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Floridian

Son's gift gives family's memories strong roots

By Don Morris, Times Staff Writer

5/30/13

“Breathe! Breathe! Breathe!" I shouted. It was after midnight and in a matter of seconds, Wendy had gone from minimum to full dilation. "Breathe, don't push!" I ran for the doctor. Aaron James Morris came into this world in a rush and never slowed down. He was one of those kids filled with questions but never satis …

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  • June issue

  1. Can a porn star have it all?

    06/01/13 Human Interest By Danielle Paquette, Times Staff Writer

    Early morning, on a US Airways flight from Los Angeles to Tampa, Taryn Stone cradles a bonsai tree and chats with a gray-haired man who just bought her two shots of Jameson whiskey.

    Sadie Holmes (Taryn Stone, really) fights off “robotic” arms while shooting a scene in a studio in Pinellas Park. Stone, 23, would earn $300 for the two-hour shoot from the Tampa man who runs League of Amazing Women, which promotes “comic-book peril and sexy bondage.”

  2. After Bangladesh factory collapse, she finds the world in her closet

    05/31/13 Human Interest By Lane DeGregory, Times Staff Writer

    I'm a terrible shopper. I hate malls and outlets, seldom order online.

  3. Son's gift gives family's memories strong roots

    05/30/13 Human Interest By Don Morris, Times Staff Writer

    “Breathe! Breathe! Breathe!" I shouted.

  4. Opening Lines: Shades of fatherhood

    05/30/13 Human Interest By Bill Duryea, Times Staff Writer

    I've always envied boys with rotten dads. I was reminded of this strange yearning as I reread The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert.

  5. Florida State football star shaped winning team at Florida School for Boys

    05/29/13 Human Interest By Ben Montgomery, Times Staff Writer

    In February 1961, Vic Prinzi pulled into the visitors' lot at the Florida School for Boys in Marianna and sat in the car collecting his thoughts. He was apprehensive.

    "Why am I here?" he wondered.

    Vic Prinzi played quarterback at Florida State University in the ’50s. In 1961, Prinzi coached at the Florida School for Boys, the reform school with an already notorious past. What Prinzi would learn about the boys, the school and the infamous White House, above, would stay with him his whole life.

  6. Everglades orchid lover dodges deadly encounters

    05/29/13 Human Interest By Jeff Klinkenberg, Times Staff Writer

    FLAMINGO

     

    Roger Hammer leads the way into the claustrophobic thickets of Everglades National Park, bobbing and weaving, watching for beauty and danger. "Don't let the leaves slap you in the eye,'' he hisses. "That's a manchineel tree. Poisonous. You could go blind, at least for a while.''

    In Everglades National Park, Roger Hammer wanders through a saltwort prairie on his way to a rendezvous with spectacular plants that include one of the world’s most dangerous, the manchineel. “They’re pretty, pretty trees,” Hammer says. Pretty, pretty trees that can be deadly.

  7. The State You're In: Rent a Ferrari, cook up some giant snails, listen to Kitty Pryde

    05/29/13 Human Interest Times staff

    Baby you can drive our car

    Every month, about 1,600 people around the world type into a search engine, not necessarily in this order, "exotic, car, rental, Sarasota."

    Time capsule: First Avenue N, St. Petersburg, 1962 In the current economy, we watch the employment statistics with an eagle eye, looking for signs. The numbers are hard to read though, not least because while some folks have despaired of finding work, others are patching together an income through two or more part-time jobs. But that’s not a new phenomenon, as this feature by award-winning photographer Weaver Tripp shows. Here’s the original caption: “It was just a pretty young woman taking a bath in a store window — probably a difficult chore with all those people staring in. But Miss Constance Horton, 19, says she doesn’t mind, really. You see, she’s a part-time secretary and part-time mermaid for Jacuzzi of Florida, Inc.” Even mermaids need to pay the bills.
  • May issue

  1. Make this old-time Florida roadside stop for a mango shake

    05/01/13 FloridaBy Jeff Klinkenberg, Times Staff Writer

    HOMESTEAD

    In South Florida, where burglar bars are as common as alligators, nervous clerks store their trusty 12-gauges behind the counter. Terrible things have happened to Robert Moehling, no doubt about it, but that's not a Glock loaded and ready under the cash register.

    It's a power drill.

    Robert Moehling chats with customers at Robert Is Here, a Homestead fruit and milk shake stand he started in 1959 when he first sat on the side of the road to sell his father’s cucumbers. Emily Springer, 18, is one of his employees. 
CAROLINA HIDALGO / Times

  2. At Harry Potter's quidditch pitch, she roots for the snitch

    05/01/13 Human Interest By Melissa Lyttle, Times Staff Photographer

    What happens when you send a muggle to a quidditch match? Something magical, of course.

    University of Texas at Austin player Simon Arends shoots a quaffle through the hoop despite the outstretched defensive move by Texas A&M’s Kacey Ortiz at the quidditch tourney in Kissimmee. 
UT-Austin advanced several more games to play UCLA for the championship. An overjoyed UT-Austin took the cup.

  3. Bradfordville Blues Club in woods near Tallahassee a soulful secret

    05/03/13 Human Interest By Ben Montgomery, Times Staff Writer

    TALLAHASSEE

    At the close of the work week, when the stars come out and the Christmas lights twinkle on and the headlights start to race through the pines and past the KEEP OUT signs, you'll find Gary Anton in his pop-bottle glasses and hippy hair-halo rushing around the Bradfordville Blues Club like a monk on …

    

  4. There goes the neighborhood: Behind tidy yards lurks constant confrontation

    05/03/13 Human Interest By Amy Wimmer Schwarb, Times Correspondent

    By Amy Wimmer Schwarb

    Times Correspondent

    LARGO — Two years ago, Bob and Connie Cain bought a two-bedroom, two-bath house in the suburbs. They added a porch swing and painted it a pleasing shade of green, with cream trim.

    More than a decade ago in Redington Shores, Michael Glick decorated his home purple and pink, with smiley and frowny faces, a little boy mooning the neighborhood, an apparently X-rated Pink Panther and a stuffed rabbit with his pants down. Times files (2001)

  5. Opening lines: Playing the high and the low

    05/03/13 Human Interest By Bill Duryea, Times Staff Writer

    Some years ago, when my wife and I were still a cat family, we had three of the critters living with us. And then, after a particularly awful weekend, we didn't.

  6. The State You're In: For Koch brother, vintage irony; a VIP experience with Mike Tyson; and giant snails, heavy lifting and more

    05/02/13 Human Interest Times staff

    Vintage irony

    Back in 2005, Florida billionaire William Koch bought 24 bottles of ostensibly vintage wine — you know, old-timey Bordeaux like Chateau LaTour from 1864 and a magnum of 1921 Chateau Petrus. He paid $355,000 for the lot and never tasted a single one. He likes his wine, but …

  7. It's a dog's afterlife: Pet death care industry booms

    05/02/13 PetsBy Peter Jamison, Times Staff Writer

    BY PETER JAMISON

    The wake for Coleen Ellis' terrier-schnauzer mix was well attended. Mico had been a small but strong-willed animal, displaying the noblest traits of a blended ancestry. Her terrier's air of authority was enhanced by the schnauzer's characteristic beard, white and wiry like that of a kung fu …

    Anderson-McQueen Funeral Home has been in business for 61 years. John and Nikki McQueen added pet services in 2006. 
They’re sitting in the Rainbow Bridge Room, where pet families say their good-byes. About 3,500 of the company’s 5,700 funerals 
and cremations last year were for animals. 
MELISSA LYTTLE / Times
  • April issue

  1. The State You're In: A cold case, Easter every day, a dolphin diva

    04/04/13 Human Interest Times staff

    Easter every day

    Want to stroll through the Garden of Eden? Rest on a rock outside the Garden of Gethsemane? For $40, you can.

    Want to stroll through the Garden of Eden? Rest on a rock outside the Garden of Gethsemane? For $40, you can. At the Holy Land Experience in Orlando, visitors enter through an arch into a model of a Jerusalem market. From there, they can tour a wax museum of biblical characters or watch Jesus’s crucifixion in a 75-minute passion play. “Just close your eyes,” says a piped-in voice, “and he will appear.” The attraction opened in 2001 near Florida’s secular theme parks. In 2007, Paul and Jan Crouch, who own Trinity Broadcasting Network, paid $37 million for the property . After Jesus is resurrected in the 2,000-seat arena, after he battles Satan and Hitler and someone who looks like a Blues Brother, the actor (one of six Jesuses) changes into street clothes and invites everyone to join him at “the altar.” Some ask Jesus to autograph their park maps. Then, everyone heads outside for the evening’s mass baptism. Weather permitting.

  2. For cancer survivor, finding wedding gown is retail therapy in truest sense

    04/04/13 Human Interest By Sabrina Rocco, Times Staff Writer

    BY SABRINA ROCCO

    SARASOTA — Nikki Rodriguez stares in the mirror and smooths the wedding dress with her fingers.

    A search for her wedding gown at Brides Against Breast Cancer in Sarasota seemed like a good idea to breast cancer survivor Nikki Rodriguez — but as she tries on dress after dress, hour after hour, frustration begins to replace hope.

  3. Finding flaws in 'Finding Florida' by T.D. Allman

    04/03/13 BooksBy Jeff Klinkenberg and Craig Pittman, Times Staff Writers

    T.D. Allman's new book Finding Florida is subtitled "The True Story of the Sunshine State" because it's supposed to correct all the myths and mistakes in the other Florida history books. But while reading it we kept finding forehead-slapping errors. You'd forgive a couple of goofs in a 500-page book, but after a …

    Nine months after Hurricane Ivan made landfall in Pensacola, signs of the storm’s destruction remain everywhere, with boarded-up windows, buildings with gutted interiors, piles of debris and miles of new construction. Ivan, a category 4 hurricane, rendered about 45,000 homes unlivable in Pensacola. In 2004, four hurricanes hit Florida within six weeks — Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne — causing more than $42 billion in property damage and 123 deaths. No one was killed by a collapsing condo, however, despite T.D. Allman’s statement: “When the killer hurricanes of the early 2000s struck, many of these monstrosities became high-rise death traps” (Finding Florida, p. 390).

  4. The divorce from hell, the battle for alimony and emptied pockets

    04/03/13 Human Interest Story by Leonora LaPeter Anton and photos by Cherie Diez, Times staff

    CLEARWATER -- Terry Power's face tightened as he listened to his wife's attorney tick off their assets on the final day of his divorce trial. He sat in a leather chair at a glass-covered table inside a paneled judicial chamber and he thought not for the first time that her voice annoyed him.

    A five-year divorce: Judge Joseph Bulone sits in chambers at the Pinellas County Courthouse in October 2012. At left, attorney LeAnne Lake, representing Murielle Fournier. At right, Terry Power, his own counsel.

  5. Dispatches From Next Door: He sweeps the fear away

    04/03/13 Human Interest Photograph by Melissa Lyttle and text by John Woodrow Cox, Times staff

    TAMPA — The alarm blared just after 6 that morning, but Jean Azor was already up. He showered, then rushed into his closet. He pulled on a pair of black slacks and a beige polo, his uniform at St. Joseph's Hospital. Behind his bed table, a newsletter was pinned to the wall. A photo on it showed him crouching next …

    Jean Azor

  6. For Mayport ferryman, a rapid rhythm on the river

    04/03/13 Human Interest By Jeff Klinkenberg, Times Staff Writer

    MAYPORT

    Let's talk about the voice, which hurts the ears like a tenor sax with a bad reed — loud, squawky, piercing. Even when B.J. Hart is standing on the deck of the last public ferry in Florida, the voice cuts through the great throb of the diesel that propels the Jean Ribault across the St. Johns …

    B.J. Hart is known for chatting it up with travelers as they cross the St. Johns River at Mayport. “We make each other’s day because we share something, a simple word that deals with a simple feeling, deals with a simple moment,” he said near the end of another shift.

  7. Opening Lines: Divorce shatters yet another illusion

    04/03/13 Human Interest By Bill Duryea, Times Staff Writer

    Divorce bores me. I'll cop immediately to a deep personal bias here brought on by too many family splits with too many decades of low-level emotional radioactivity. But even when the stories involve bold-faced names and gobs of money, they have never managed to overcome my sense that divorces generally are pretty …