Category: COMMUNITY

BY TAYLOR WILLIAMS
NNB Student Reporter

ST. PETERSBURG – She spent months helping create a lush, beautiful garden out back for meetings and parties. At Christmas time, she and friends took 12 little girls to have lunch with the mayor, get their hair and nails done and spend the night at a downtown hotel. And now Terri Lipsey Scott stands by the museum fence to chat with a little boy.

For Scott, chairwoman of the Dr. Carter G. Woodson African American Museum, building community is as important as showcasing history and art. So the little building at 2240 Ninth Ave. S has become both a museum and community center.

“Museums no longer reflect what they use to,” said Scott. “They used to be stale and for just looking at art, but have evolved into a more social area.”

But some prominent people don’t share her vision for the museum.

The executive director of the St. Petersburg Housing Authority, which owns the building, has said it should be a fully functioning museum and less a social gathering place. He also said it is the “fiscal responsibility” of the Housing Authority to consider “increasing revenues or decreasing expenses” there.

This spring the authority invited St. Petersburg College to consider leasing the building and opening its own museum there.

The chairman of the college’s board of trustees, which is quadrupling the capacity of its Midtown campus, has said the school would welcome the opportunity “to embrace and enhance” the museum.

The future of the museum came to a boil in May, when Scott and colleagues on the museum board were incensed to learn that a possible change was afoot.

In the weeks and debate that ensued, the future of the museum has put a spotlight on three organizations and their leaders, who are all prominent in the city’s African-American community:

Scott, the former office administrator to the St. Petersburg City Council, said she and the museum board were blindsided. They went to a workshop thinking the issue was a possible partnership between the board and St. Petersburg College. Instead, they learned the authority was proposing to hand management of the museum to the college.

“It’s disrespect by both SPC and the Housing Authority,” Scott said, “and I will say ‘disrespect’ because no one’s talked to us.”

She said the museum has handled its limited resources well, noting that it has not gotten the sort of taxpayer support enjoyed by three downtown museums – the Dali, the St. Petersburg Museum of History and the now-defunct Florida International Museum.

Darrell Irions, the CEO of the Housing Authority, also cited money. He said the authority gets 8 cents per square foot in rent from the museum board while the tenants of “similar properties” pay rent ranging from $4.70 to $6.75 per square foot.

Although the museum board’s lease was set to expire May 31, the Housing Authority “had received no communication from the museum board about their future plans,” Irions said.

“After listening to SPC’s presentation, it appears that SPC has many more resources to offer than the current museum board does,” he said. “They mentioned investing $250,000 into building improvements and getting accreditation. This type of commitment could not be discounted.”

Deveron Gibbons, the chairman of the St. Petersburg College board of trustees, said the college was asked to submit a proposal for taking over the museum. The college already manages the Leepa-Rattner Museum on its Tarpon Springs campus, he said.

SPC president Bill Law, who seemed taken aback by the controversy, emailed Scott in late May to say the college would not pursue its proposal until the boards of the museum and the Housing Authority resolve their differences, according to the Tampa Bay Times.

Since then, both Scott and Gibbons have said they would be open to a partnership at the museum.

“At SPC, we aim to offer our students the best educational resources,” said Gibbons, an executive at Amscot Corp. and onetime candidate for mayor of St. Petersburg. “SPC has an opportunity to partner with the museum to enhance its current offerings, expand financial capacity, while increasing exposure to the rich culture and history of African-Americans to the general public and SPC’s student body of over 65,000.”

That sounds good to Scott. “Everything they (SPC) presented is what the Woodson needs. We are not disagreeable to a partnership,” she said.

The possible partnership may be discussed when the Housing Authority board meets June 26.

The museum, which opened in 2006, is in a building that used to be the rental office for the adjacent Jordan Park public housing complex.

“It was a notorious place for crime and the objective was to condense the crime,” Scott said. “The residents wanted a place to preserve African-American history.”

The Legacy Garden behind the museum was a project of the museum, the city Midtown Economic Development Initiative and the Leadership St. Pete class of 2008 at the St. Petersburg Area Chamber of Commerce.

Transforming the area into a lush, beautiful garden was no easy task, said Scott. “It was like Baghdad out there. I spent many nights crying on the back step, but knew with every vision, there is provision.”

For Scott and the staff of the Woodson, preserving history has meant many long, volunteer hours. “It’s passion, not profession,” she said.

The Woodson museum has paid for only two of the roughly 16 exhibits that have been showcased. The rest of the exhibits came from local artists and curators who donated the pieces for a month. “Most of it has been on the backs of volunteers.” Scott said.

Information from the Tampa Bay Times and Weekly Challenger was used in this report.

If You Go: The Dr. Carter G. Woodson African American Museum at 2240 Ninth Ave. S is open Tuesday through Friday from noon to 5 p.m. Museum space is available to rent for events, meetings and weddings. Call (727) 323-1104 for details.

BY KARLANA  JUNE
NNB Student Reporter

ST. PETERSBURG – The streets are quiet. Moisture hangs heavy in the morning air and dark clouds loom on the horizon. Many houses in this neighborhood are dilapidated, their paint peeling, their yards neglected.

A small group gathers in front of a humble blue and yellow house. Its windows are boarded up, and a stale stench wafts out the open door. Mayor Rick Kriseman stands on the steps, flanked by local dignitaries. Three police officers and a representative from the sheriff’s office casually look on from a distance.

What is so special about this unassuming little house at 4200 14th Ave. S?

It is one of 68 houses in the city’s Midtown and Childs Park neighborhoods that a nonprofit called Builders of Hope bought earlier this year from Fort Lauderdale’s Dalland Properties. Some of the houses will be renovated and sold to low-income families. Some rehabbed homes will provide affordable, safe rentals.

The North Carolina-based organization is a national leader in affordable housing and urban renewal. Its plans coincide with the city’s drive for housing upgrades in pockets of poverty – a campaign promise of the new mayor.

Kriseman joined City Council member Karl Nurse and Builders of Hope officials on June 11 for a  ribbon-cutting ceremony and optimistic talk about things to come.

“My goal is that everyone has a safe place to live,” said Kriseman.

Builders of Hope has dedicated nearly $2 million to this project, between $24,000 and $26,000 for each renovation. Three homes have already been rehabbed, and the goal is to complete the rest in the next four months.  All the work is done by local contractors and builders, using local materials.

The little blue house on 14th Avenue will get a new roof, an efficient heating and cooling system, new flooring  and, of course, a new paint job. Built in 1940, the 836-square-foot home has three bedrooms and one bath. The frame molding around the front door has character, with a diamond centered at the top.

The partnership between the nonprofit and the city began about a year ago, with the instrumental efforts of Nurse growing from a conversation and a dream.

“This couldn’t have happened without the mayor,” said Nurse. “The future (of this neighborhood) is better because of this.”

There is hope that other nonprofit and for-profit organizations will soon be working on similar projects in the same vicinity, creating a better place for low-income residents to call home.

“We want to support the local community,” said Katie Spalding, the sales and property management director at Builders of Hope. “There is a sense of pride, when a local builder can drive by one of these homes and say, ‘I worked on that house!’”

BY JENNIFER NESSLAR
NNB Student Reporter

ST. PETERSBURG – The front window of the house was shattered. Broken glass lay piled around an upside-down bucket, which made neighbors believe the vacant house has been broken into.

When Gina Hartzig, St. Petersburg police District 1 officer, entered the house with colleague Ryan Clark, she noticed a tarantula on the floor. Clark checked to see if the tarantula was real, and he jumped back quickly.

Hartzig screamed.

Then Clark smiled. The tarantula was plastic.

The intruders were leaving fake rats and spiders in the house, according to the homeowner, who doesn’t reside there. Clark used the situation to play a joke on Hartzig.

Broken glass, spider webs and dead roaches – real ones – littered the house.

Encountering problems with vacant homes is common to officers of District 1 – the area extending from U.S. 19 east to Tampa Bay, and Tropicana Field south to the Sunshine Skyway.

District 1 covers some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, where crime rates are high, and some of the nicest, with high-valued waterfront real estate.

Hartzig works in the 20 zone of District 1, which means she is the first called to respond in the area between 20th to 30th avenues.

In the 20 zone, “we have lots of vacant properties,” Hartzig said. “Kids go in to hang out and smoke marijuana.”

Hartzig, 36, moved from New York to the Tampa Bay area when she was 23. She started at St. Petersburg College, in order to get her 30 credit hours to transfer to the police academy. Policing was a natural choice for her.

“It’s just something I always wanted to do,” she said.

Hartzig, a single mother, works the day shift so she can come home to her 4-year-old daughter, Taylor.

In March, Hartzig celebrated 10 years with the department. She’s spent the years working as an officer and training other officers.

Hartzig and Clark have worked together in the 20 zone since Hartzig trained Clark, 22.

The jokes began early. During training, Clark would attach his paperwork to the police cruiser visor with rubber bands. When Hartzig closed the visor, the bands would snap her in the face.

Clark regularly adjusts the mirrors on Hartzig’s car when she isn’t looking. Hartzig  teases him back.

But Hartzig’s job doesn’t always allow her to joke with her colleagues.

In 2011, she and a trainee responded to a call for backup. Officers had gone to 3734 28th Ave. S. to serve a domestic battery warrant. They discovered that the suspect, Hydra Lacy, was armed and in the attic.

Over the radio, Hartzig heard loud gunfire.

“One of the officers was saying, ‘Get us out of here’ in a low voice,” Hartzig said. “It was just unreal.”

Two sergeants, Tom Baitinger and Jeffrey Yaslowitz, were fatally wounded. Hartzig went to the hospital with Baitinger.

Hartzig notices a tension between police and some of the residents of District 1. People are often dishonest with the officers.

A boy caught for stealing a scooter lied about his name.  A woman lied about a man living with her. But officers can usually figure out the truth by asking around.

“Around here, everybody knows everybody,” Hartzig said. “As much as they don’t want to help us, they help us a lot.”

Not all District 1 residents resent the police. At Munch’s Restaurant & Sundries at 3920 Sixth St. S., the waitress knows Hartzig always orders sweet tea and her coworker Rich Thomas orders water. The restaurant gives the officers half off on their meals – even though Hartzig wrote a waitress a traffic ticket in a car accident.

“I kept apologizing,” Hartzig said, “but our policies make us do it.”

During their lunch breaks – and whenever work is slow – Hartzig meets up with Thomas and Clark. Meet-ups usually involve laughter.

Hartzig pointed at Thomas. “He’s my work husband,” she said with a laugh. Both officers are single, but they are not dating each other.

In her free time, Hartzig shops with Taylor. She goes out to dinner with Thomas every few weeks, and they frequently argue over who picks up the check.

“My daughter loves him. I don’t know why,” Hartzig said.

“You know why,” Thomas said.  “’Cause this!” He pulls out his phone and shows a picture. Taylor is resting her head on Thomas’ shoulder.

“We’re cute together!”

BY ELLIE OHLMAN
NNB Student Reporter

ST. PETERSBURG – “Call me from booking, baby! I love you!”

Police officer Rich Thomas looked up momentarily, then resumed putting Edelmiro Nadal into the back seat of his cruiser.

Nadal, 53, was being arrested on a warrant for outstanding drug charges. The snitch who turned him in? His wife, Nellie, who was now calling out endearments to him.

She did not want to call the police, she said, but she is desperate for her husband to turn his life around. “I didn’t want to do this, but he needs the help.”

It is rare – but not unheard of – for one member of a family to turn in another, said Thomas, 50, a 26-year veteran of the Police Department.

“Family members get tired of putting up with their bad habits and eventually turn them in,” he said.

During his career, Thomas said, he has seen a lot: spikes in cocaine use, child abuse, murders and domestic abuse.

For all but one of his years on the force, Thomas has patrolled District 1, which covers most of the sprawling south side of the city.

The district includes some of St. Petersburg’s nicest neighborhoods: Tropical Shores, Lakewood Estates, Bahama Shores, Pinellas Point and Broadwater.

It also includes low-income neighborhoods like Midtown, where drug use and gang violence are problems and police officers grow accustomed to the hostile stares of some residents.

Thomas’ patrol shifts have been as trying as they have been rewarding, he said. He knows that any time he is dispatched he could be heading into a tense, life-or-death situation.

In 26 years, he “has practically heard, done and seen it all,” he said. But he has never had to fire his weapon.

He plans to retire in five years. He knows those years will be bittersweet as he finishes living out his boyhood dream of being a police officer.

His plans for retirement? “Nothing,” he said.

Fair enough for a man with 32 years in law enforcement.

BY EMILY EVANS
NNB Student Reporter

ST. PETERSBURG – In a quaint corner toward the back of the consignment store, there’s a fashion mannequin wearing the latest work-in-progress blouse. An electric sewing machine ticks away and spools of color-coordinated thread line the walls.

Virginia Bautista hunches over the sewing machine, with hands weary of needle pricks, working away at a black, short-sleeve peplum top for the wife of a St. Petersburg minister.

The 70-year-old seamstress has become a fixture in the consignment shop and thrift store at 913 22nd St. S, one of four buildings that Elihu and Carolyn Brayboy are restoring on the street known as “the Deuces.”

“I originally came to the Deuces Live (Sunday) Market looking for a table to sell my crafts, which is another hobby I have,” she said. “But I ended up speaking to Mr. Elihu Brayboy, who told me there was a need for a seamstress. And here I am.”

The consignment shop is in a building that also has an ice cream shop and an art gallery.

The building has housed a variety of businesses since Clarence Moure, a hired African- American carpenter, and his contractor, Peter Primus Perkins, built it more than 50 years ago, said journalist and historian Jon Wilson.

Bautista moved to St. Petersburg from San Antonio, where she found herself living the dream. She was a shop owner and a vocational coordinator, teaching immigrant children ages 12 to 17 the life skills to make it in the U.S. – speaking fluent English, networking and finding a job.

“I had my own shop, called Virginia’s Fabrics to Fashions,” Bautista said. “I would take bigger-sized clothing and make it smaller, into something that the customer could wear and love.”

After her daughter fell ill, Bautista moved to St. Petersburg to help take care of her daughter and  five grandchildren. But she also wanted to turn her love for crafting and sewing into a job.

From men and women’s clothes to custom-made wedding gowns, Bautista said, she is always busy.  She works from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Time is not an issue for her. The black peplum top she is working on will take her two to three hours. A custom made-to- fit wedding gown will take two to three weeks.

With so many customers buying their clothing from brand-name retail stores, she said, the economy for hand-made clothing is shrinking.

“At my shop in San Antonio, I would charge up to $60 for a blouse,” Bautista said. “Here at this shop, I would charge maybe $30. There isn’t a demand for hand-made clothing.”

By TAYLOR WILLIAMS
NNB Student Reporter

DUNEDIN – Light rain sprinkled from the dark gray clouds billowing over Florida Auto Exchange Stadium on a humid summer night.

On the field, the Dunedin Blue Jays were playing the Daytona Cubs.

In the broadcast booth, play-by-play announcer Tyler Murray was calling the game with one eye on the diamond below and the other on the weather radar on his laptop computer.

Then came a text message. Murray passed the announcing to his assistant, took off his headset and ran down to the field – for tarp duty.

Murray, 23, wears many hats. As the Blue Jays’ broadcasting coordinator, he is the principal play-by-play broadcaster, media relations guy and jack-of-all-trades. And when it rains, he helps the grounds crew and other staff members cover the field with a tarp.

Like the players on the field, Murray hopes to make it to the big leagues someday, to be a voice heard by millions. But for now, he said, he is living the dream.

“I have my dream job right now,” he said. “Maybe not the dream fan base, ballpark or salary, but our fans are loyal, the team is great, and I make enough to break even on rent and food every month.

“I’m doing everything I can to advance up the ladder. Just like the players, our dream is to make it to the bigs. For me, it’s all about staying in sports and staying on the air.”

Murray was born in Riverside, Conn., and moved to Medfield, Mass., when he was 7. “I was a New York (Yankees) fan in Boston territory,” he said.

Murray’s passion for sports journalism began when he was in high school. “Everyone always says, ‘We love sports, but we’re not good enough to play,’ but I’ll do you one better,” he said. “I’d go home every afternoon and read the daily Yankees news written by Mark Feinsand.”

Murray graduated from Boston University with a degree in journalism. He started with a concentration in writing because of his love for English and writing in high school. People started telling him he had a good radio voice, however, and he enjoyed hanging around the school’s radio station. So he switched his concentration to broadcast journalism.

After college, Murray worked as the assistant director of broadcasting and media relations for the Daytona Cubs. His supervisor, Robbie Aaron, helped Murray get the position with the Dunedin Blue Jays, the Class A-Advanced affiliate of the Toronto Blue Jays.

In Dunedin, a typical day at the ballpark for Murray begins at 10:30 a.m., roughly eight hours before the first pitch.

Murray arrives at the stadium and starts by printing lineups and putting together game notes. He calls it the “bare minimum to start. Every day something else pops up like a graphic, press release, promotions schedule, etc., etc.”

At 3 p.m., game notes and lineups are distributed. Al Hernandez, the assistant coordinator of broadcasting and media relations, goes to the home and visiting clubhouses and the press box to drop them off.

“After the game note prep, we can get to the fun stuff,” Murray said.

From 4 to 5 p.m., he and Hernandez put the scorecard stats together and interview a player. They split this task and after batting practice one goes into the clubhouse to catch a player. The interview takes four to five minutes, depending on the player.

“Usually it’s a hot hitter,” said Hernandez. “Tyler (Murray) doesn’t like to interview someone too good because he doesn’t want to jinx him. Sometimes interviews last longer, especially when they’re talking to Tyler; he’s good at shooting the s—.”

During this time, Murray prepares his scorecard by looking up each player on both teams to reference during the broadcast. This helps him offer details about each player – height, weight, when they were drafted – while they’re at bat.

At 6:15 p.m., Murray and Hernandez begin the play-by-play, which is aired online and broadcast on WTAN-AM 1340 every Saturday.

For most game broadcasts, Murray does the play-by-play for the first three innings. Hernandez takes over until the seventh inning, and Murray finishes off the broadcast. Both chat and joke during lulls in on-field action. But as soon as something happens on the diamond, the chat stops mid-sentence, to be finished after the action is reported.

During a game in June, Murray and Hernandez were on alert for the possibility of rain. Other teams in the area were having rain delays and rainouts.

Murray got the signal and went to sit by the tarp while Hernandez held down the broadcast. When Murray returned a few innings later, Hernandez went down to the field to replace him. The radar on Murray’s computer showed the bay area covered in rain, but for the night, the stadium stayed dry.

After the game, Hernandez went to do an on-field interview and Murray wrapped up the broadcast by playing highlights and giving a preview of the next day’s game.

He finished his day at 10 p.m. and headed home. Tomorrow he’ll do it all again.

BY JENNIFER NESSLAR
NNB Student Reporter

ST. PETERSBURG – Just before the 8:30 a.m. start of the St. Petersburg City Council meeting, reporter Kameel Stanley took a seat in the corner labeled “Press.” She pulled out the huge agenda package, which warned the meeting would last a long time.

A council member walked by.

“I hope you brought a cushion,” he said with a laugh.

Stanley groaned.

“And a neck pillow.”

Their fears proved true. The meeting lasted 11 hours.

The pace of City Hall is slower than what Stanley, 26, is used to. In 2009, the Tampa Bay Times hired her as the early-morning police reporter, a beat packed with action.

Stanley, a graduate of Central Michigan University, had experience interning at other newspapers such as the Jackson (Mich.) Citizen Patriot and Washington Post. At the Times, she covered police and general assignment before her promotion to City Hall last fall.

Despite the prominence of her position, Stanley enjoyed her former beat.

“I definitely miss the adrenaline rush of cops,” Stanley said, “but that doesn’t mean interesting things don’t happen” at City Hall.

Although the June 5 council meeting was slow, Stanley stayed busy covering a variety of issues – the extension of the management contract for Al Lang Stadium and the Walter Fuller Complex, an update on homeless issues in the city, a vote on the downtown waterfront master plan, and another vote allowing customers to bring alcoholic beverages on pedal-powered buses.

At the meeting, Stanley furiously took notes on her laptop. Christopher O’Donnell, the Tampa Tribune reporter seated next to her, did the same.

To complete her work for the day, Stanley needed to multitask. She wrote three stories for the next day’s paper, several blog posts for its website, tampabay.com, and ongoing updates on Twitter.

She said she takes a lot of notes because “you never know what you may or may not need.” At meetings, she is constantly faced with a decision: take notes or work on a story.

The meeting was packed with important issues, but Stanley faced another challenge: She needed to pay attention to her phone. She had received a tip that Mayor Rick Kriseman would be narrowing the list of police chief candidates. She waited to hear the news while paying attention to the council meeting.

“It was a unique situation,” Stanley said.

While State Rep. Kathleen Peters, R-South Pasadena, addressed the council, Stanley began drafting the police chief story. During the discussion of the Al Lang/Walter Fuller management contract, she received the police chief news. She slipped out of the council chambers for about two minutes to take the call.

Her story on the homeless update made page 1-A the next day. While she was at City Hall, her editor, Heather Urquides, pitched the story at a news meeting.

To break up the monotony of marathon meetings, Stanley tweets about what is happening.

“It’s the quickest and fastest way to get out news,” she said. Twitter allows her to get the news out in seconds, rather than drafting a blog post and sending it to the newsroom to be edited and posted.

Her posts range from serious to funny. Sometimes she just tweets about how she is feeling.

“Pretty sure I’m never leaving City Hall today. Meeting has been going on for 4+ hrs & we haven’t even gotten to the most controversial stuff,” she tweeted before the first break.

When Stanley finally left City Hall, more work awaited her. She returned to the newsroom to keep writing and polishing the story for 1-A and two more for 1-B. She got home at 10.

A 13½-hour work day.

BY IAN MacCALLUM
NNB Student Reporter

ST. PETERSBURG – Ron Brackett’s work day starts about 9 a.m. with a cup of coffee and an email check. Then he surfs the websites of major national newspapers to check on their big stories of the day.

A coworker pops her head into his office. “President Bush jumped out a plane today. Seems like prime front-page material,” she said. (The 41st president marked his 90th birthday by skydiving in Maine.)

Brackett, 51, has spent 29 years in the news industry, all but a few months of that at the Tampa Bay Times. During that time, he has worn many hats and taken on many roles. His current title is deputy managing editor/tampabay.com and presentation. He oversees the paper’s website and supervises copy editors, page designers and news artists.

Brackett has helped lead the Times newsroom through events such as the Columbia shuttle disaster, the 9/11 terror attacks, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the deaths of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

But he knows it isn’t just the big stuff that makes news.

“That’s always been our brand at the Times:  strong local news,” he said.

Even on a slow news day, the newsroom bustles with increasing activity as the day’s deadlines draw closer.

Brackett grew up in Inman, a community in northwest South Carolina. He graduated from the University of South Carolina in Columbia with a bachelor’s degree in journalism.

“I spent the whole of my senior semester working on the college paper, The Carolina Reporter,” Brackett said. “I spent half of my time reporting, and the other half editing.”

Although he enjoyed reporting, “news editing appealed to me because it allowed me to take something – in this case a story – and make it better. To improve on someone else’s work,” he said.  “I also enjoyed the coaching aspect of that.”

Brackett’s first job was at the Greenville News, about 30 miles from Inman. He was hired as a copy editor and page designer for the paper in 1985.

Later that same year, Brackett began his career with the Times, then known as the St. Petersburg Times.

“It was a weird transition for me,” Brackett said. “This is a much bigger city; then, the Times had a Sunday circulation of around 450,000 papers.” (Although the population of the Tampa Bay area has grown dramatically in 30 years, the Times’ circulation has not. The paper’s website says Sunday circulation is 397,000.)

Once another coffee has been consumed, more emails have been read, and the news wires have been perused again, the next order of business is the 3 p.m. news meeting.

At the budget meeting – the name is derived from the budget of stories for the day – editors from each department discuss what should appear on the front page of the next day’s paper.

On a typical day, there are about 20 people at the meeting. Each department describes its top stories. The most important and interesting stories are pitched for the front page. The day’s best photographs are presented on a TV at the front of the conference room.

There is often spirited conversation during these meetings, and usually a few laughs.

While there is normally a strong focus on the day’s deadlines, sometimes the newsroom gets to relax and celebrate.

“The most fun days are when you win a Pulitzer,” Brackett said with a chuckle. “There are speeches and Champagne and cake. It’s the only time we can drink in the newsroom.”

Brackett has been present for seven of the newspaper’s 10 Pulitzers. “On Pulitzer (announcement) day, everyone in the newsroom gathers around one computer for the announcements about 3 p.m. If our name pops up, we all clap and cheer like crazy.”

Once the stories for the front page are selected, the department heads return to their desks to make the discussion become a reality. A page designer then drafts several examples of how the front page might look.

At 5 p.m., eight to 10 editors meet to look over the front-page design options and decide which one they like best. Of course, if a major news story breaks during the evening, they tear up the front page and design a new one.

The newsroom is an electric environment as deadlines approach. Reporters, editors, photographers and designers all work together to assemble the newspaper.

As the day wears on, Brackett remains composed and collected. As he gets his night editor caught up on the day’s happenings, he checks the Times website one last time before leaving the office. He usually heads home about 7:30 p.m.

With the speed at which news travels, it can be difficult to fully process a big, breaking story. 9/11 was one of those days for Brackett.

“We were trying to make sense of it for the public and that was very hard,” he said. “It was so trying because we couldn’t stop and make sense of it ourselves.”

For the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II in 2005, Brackett helped produce a special section honoring those involved in the war, both here and overseas. It is one of his most enjoyable memories at the paper.

“I solicited stories from readers,” he said. “What they remembered from the war. We got great responses – love stories, war stories, rationing stories – I got to talk to so many people.”

The section was put into an online special report, which can still be enjoyed today.

“They shared their treasured old photos and scrapbooks with me. You don’t always know that you have an impact,” Brackett said, “but I know I had one on that edition.”

To see the special report on the 60th anniversary of WWII, visit http://www.sptimes.com/2005/webspecials05/wwii/index.shtml

BY MARK WOLFENBARGER
NNB Student Reporter

TAMPA – In another life, Bobby Thompson was named John Donald Cody.

As Cody, he was a Harvard-educated lawyer and former Army intelligence officer in Phoenix.

As Thompson, he was a con man and federal fugitive who was living in a rundown duplex in Tampa’s Ybor City.

That is where Cody caught the attention of the Tampa Bay Times and became the focus of the biggest, most complex case in the career of John Martin, the Times’ senior news researcher.

For months, Martin and Times investigative reporter Jeff Testerman used mountains of records and dozens of interviews to produce a series of stories that exposed Thompson’s fraud and made him the subject of a national man hunt.

Before good journalists write a story, they dig through records and backgrounds to uncover every possible detail.

Martin, 49, spends most of his days entrenched in archives.

With a clean-shaven bald head, wire-rim glasses and well-groomed goatee, Martin has a scholarly appearance.

A Tampa native and graduate of the University of Tampa, Martin began with the Times in 1995, two years after he earned a master’s degree in library and information science from the University of South Florida in Tampa.

Whether it is government officials or private citizens, Martin’s job is to research their past. “If we’re going to do a story about someone, we want to know who that person is and what kind of baggage they carry,” he said.

Martin said he likes researching people who have something to hide. And none of his subjects had more to hide than Cody-turned-Thompson.

In 1984, soon after a judge threatened to hold him in contempt of court for making false statements, Cody abandoned his Corvette in a Phoenix airport parking lot and disappeared. It was discovered that he had stolen almost $100,000 from clients.

He was put on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list in 1987. Cody’s legal assistant, Margaret Chapman, said that investigators searching Cody’s office found documents that indicated several plastic surgeries.

In 2002, Cody started the U.S. Navy Veterans Association under the name Bobby Thompson. It was a scam operation disguised as a charity.

Martin and Testerman began investigating the operation in 2009 when it contributed $500 to Hillsborough County Commissioner Kevin White’s re-election campaign – an unusual gesture for a supposed nonprofit.

Several weeks after Testerman interviewed Thompson outside his Ybor City duplex, he disappeared.

In their reporting, Testerman and Martin learned that Thompson had attended Republican dinners and posed for photos with bigwigs like George W. Bush and John Boehner.

By 2010, the scam had brought in more than $100 million. Cody contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican campaigns, the Times learned, but veterans received little.

That was the same year the Times broke the story. It reported that 84 of the 85 officers of the charity listed on documents – all but Thompson – were nowhere to be found and that 99 percent of its annual revenue could not be accounted for.

It was “totally a records-driven story,” Martin said.

Thompson spent two more years running before an Ohio-led U.S. Marshals Service task force caught him in Portland, Ore., where he was hiding under the name Anderson Yazzie. He refused to disclose his identity, which authorities eventually learned through fingerprints.

Throughout the trial that followed, Cody’s body withered and became frail. His hair grew into a greasy, salt-and-pepper mop. He acquired a scar on his forehead from bashing it against a cell wall.

By the end, he resembled Charles Manson more than a man with such lofty credentials.

In 2013, Cody, 66, was convicted of 23 counts of fraud, money laundering and theft in the scam that Testerman and Martin first exposed three years earlier. He was sentenced to 28 years in prison.

Martin said he “spent more time on this story than any other story I’ve worked on.”

Testerman may write a book about the case.

If he does, he won’t be able to use one obvious title. That has already been taken for a Leonardo DiCaprio movie: Catch Me If You Can.

Information from the Tampa Bay Times was used in this report.

BY EMILY WEHUNT
NNB Student Reporter

ST. PETERSBURG – When the Sweetbay Supermarket pulled out of Tangerine Plaza in February 2013, business at Meme’s Beauty Gallery came to a screeching halt.

Business at the beauty shop had been booming, said owner Jamekka Harris, 39. She had seven employees and a steady flow of traffic, most of it from the grocery store a few steps away in the shopping center at 22nd Street S and 18th Avenue.

Then Sweetbay departed and the bottom fell out, Harris said. She lost more than half her income and struggled to pay her bills. She laid off her employees, and for a few months she worked alone.

“I had thoughts of closing down,” she said.

But Larry Newsome, the head of the company that runs the shopping center, persuaded Harris and other Tangerine Plaza tenants to stick it out. He worked with those who couldn’t pay their rent on time, she said. With a Walmart coming to replace the Sweetbay, he said, surely their sales would rebound.

His counsel proved wise. Since the Walmart opened on Jan. 29, Harris said, business has picked up, although it is still not as brisk as before. She has three employees and they see 10 to 20 customers a day.

For years, Midtown did not have a supermarket. Residents had to leave their neighborhood to shop at a full-service grocery or else pay higher prices at nearby convenience stores.

The city spent heavily in the quest to bring a supermarket to the neighborhood, according to the Tampa Bay Times. It paid $5.1 million to buy the land at the northeast corner of 22nd Street and 18th Avenue and tear down the buildings there. It loaned another $1.4 million to a nonprofit to build out the inside of the store and spent $400,000 to bury power lines.

Then it leased the shopping center to Urban Development Solutions, which is headed by Newsome.

It took several years for the city, Newsome and private entrepreneurs to persuade Sweetbay to put a store in the low-income neighborhood in 2005. And when Sweetbay pulled out eight years later, it took several months to land Walmart as a replacement and several more months for Walmart to upgrade the space and move in.

In the meantime, Meme’s Beauty Gallery and other shops in the shopping center watched their business drop dramatically.

Harris said that she has lived in Midtown her entire life and that five generations of her family have grown up in the community. She began doing hair when she was 16 at a salon on the corner of 22nd Street S and 15th Avenue.

“It was my first job,” Harris said. “It’s all I know.”

She continued her education and got her cosmetology license from the Pinellas Technical Education Center. She opened her salon in Midtown in 2007 because she loved the community and wanted to give back.

When business dragged last year, Harris still kept her salon open every day. The construction upgrades for Walmart made things even worse. Some people thought the shop had closed.
“Thank God for the regulars; they are what kept us going,” said Harris.

She said she has been working on marketing the business more and hopes to eventually hire a larger variety of licensed staff, including nail technicians, estheticians and makeup specialists.

Harris believes in the community and is looking toward the future.

“It’s a great area.” Harris said. “We just need the community to strive together and keep supporting each other’s businesses.”

Information from the Tampa Bay Times was used in this report.