
Sims (left), his biological sister, Victoria (behind him) and five foster siblings were adopted by Ronald and Violet Sims of Winter Haven.

But Sims said he is used to challenges. He wants to “break barriers and build futures” in his campaign, he said. “I’m a strong believer in God, and I think God will lead me to where he wants me to go next.”

As he moved from foster home to foster home, Sims said, the experience was often difficult.

“The constant moving was a huge problem for me because I would get close to the family and then leave,” he said. “It was difficult to go to school and wonder if the caseworker was going to pick you up and tell you that you’re no longer a part of that household.”

But Sims said he learned from the experience and wants to use it to help others. “I’ve lived with a lot of different families being in foster care,” he said. “I’ve seen multiple angles of life. That is something that most (political) candidates don’t have.”

Sims’ life changed when he was placed in the home of Ronald and Violet Sims, who have adopted seven children, including Victor and his biological sister, Victoria.

“I started only wanting two girls,” said Mrs. Sims. “I did adopt a girl, but then I asked the caseworker if she had family. Well, she had two brothers and I couldn’t just split them up.”

Raising Victor wasn’t easy at first, she said. He was a sensitive child who wept a lot. But he loved to sing gospel songs around the house, and after a year he began to open up. The Sims couple adopted him in 2007.

As he grew up, Mrs. Sims said, Victor proved to be a determined young man who knew what he wanted. That’s why she nominated him for the 2013 Outstanding Young Leader award from FosterClub, a national network for foster families. He traveled to Washington to receive it and met with members of Congress and officials in the Department of Education.

“Victor had a drive to do things,” Mrs. Sims said. “He liked to help people. He always said that foster children had a bad rep. That people treated foster kids different, and he wanted to change that.”

In 2014, Sims graduated from Chain of Lakes Collegiate High School and received an associate degree from Polk State College. While in high school he was student government president, a member of the National Honor Society, and a manager at a McDonald’s.

At USF St. Petersburg, Sims has been Mr. USFSP, an officer in student government, and one of 11 university “Ambassadors,” student leaders who help with commencement, homecoming and other campus events. He ran unsuccessfully for vice president of student government last year.

Earlier this year, he was in professor Judithanne Scourfield McLauchlan’s “Road to the White House” class, which spent 10 days in New Hampshire volunteering in presidential campaigns on the eve of the primary there. Sims worked for Hillary Clinton.

Sims was “positive, upbeat, enthusiastic,” McLauchlan said. “His enthusiasm is infectious.”

Education is a big plank in Sims’ platform. “My first thing to tackle is education,” he said. “I believe that is one of the most important things to make a society great, and figuring out how to make education available to everyone at an affordable rate.”

Courtesy of Victor Sims As an elementary school student, Sims bounced from foster home to foster home.
Courtesy of Victor Sims
As an elementary school student, Sims bounced from foster home to foster home.

He said he wants to help foundations like the Head Start Program, which offers education to young children from low-income families and helps prepare youngsters for kindergarten. His mother teaches in the program.

Sims said that having a relationship with the community is also important to him. It’s something he learned at USFSP.

“Seeing students every single day, you build a relationship with them,” he said. “Having relationships with people is what we are missing between politicians and the community. They forget to come back and be a part of that engagement.”

Sims knows that his political challenge is daunting. And if he doesn’t win?

“I will find another challenge to go for,” he said. “I will come after the same seat in 2018.”