Gulfport

By JEFFREY ZANKER
USFSP Student Reporter

GULFPORT – There was a time, decades ago, when Gulfport was like a lot of Pinellas County communities – a mean place where people with dark skin dared not venture far from home at night.

Yolanda Roman has heard those stories, of course – heard them and dismissed them as a long-ago chapter in the history of a quiet, waterfront community that is better known nowadays for embracing diversity.

“If that existed before, you would not see it today,” she said.

In fact, Roman personifies the town’s current image. When she was elected to the Gulfport City Council in 2014 with almost 59 percent of the vote, she apparently became the first person of color to serve there. She was re-elected without opposition this spring.

Roman, 58, has dark skin, but she identifies as Hispanic, specifically Puerto Rican. Puerto Ricans have a diverse heritage of Spanish, African-Americans and indigenous Indians, she said, but “we are Americans first.”

Blacks make up about 10 percent of Gulfport’s population and Hispanics about 5 percent, according to U.S. Census estimates for 2015.

The city of 12,100 has a nice mix of people by age, occupation, race and sexual orientation, Roman said. “You won’t find much separation. We respect one another and that adds to the richness.”

As a member of the five-person City Council, Roman is known for her meticulous preparation and outspoken style – a style that sometimes leaves other commissioners bristling.

During a council meeting on Feb. 16, Roman and Mayor Sam Henderson clashed over her remarks about the city’s response to St. Petersburg’s decision to dump raw and partially treated sewage into Clam Bayou after heavy rains overwhelmed the St. Petersburg sewer system in August.

For months thereafter, Gulfport repeatedly closed its beachfront, marina and Clam Bayou Nature Park because of high bacteria counts.

Roman introduced a proposed resolution holding St. Petersburg more accountable for the dump and questioning the effectiveness of Gulfport’s response.

That drew a heated response from Henderson, who had met several times with St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman.

Henderson called Roman’s assertions a “bald-faced lie” designed to advance an agenda marked by “political spin and offensive grandstanding” and hurt his re-election campaign. His opponent was Barbara Banno, Roman’s friend and former campaign manager.

In a lengthy written response, Roman denied that she was in cahoots with Banno. She said she would not be intimidated by accusations of grandstanding.

“It has become apparent that other council members also question the integrity of my work,” she wrote. “They are free to their opinion. I know my own truth.”

Henderson, who was easily re-elected a month later, said he now realizes his fiery comments were unprofessional. He still disagrees with Roman, he said, but “we need to demonstrate more professionalism as city representatives.”

Roman grew up in Philadelphia. She graduated from Chesnut Hill College, a private Catholic school in the city, with a bachelor’s degree in biological science in 1979 and then spent 36 years in the pharmaceutical field.

Much of her career was at Johnson & Johnson, the giant health care company, where she worked in research, sales and state government relations, helping the company keep track of health care legislation in state capitals.

Her last job, she said, was working at home as a regional director post at Alkermes, a Dublin-based company that manufactures Vivitrol, an injectable medicine for patients with opioid and alcohol dependence.

She retired in 2015 – “a good stopping point,” she said – but thinks about starting a small pharmaceutical consulting firm.

Roman and her husband, a biochemist, had three children, all college graduates. They divorced in 1995.

Roman, who lived for years in the Philadelphia suburb of Laverock, said she got acquainted with Gulfport when her mother and brother moved here in 2003. She bought a vacation cottage near Clam Bayou two years later, and over time grew to love the community.

“In Gulfport, you have everything a small town needs,” Roman said. “You can walk down the streets and feel right at home.”

She became a Gulfport resident in 2008, bought a bigger house and sold the cottage.

“I did not want to become a landlord,” she said.

When Roman decided to seek a City Council seat in 2014, she and friends knocked on a lot of doors to introduce herself and hear what residents were saying about the city.

One of those friends was Banno, a restaurateur and council member in 2011-2013 who helped manage the campaign and raise $7,468.

Roman “knew how to take initiative” as a leader, said Banno.

During the campaign, Roman said, she and friends heard a few comments about her dark skin but never considered it a concern.

As a new council member a few months later, Roman struck a blow for diversity by sponsoring a resolution expressing support for changing the state ban on same-sex marriage. The council unanimously approved it.

As a council member, she said, her main duty is getting current issues on the council agenda. She meets regularly with City Manager James O’ Reilly and residents for their input.

During her spare time, Roman likes to garden and stroll Gulfport beaches.

She lives with two dogs, a German shepherd named Duchess and an English fox hound named Ms. Bella, along with a cat named Maddy and two betta fish.

“We are one happy zoo,” she said.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.”

By SHAWN AVERY SPEAGLE
USFSP Student Reporter

GULFPORT – Everybody jokes about Florida.

The media, comedians and even people who have never set foot in the state have painted a narrative about the idea and dream of what Florida is.  But author Cathy Salustri wants to describe what she believes the real Florida is.

“Florida is not this crazy circus the media makes it out to be,” Salustri said.  “I write to show people the Florida that I see.”

Salustri, 43, has been a Floridian since she was 7.  Her parents did not like the cold weather and cost of living in New York and moved to Clearwater to be near the beach.

In 2003-2005 and again since 2013, Salustri has lived in Gulfport for a life next to the water in a place with a small-town feel.

She attended the University of Central Florida and got a bachelor’s degree at the University of Tampa.  In 2012, she earned a master’s of liberal arts with a focus in Florida Studies from the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.

For 12 years, she wrote for The Gabber, a weekly newspaper that serves Gulfport, South Pasadena, west St. Petersburg, and the south Pinellas beaches.  She covered hyperlocal news, wrote an opinion column called “Hard Candy,” and did monthly in-state travel pieces.

Salustri, who also has written travel stories for USA Today, Visit Florida, regional magazines and local newspapers, is now arts and entertainment editor at Creative Loafing.

Salustri is writing two books, one based on her travels around Florida, the other a compilation of her best Gabber columns. The first is due out in October.

Salustri likes to say that Floridians are “beautifully flawed people.”  It is a label that might apply to her as well.

In 2005, she ignored the advice of family and friends and bought a home in a black St. Petersburg neighborhood.

Things went well at first, she said, but then things started disappearing from her property – a ladder, a weed whacker, a scooter.  As they did, she said, her thoughts evolved from tolerance to prejudice.

In a column that appeared on the front page of The Gabber, she described how living in the neighborhood had helped her understand how people could have racist thoughts.

She recounted going to court when a man charged with stealing her scooter appeared on drug charges.  When she saw him smile and wave at people in the courtroom, most of them black, she became disgusted with every black person in the room, she wrote.

Now, nine years later, she said, “I do not carry – and did not then – prejudices and, while we’re at it, I do not now – and did not then – discriminate.

“When we talk about race and how we think and talk about it, these are significant distinctions.”

Now living in Gulfport, Salustri is outspoken – as a resident and as a journalist – about people and issues there.

In the mayor’s race earlier this year, she called out candidate Barbara Banno and defended the incumbent, Sam Henderson, and incumbent council member Dan Liedtke.

“I’m getting tired of your bulls—, Camp Banana,” she wrote on Facebook, using her nickname for Banno.  “The whole town, save your ten donors who exist to seemingly intimidate, besmirch and defame anyone who supports Sam and Dan and our sense of community, is tired of your bulls—.”

She also posted photos of legal documents in the foreclosure action filed on Banno’s home.

Salustri’s first book, called Backroads of Paradise, is scheduled for publication in October.  She based it on her master’s thesis, which describes her travels across Florida.

Salustri based the thesis on a project of the Works Progress Administration, one of the agencies that President Franklin D. Roosevelt created in the 1930s to stimulate the economy and get America out of the Great Depression.  The WPA got writers in every state to create a guidebook of their state and chronicle what they saw on the main roads.

Following the 1939 Florida guide, Salustri wrote a narrative about her travels, flashing back to what it was like in the 1930s and what has changed today.

The 1930s predated the interstate highway system, Salustri said, “so I am going to these main streets that have now become back roads and writing about the locals.”

Gary Mormino, a co-founder of the Florida Studies Program, said few master’s theses become books, and that Salustri’s thesis was unorthodox to begin with.

“This was a very hard book to write,” Mormino said.  “The thesis itself was not what most graduates write about, and they are usually not very well written.  But this thesis had heart to it.”

Mormino helped edit the book and takes pride in his student’s accomplishments.  He said he was shocked to discover this is the first book published by the University Press of Florida to have the F-bomb in it.

“It just shows how well written everything is if she could get away with that,” he said.

Mormino said the only thing he regrets about Salustri’s book is the way she harps on Dollar General stores.

“Stores like that are taking over the mom and pop shops,” Mormino said.  “But I just felt she was a little cruel to the people who shop there.”

Salustri’s second book, tentatively titled Adventures in Small Town Paradise, is still a work in progress.

Salustri got the idea for it from a book by an obituary writer from Alaska who described meeting the families of people who had died.  She said the setting in Alaska was more interesting than the stories themselves.

“We have better stories in Florida, especially Gulfport,” Salustri said.

She is compiling her best columns from The Gabber, adding the backstory for readers who don’t know Gulfport.

Salustri said she hates the idea of the “Florida bum” and how the media portrays the common Florida resident as crazy and absurd compared to people in the rest of the country.

“We are not caricatures for the world to ogle,” Salustri said.  “We are all beautifully flawed people, and I want my book to reflect that mentality.”

Salustri said the narrative of “Florida is ruined” is not accurate.  She wants to bring out the good still in Florida for everyone to see.

“It is all real,” she said, “and the world needs to see the real narrative from someone that lives and breathes the Florida air.”