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Job interview
Ten years ago, they graduated from high school at the top of their class. Like smart kids everywhere, they dreamed of becoming doctors, lawyers, professors and military officers.
Today, 13 high school valedictorians from Volusia-Flagler's class of 1996 have scattered to eight other states and even overseas to launch their careers or continue graduate study. Only one has come back home for a job.
He's Jeremy Carlton, an ordained Baptist minister who has been counseling teenagers at First Baptist Church in Daytona Beach for the past two years.
"My family has been in Port Orange for four generations, so maybe that makes me a little different," Carlton said.
No question, job opportunities are luring the best and brightest of Volusia-Flagler far from their hometown roots.
The other 1996 valedictorians have come back to this area only for occasional visits with their families. More may be showing up this summer as the class reunion season gets in full swing. But nearly all of them said they never seriously considered starting their careers where they grew up because the area lacks jobs in their specialties.
Take Tuan M. Tran, for example. Now a medical student at Emory University in Atlanta, the Spruce Creek High graduate is getting ready to choose a residency program to pursue his interests in immunology and internal medicine. Most likely, he said, it will be at a big-name hospital in either Boston or San Francisco.
"My parents would love for me to come back to Central Florida, but unless they open a big research hospital there, I don't think that would ever happen," Tran said. "My long-range plan is to go to Africa and do more research on vaccines."
Katrina Krochak, 27, has been working as a speech pathologist at an Ocala hospital but now she and her husband, Mark Ouellette, are getting ready to move to Nashville.
"It isn't that we wouldn't consider working or living in Volusia County," said the Father Lopez High School graduate. "But the kinds of jobs that we want and that will further our careers aren't there currently."
But the outward flow is only half the picture. In a highly mobile state like Florida, people are constantly on the move, and for every person moving out of the state, two are entering. Many of them have college degrees.
"I've heard about the brain drain for the past 30 to 40 years," said George Mirabal, longtime president of The Chamber, Daytona Beach/Halifax Area.
"It's nothing new and it's a phenomenon that's not just a Daytona problem; it's national in scope. Every chamber executive in the country talks about it. Young people just don't stay in their hometowns."
Nearly one-third of 20-somethings move to a different state each year, the Census Bureau reports.
But in the brain-drain ebb and flow, Florida gains more than it loses, according to the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, a private research group in Boulder, Colo. Of every 100 students who receive a bachelor's degree in Florida, 63 leave the state. At the same time, however, 112 other people with bachelor's degrees move into the state, giving the state a net gain of 149 graduates.
But educated people who migrate to Florida don't scatter evenly throughout the state. Census numbers show they clump in larger metropolitan areas where the best jobs are. Volusia and Flagler counties come up short.
While 24.4 percent of the U.S. adult population over 25 has at least a bachelor's degree, only 21.2 percent of the adults in Flagler have that much education and in Volusia only 17.6 percent.
By comparison, 31 percent of the residents of Seminole County have four-year degrees. In Brevard, 23.6 percent are college graduates.
At Stetson University in DeLand, about a fifth of the students hail from the local two-county area. Kelly Cleary, who heads the university's office of career services, said many of the local seniors tell her they'd like to settle close to campus if they could.
"But they're having trouble finding jobs that pay well," she said. "There might be a $10,000 difference between what they can get here, and what they can get in Orlando, so they're forced to go down to Orlando."
Allene Dupont hears the same story from many of Volusia County's high school graduates. As coordinator of high school services for the county's public school system, she's encountered cases of graduates finishing college and being lured away by pay that's as much as $20,000 higher than local levels.
"I think the Internet is a factor in this," she said. "Students have become more aware of job opportunities throughout the country."
Dupont said she tries to be an optimist. She expects some graduates will return as they tire of big-city stress, seek affordable housing or help care for aging parents.
"I have to hope that at some point in their career they will come back here eventually, but we need them here from the very beginning."
Starting pay is especially important to the many graduates leaving campus with big debts. According to the U.S. Department of Education, the median student loan total for this year's graduates tops $19,000. If a graduate wants to get the debt paid off within 10 years, that means a monthly payment of $200 or more.
But sometimes local students simply don't bother to search out attractive job opportunities that exist close at hand, said Bob Williams, vice president of economic development at Daytona Beach Community College.
"It becomes a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy," Williams said. Students are told countless times as they grow up that Daytona has only low-wage jobs and they come to believe it, he said.
"To counter that, we started holding the Rockin' Jobs trade show each year where we bring high school students to meet local employers. We do it to show the kids there are some cool jobs in this town."
But not as many as there should be, adds Rick Michael, Volusia County's director of economic development.
The county's job shortage is especially severe in office technology and operations centers, the type of better-paying administrative jobs found in the home offices of NASCAR and the Brown & Brown insurance agency.
"For the population of this area, we should have about 27,000 jobs in that segment, " Michael said. "We only have 3,000."
Michael said his staff worked hard to recruit a Coca-Cola operations center and a Ford warranty center during the past two years. The facilities would have created hundreds of jobs. But in both cases, the companies decided to go elsewhere because there were no large office buildings available for an immediate start-up, Michael said.
CAREER QUEST
Mark Soskin, an economist at the University of Central Florida's Daytona Beach campus, said he's been sounding alarms about the brain drain for 15 years, but not many employers seem to care.
"It's not so much the low pay or poor benefits, it's the lack of opportunity for a career," Soskin said. "Most employers don't seem to care about helping their employees develop their skills."
However, there are recent signs of a possible turnaround, Soskin added. He cited a new professional MBA program that UCF-Daytona launched last August that allows working people to get their master's degree by attending classes two nights a week for 19 months.
"Everyone predicted we wouldn't get any interest but we had 85 people come to the information sessions, 39 applied and we accepted 27," he said. Many of the students are getting a helping hand with the program's $27,000 cost from employers like International Speedway Corp. and Ocean Design.
Opportunities like that may help Volusia plug its "big demographic hole" -- people in their 20s, Soskin said.
"We've been hemorrhaging our young people for years and years," he said. "That's why we're the slowest-growing county in Central Florida."
But not every graduate flees Volusia-Flagler, or stays away forever. Diane Dyer, director of secondary education for the Flagler County school system, said she's noticed a growing number of graduates who have come back to the school system in recent years to become teachers. She counted 18 former students who now are on the faculty.
"We recently upgraded our salaries, and we now have the second-highest starting salary in the state," she said. "That may have something to do with it."
This fall, entry-level pay for new teachers in the Flagler system will be $35,847.
That's a lot more than Marcus Sanfilippo made when he accepted a teaching job in the Flagler system in 1999.
"I started at $24,000," the math teacher said. "I had to take a pay cut from the auto body shop where I was working."
Still, he said, he never considered leaving Flagler because his family has lived there for three generations.
"I married my high school sweetheart and both our parents are here. So are my grandparents, my brothers and my sisters," he said. "And I was able to buy a house in Palm Coast when the prices were still cheap."
But Sanfilippo doesn't see many of his high school classmates any more. "A few of them are in the police force but most of them have moved away," he said.
AND ONE CAME HOME
DAYTONA BEACH -- Jeremy Carlton spent nearly three years traveling around America with a guitar and a Bible, talking with teenagers about how to live a Christian life.
But when First Baptist Church, his boyhood house of worship, offered him a youth ministry job two years ago, Carlton jumped at the chance to come home. Port Orange is where his family has lived for four generations and he was happy to return to the Halifax area.
"I've been coming to First Baptist since nine months before I was born, and I love this church," Carlton, 28, said in a recent interview at its youth auditorium. "I also love Daytona because I surf and fish and love outdoor things. And I like its hot weather."
Returning to his roots also has reunited the Warner Christian Academy graduate with his parents and his two brothers at a challenging time for the Carlton family. His father is seriously ill with diabetes and its side effects. "I want to spend as much time as I can with my dad, and this job allows me to do that."
But Carlton has a lot of unfinished business that eventually may pull him away from Daytona Beach -- maybe in two years, or maybe 10. "That's up to God; I'll go whenever God calls me," he said.
One goal is to finish up the final year of a three-year master's program he began at Baptist Theological Seminary in New Orleans after earning a business degree at the University of Florida. However, the seminary was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina's flooding, so it may be awhile before it is fully operational at a temporary location in Atlanta. Carlton is waiting to see what courses the seminary may be able to offer either in Atlanta or at a branch campus in Orlando.
Another option would be to transfer to another seminary recognized by the Southern Baptist denomination. Or, since he already is ordained, he could simply forget the master's, but Carlton said he doesn't think God wants him to give up on the degree.
In the meantime, he said, he enjoys working with young people. He dresses casually in a tennis shirt, khakis and sandals and frequently does gospel jamming with them on his guitar.
"Teenagers are the coolest people on Earth," he said.
Wednesday and Sunday worship services are the focal points of his work week. On other days, he does personal counseling with teens, visits schools and does Web site design work for the church.
Working in Daytona Beach has both advantages and drawbacks, he acknowledged. He finds it fairly easy to muster support for his projects because he knows the church's traditions as well as anyone.
"When somebody says, 'We've always done it this way,' I can tell them 'Yes, I was there doing it, too, and this is why we've got to do it differently.' "
But some of the church's middle-aged people are a little uneasy in accepting him as a spiritual adviser, he conceded. "They see me preaching to them and they still see me as little Jeremy, the kid they used to teach in Sunday school," he said.
Where will he be in five or 10 years? Carlton isn't sure, but he's leaving that up to a higher power.
"One thing I don't want to be is a pastor," he said. "I see myself as a people person on the front line. I love working with the kids, but I realize that a youth minister in his 40s or 50s might be kind of goofy."
Carlton recently married a fellow seminary student who has done mission work in Africa and Korea. He said his wife, Heather, teaches Sunday school at First Baptist but is ready to go with him wherever his ministry takes him.
Carlton has toured in Indonesia and England himself, and is open to the idea of going overseas someday. "Way down the road, international ministry is definitely a possibility."
SOCIAL SCENE
When local employers manage to recruit young graduates, they then face the challenge of retaining them. Sometimes that involves more than just pay and benefits.
"Some companies have a problem keeping their young talent because there isn't the social atmosphere the young people are looking for," said George Mirabal, president of The Chamber, Daytona Beach/Halifax Area.
Michael Ciocchetti, who graduated from Mainland High School in 1996, returned to Daytona Beach in 2003 to start a job at the law firm of Doran, Wolfe. He was glad to find work in the specialty he wanted -- municipal law -- but felt at loose ends at the end of the day.
"Of the close friends I had at Mainland, only two or three of us came back to Daytona," he said. "It was hard to meet other people just starting their careers."
To fill the gap, he joined with a few other people in starting the Young Professionals Group, an informal networking organization that has grown to about 900 in just three years.
"Part of our mission is to help employers recruit other young professionals to the area," he said. "That's not always easy because there's a perception there's not a lot to do around here."
The group sponsors a variety of luncheons, parties, field trips and cruises. As it has grown, it has started forging ties with the Daytona chamber. And it's helped its hometown-bred members broaden their social circle.
"The friends I have now are not the friends I grew up with," Ciocchetti said. "Things change."
tom.brown@news-jrnl.com
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
1. WARNER CHRISTIAN ACADEMY, South Daytona: Jeremy Carlton, 28, is the only class of 1996 valedictorian to return to the Volusia-Flagler area. Carlton was considering becoming a doctor or veterinarian when he started studies at Daytona Beach Community College. But after transferring to the University of Florida, the devout Baptist received a "call from God" that he should enter the ministry, a decision that led him to a part-time church job in Gainesville, a seminary in New Orleans and then three years of traveling mission work throughout the nation before he accepted a job doing teen outreach for his home church, First Baptist Church in Daytona Beach. He expects to stay here at least a few years more -- but not forever.
2.TAYLOR HIGH SCHOOL, Pierson: Elizabeth Fogleman Hewitt, 27, works in Athens, Ga., as a research chemist for Noramco, a research and development group for Johnson & Johnson. Hewitt received her bachelor's in chemistry and biochemistry at Stetson University and a master's in chemistry at Duke. Her first job was with Pfizer Pharmaceuticals in Ann Arbor, Mich. Hewitt said she wanted to escape Michigan winters, so when her husband-to-be was offered a job with a scientific instrument manufacturer in Georgia, she jumped at the chance to move back to the South and be closer to her family in DeLand.
3-4. DELAND HIGH SCHOOL, DeLand: Co-valedictorians Elizabeth Fansher and Alina Opreanu took divergent paths after graduation, one heading to Chicago and the other to the Boston area.
Fansher, 28, is working as a medical editor for The Hamilton Group in Chicago. . After graduating from Wheaton College in Illinois with a double major in English and psychology, she stayed in the Chicago area for an entry-level job in publishing, said her mother, Rosemary Fansher. She switched to Hamilton after the firm offered to double her salary.
She has no plans to return to Florida because she enjoys the colder weather, broader cultural life and higher salaries that Chicago offers, her mother said.
Opreanu, 28, has stayed in academia, teaching French at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., while pursuing a doctorate.
5. DELTONA HIGH SCHOOL, Deltona: Nikisha Ranger, 27, works at a hospital in Flushing, N.Y. in the physical therapy department. Her father, Wilbert Ranger, said she attended Seminole Community College, where she received her associate degree, and the University of Central Florida, which she left after two years without receiving a degree. Ranger worked in physical therapy locally for about a year before moving to New York, her father said.
6.-7 PINE RIDGE HIGH SCHOOL, Deltona: Co-valedictorians Margaret and Megan Edmonds, 28, are identical twin sisters who both are captains in the Air Force, one stationed in North Dakota and the other based in New Jersey. The sisters, now married to Air Force captains, were only 13 when they decided on military careers, according to their father, Dan Edmonds, a retired Pine Ridge High teacher who also has a military background. .
Both graduated from the Air Force Academy in 2000. Megan Edmonds Hart is a squadron section commander at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota. Margaret Edmonds Barry is an aircraft commander due to return soon to McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey from duty in the United Arab Emirates, Air Force officials said.
They've always been "explorers and outward looking," their father said. And it's not likely either will return to Volusia County except for visits, he added.
8. SPRUCE CREEK HIGH SCHOOL, Port Orange: Tuan M. Tran, completing a dual-doctorate program at Emory University's School of Medicine in Atlanta, already has done field work on malaria in Brazil and hopes to make a career of disease research in the Third World. Tran, the son of a doctor, started his academic career by earning an undergraduate degree in zoology at the University of Florida. From there, he enrolled in Emory's medical scientist program, completing a doctorate in immunology and now working on his M.D. His next step will be to select a residency in internal medicine later this year, probably in Boston or San Francisco.
9. FLAGLER-PALM COAST HIGH SCHOOL, Palm Coast: Amanda Hammond Rapp recently moved from West Palm Beach to Atlanta, both for her husband's law career and her own work in business law. In her new location, the attorney continues handling appellate cases out of her home-based office for her Florida employer, Page, Mrachek, Fitzgerald and Rose. Growing up in Flagler Beach, Rapp decided early on she wanted to be a lawyer like her father, Judge Kim Hammond. When she went off to Florida State to earn her bachelor's and law degrees, Tallahassee "felt like a huge city, " she recalled. "After getting my degrees, I never really thought about going back to Flagler to work, although I love to visit there."
10. SEABREEZE HIGH SCHOOL, Daytona Beach: Clare Douglass, 28, is pursuing a doctorate at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill with plans to teach English literature. She received a bachelor of arts from Wake Forest in 2000. "Although I hope to stay in the South to work after I earn my degree, I doubt that I will return to Daytona Beach," she said. "The job market in my field is such that I don't have any idea where I will end up at this point, and I will have to go wherever a job is available. . . However, I would love to be close to my family and will look into teaching positions at colleges and universities in other parts of Florida."
11. FATHER LOPEZ HIGH SCHOOL, Daytona Beach: Katrina Krochak, 27, is a speech pathologist in Ocala but is getting ready to move to Nashville for her husband's job as a pharmacist. Her husband is Mark Ouellette, a fellow Father Lopez graduate. She got her bachelor's degree in biomedical research from Vanderbilt. She moved to Gainesville in 2002 to get a master's degree at UF in speech pathology. After graduating in 2004, she began working at a hospital in Ocala.
"We are very excited about living in Nashville, but will miss the beach and being close to our parents," she said.
12. MAINLAND HIGH SCHOOL, Daytona Beach. Vinayak Shandbhag, 26, is finishing up his doctorate in pharmacology at Emory in Atlanta after earning a bachelor's in chemistry from Bethune-Cookman College, where his dad is a professor.
13. NEW SMYRNA BEACH HIGH SCHOOL, New Smyrna Beach: Sheldon Ebbeler, 28, is in Orlando, working as a behavior analyst with autistic children at QuestKids , a nonprofit Central Florida organization. After high school, Ebbeler attended Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and then transferred to the University of Central Florida, where he earned a bachelor's degree in physics. Switching to linguistics, he earned a master's degree at the University of Florida, and has focused on behavioral analysis ever since. Ebbeler, who has a wife and baby daughter, said he's flexible about where he might settle in the future, and hasn't ruled out Volusia County, where he still has family. "It's still appealing," he said.
14. ATLANTIC HIGH SCHOOL, Port Orange: Thien-Thanh Tran is working at the University of Central Florida's office of student development in Orlando. She declined comment on her career plans.
Job interview
Sometimes it takes help to figure out professional goals and how to reach them, say several successful Rhode Islanders.
01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, June 18, 2006
BY ARTHUR KIMBALL-STANLEY
Journal Staff Writer
Getting to where you want to be as a professional takes hard work, ambition and ability. But the most difficult part could be knowing where you want to go and how to get there.
Charting such a course is not always something you can do for yourself. That's why many people turn to mentors.
For Constance A. Howes, president and CEO of Women & Infants Hospital in Providence, it was older, more experienced people who had enough faith in her to give her genuine challenges that allowed her to meet her potential. "When I look at how people advance," she said, "people need to have a base level of competency, but after that they need to be given a certain amount of developmental opportunity. They need to be put in high-risk situations and that is when they rise to the occasion."
Looking back on her experience, Howes remembered one of her first bosses, a lawyer named Ted Pliakas. In 1978, fresh out of law school, Howes began working at Tillinghast, Collins & Graham, a Providence law firm. Pliakas was a partner at the firm and one of her bosses.
"I remember one occasion when I gave him something I was working on and he told me to send it out to a client before he read it," she said. "He did it to make me use my own judgment."
Knowing that she had that kind of responsibility, Howes said, forced her to do a better job. It forced her to be a better lawyer.
"It's different in a law firm," she said. "You're so busy it's not very likely you will be able to seek people out. . . . But I liked business litigation and I wanted to do more of it. They recognized that interest and let me pursue it."
Later on, after she had become a partner at the firm, Thomas G. Parris, the former CEO of Women & Infants, became a strong influence on her progression. Howes was working as general counsel for the hospital, but Parris encouraged her to do more.
"He encouraged me to take responsibility outside my job description," she said. "He invited me to come to work in health-care administration. It was a real leap of faith giving me that opportunity."
Howes said she never looked to have these people seek her out. "I just tried to do the job as well as I could," she said. "If you just do what you say you will do and do what you're supposed to do, you will stand out and people will know they can rely on you."
MICHAEL McMAHON, former executive director of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation, said the important mentors in his life taught him how to buckle down and do great work and to keep from straying into questionable territory. As a young Wall Street investment banker during the 1970s, those lessons, he said, would turn out to be incredibly important.
As a trainee at J.P. Morgan, McMahon said, he was taught by Ellmore C. Patterson, the former chairman and CEO of the bank, how important it is to keep high ethical standards in business.
"He told us that when we did anything we should make sure it was not something we didn't want our mothers to read about in the right-hand column of the Wall Street Journal," McMahon said. "What he was talking about was protecting the reputation of the firm."
Later McMahon took a job as a vice president at Lehman Brothers. At the time the investment bank was coming under new ownership and McMahon said he worried about how wise the decision to move had been. He went to a former senior partner of the investment bank named William C. Morris to ask his advice.
"I remember his advice very well," he said. "He told me there are always going to be periods of turmoil, but those who keep their heads down and work hard and continue doing a good job will always come out ahead. . . . I've given that piece of advice more than 10 times myself. Keep your head down, work hard, and do better, and you'll get ahead."
McMahon said those whom he sought out to be his mentors were those whom he wanted to model himself after. "It's a question of shared values," he said.
Much of what he learned came from simple observation, McMahon said. "You have to be very careful not to waste people's time, but when you really need advice it doesn't hurt to seek it out."
"You have to do two things," he said. "You have to follow their advice, and once in awhile inform them of what you did and how they helped. It can't be a one-way street."
Both McMahon and Howes expressed a genuine gratitude at how their mentors went out of their way to help them. According to Robin Beauchamp, director of the career center at Roger Williams University, sometimes young people have to go out of their way to find the right kind of help.
"Mentors are so very important and can mean so many different things to different people," Beauchamp said. "Whether it's just an informational interview or something more long-term, many different people get different perspectives from building that kind of relationship."
She explained that if you want to find out about a certain kind of job or find out how people advanced during their careers, there is nothing wrong with taking the first step, contacting them.
"A lot really depends on how you know those people," Beauchamp said. "So you should always be out there meeting people. Go back to your college or university and find alums that are doing things you want to do. Don't be afraid to approach people and ask them what a day in their lives is like."
akstanle@projo.com / (401) 277-7485
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Job interview
Growing up, Helen Glover was frequently reprimanded in school for talking too much.
Now, as a morning talk-show host for WHJJ-AM (920), it's her job.
"I think it's hilarious I'm being paid to talk," Glover says.
Two people are largely responsible for transforming the Portsmouth resident from a civilian water survival swim instructor for the Navy into a statewide radio personality: local talk-radio queen Arlene Violet and TV reality mastermind Mark Burnett.
Burnett, producer of the CBS hit Survivor, cast Glover on Survivor: Thailand in 2002. Glover would make it all the way to the final show before being ousted by the shifty maneuverings of the ultimate winner, California used-car salesman Brian Heidik.
After Glover returned to Rhode Island, Violet heard her doing radio commentaries about Survivor, and invited her to host some substitute shifts on Violet's afternoon show on WHJJ.
Glover freely acknowledges that she'd never have the radio job if it weren't for the visibility she obtained from Survivor.
"Oh, absolutely," she says. "It's 100 percent due to Survivor, and I'm very thankful for that."
And yes, she still watches. Glover says she sees very little TV, mostly the Red Sox and the occasional Seinfeld rerun, but she never misses Survivor.
"I love to watch people interact," she said in a recent interview at her Portsmouth home. "It's like going to the zoo -- only it's people.
"And now I know what they are going through, how tough it is. It strips you down to who you really are. In that sense, there's nothing fake about it."
When Glover got back from Thailand, she said at the time she had been so hungry, "I was ready to gnaw off my own hands."
In an interview this month at the WHJJ studios, Violet said Glover was "articulate and gutsy" when she was on Survivor, and that's a good combination for any talk-show host.
For her part, Glover said Violet is a role model: "She's who I want to be someday. She just makes it look so effortless."
Glover said that for her, being on the radio is anything but effortless.
"I'm always a nervous wreck," she said. "I try to run every morning to get rid of the tension, but it doesn't work. It's a good thing that behind the microphone they can't see you shaking."
That was Thursday morning, June 8. Governor Carcieri, who had announced for reelection the day before, was due to visit the WHJJ studio.
"You're sitting next to the governor of the state, you can't sound like an idiot," Glover said.
Republican leanings
Before the governor arrived, though, Glover's callers were grilling immigrant advocate Olivia Geiger, part of a local coalition called Immigrants United. The perils of illegal immigration have been favorite topics of Glover's, and Geiger was not getting a very friendly reception from the talk-show audience.
"Look at this," said Glover's producer, Maria DeCristoforo, who works in a small room immediately behind Glover. DeCristoforo pointed to a computer screen that showed incoming calls piling up. "When you see the phones light up like this, you know it's a good topic."
Still, Carcieri was due to arrive soon. DeCristoforo typed a message that appeared on another computer screen in front of Glover: "Let's try to speed through these calls."
Just before 11 a.m., the governor arrived, accompanied by his communications director, Steve Kass, a former radio talk host himself.
Glover leans conservative, and on the air she didn't hide her admiration for Carcieri, a Republican.
"I'm convinced the state of Rhode Island is smart enough to vote you back in," she said.
"From your mouth to God's ears," the governor replied.
Glover lobbed a softball in the governor's direction, asking him to list his accomplishments and describe his plans for the future. Then she got more specific, quizzing him on the state budget and voter initiative.
When she opened the phone lines to callers, the governor spoke easily to everyone from Joe on a cell phone, who wanted to know why Carcieri authorized more slot machines at Lincoln Park, to Tim, who is considering moving his business out of state because of high costs.
(Carcieri told Joe he had inherited slot machines at Lincoln Park, which is an important source of income for the state, and he is trying to ensure that the state continues to get its money. He urged Tim not to give up on Rhode Island.)
"He's not a politician who ducks questions," Glover said after the governor had left. "He's not like some of them, who have a whole entourage of people to help answer questions."
The guest list
For the rest of her 10 a.m.-to-1 p.m. shift, Glover interviewed a terrorism expert at the Naval War College about the death of terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and briefly spoke to T. Jason Smith, who wrote a book called Leaving Campus and Going to Work.
Glover said she was going to give a copy to her 22-year-old daughter, Katherine.
Directly across from Glover sat her engineer, Mark "Mountain Man" Gaudet.
Occasionally, Gaudet would hold up one finger, a signal to Glover that she should repeat the station call letters and phone number. Two fingers meant there were two minutes until the next break.
As she spoke, Glover looked at e-mails on her computer and shuffled the pile of papers in front of her.
Lurking in the back of her mind, Glover said, was the dread specter of what broadcasters call dead air, and everyone else knows as silence. Silence may be golden, but not on the radio.
"Helen is like a thoroughbred race horse who sometimes get spooked, and doesn't always recognize her own talent," Violet said.
Looking ahead
Glover, 51, originally tried out for the WHJJ job in 2004, after John DePetro left to go to WRKO in Boston. The station sampled a number of candidates, but ultimately decided to go with syndicated programming from liberal Air America.
It was a ratings disaster, and a year later WHJJ announced that Glover would take over the 10 a.m. morning talk slot. So far, the numbers have not rebounded much.
For all listeners ages 12 and over, WHJJ fell from 47,500 per week for DePetro in the summer of 2004 to 26,900 for Air America in the spring of 2005.
Listeners rose to 32,300 for the fall of 2005, when Glover started, but went back down to 26,900 for the last recorded rating period, in the winter of 2006.
WHJJ program director Bill George said the station still hasn't recovered from the Air America experience, and he's convinced Glover's ratings will start to come up.
"We believe Helen is a big part of the future for this radio station," he said. "She's been great. She and Maria [DeCristoforo] and Mountain Man are a machine. They're in here at 8 a.m. doing prep work -- Helen is very intense with her prep.
"I think her best gift is recognizing the topics people are talking about, and why it matters."
Certain topics keep coming up on Glover's show. Illegal immigration is one. Sexual predators who get out of prison is another.
"Why was this guy out? We should put creeps like this behind bars and throw away the keys!" Glover said on the air after reading a story about a registered sex offender who killed a college student.
She thinks Rep. Patrick Kennedy should resign, for his own good if nothing else, and generally supports the policies of President Bush.
Looking back
Glover was born Helen Olds in Hawaii, the middle of three siblings. Her dad was a Marine Corps officer, and she spent her childhood moving all over the country. She attended four different high schools in four years.
"My middle name was 'the new girl' " Glover said. "To go to four different high schools was tough. You didn't get the time to really know anybody, and it was almost impossible to take part in things like sports or student government."
On the other hand, said Glover, she got to see a lot of the country, experienced different cultures, and developed a knack for finding common ground with other people in a hurry.
Glover spent her junior year at Rogers High School, in Newport, while her father went to the Naval War College. She said she fell in love with Aquidnick Island, and decided that she would live there someday.
At 18, while living with her family in Virginia Beach, Va., she decided to get married.
"I got married too young. I was in too big a hurry to stop moving around," Glover said. "In retrospect, it was a very stupid thing to do."
Glover and her husband, Doug Fehmel, had a son, Matthew, and moved to Newport in January of 1978 -- just in time for the famous blizzard a month later.
The marriage broke up shortly afterward, but Glover stayed in Newport, working as a waitress and a pastry chef.
"In the summers, you can make a lot of money working as a waitress in Newport," she said. "It was definitely the job to have."
She's a Survivor
She met her second husband, Jim Glover, when they were both working at a Newport restaurant called the Spindrift. They married in 1982.
It was Jim Glover who downloaded an application for Survivor from the Internet and gave it to his wife, after hearing her claims that she could do well on the show.
Jim made a big impression when he appeared on Survivor and ate a spoonful of ants, a tarantula and a scorpion in order to win a 24-hour visit with his wife. For a while, the answering machine at the Glover home referred to him as "bug man."
(Helen Glover, who refers to her husband as "Mr. Glover" on the air, said she prefers to keep his occupation private.)
When Helen Glover applied to Survivor, she was a survival swim instructor for the Navy, a job she heard about from a Navy SEAL she met while taking a class for water safety instructors.
Glover, who said she was always an excellent swimmer, got the job and received further training from the Navy. It was a perfect fit for her, allowing her to be part of the military while still remaining a civilian.
"My father wanted me to be a Marine in the worst way, and I think I would have been a fantastic Marine officer," Glover said. "But when I was growing up, I moved every year of my life. I wanted a home town. I wanted stability for my kids."
Her son, 32-year-old Matthew Fehmel, is a Marine captain who recently returned from Iraq and is now stationed at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. He has a 2-year-old daughter, Alison.
Glover said having a son fighting in Iraq gave her a very personal perspective on the war.
But she said she didn't really want Matthew to join the Marines.
"My dream was for my son to be an architect or a stockbroker and live down the street from me, not be on a battlefield," she said. "But I'm very proud of him."
Glover's 22-year-old daughter, Katherine Glover, graduated from Gettysburg College with a degree in religion. This summer she'll be captain of the lifeguards at Second Beach in Middletown.
It's a challenge
On the home front, Glover is used to political disagreement. She leans to the right; her husband leans to the left.
"I'm very much a liberal Democrat. She's a reactionary Republican," Jim Glover said. "But it's just politics, it's never personal. We respect each other's opinion. She's always wrong, of course."
Sometimes he'll send an e-mail to his wife during her broadcasts, reminding her of the other point of view. Glover said they don't change her mind.
Asked if she enjoys talk radio, Glover hesitates for a few moments, and then says yes, adding that she never realized how much work was involved.
She said she never thought she'd leave the Navy job she had for 17 years.
"I loved it, I loved every minute of it," she said. "It was a very frightening step for me to leave. It was like going on Survivor all over again."
But Glover said she doesn't regret the choice.
"If I had stayed with the Navy, I would have always wondered 'what if.' This is a much better job for me in terms of opportunity, it's much more of a challenge for me . . .
"I'm trying very hard to do the best I can, and I'm learning more each and every day."
asmith@projo.com / (401) 277-7262
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Job interview
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (AP) - Tim Lewis is ready to be an NFL head coach. It just won't be this year.
Lewis is back for a third season as the New York Giants defensive coordinator after failing to land a head coaching job for the second straight year - even though he was considered one of the assistants at the top of the list when the coaching searches started.
The Packers, Lions, Jets and one other team interviewed Lewis after last season but chose someone else.
Lewis accepts the choices.
"They didn't work out, but I am fortunate to have a job with the New York Giants," Lewis said. "If things go right and I do my job and keep my nose to the grindstone and the product we put out there is good enough, maybe I'll get another opportunity."
Lewis, who gets to talk to the media only a few times a year under coach Tom Coughlin's restrictive policy for assistants, is excited about the Giants' chances this year coming off an 11-5 record and an NFC East title.
New York signed inebacker LaVar Arrington and shored up a porous secondary with cornerbacks Sam Madison and R.W. McQuarters and safety Will Demps. First-round draft pick Mathias Kiwanuka should help a pass rush that features Pro Bowl defensive ends Michael Strahan and Osi Umenyiora and a healthy Antonio Pierce is back at middle linebacker.
Lewis had a couple of interviews after the Giants struggled in 2004 in Coughlin's first season as coach, and he had four more this offseason when 10 jobs were up for grabs.
Only one opening went to a black coach: Art Shell in Oakland. Another, Herman Edwards went from the New York Jets to Kansas City and the Jets hired Eric Mangini, so the net increase in black coaches was one, to seven.
"No disappointment, and not much wondering," said Lewis, who was a defensive coordinator for four seasons in Pittsburgh before coming to the Giants. "It was a great opportunity. I went out on a couple of interviews. It was a good opportunity for me to learn and grow. I'm excited about being back."
Strahan was surprised Lewis didn't get a job.
"Owners are owners, they hire who they want," Strahan said. "He did a great job with us. He held us together when we were falling apart (with injuries). Hopefully, next year, the opportunity will come around."
Lewis needed surgery in May to correct a neck injury he suffered playing for Green Bay against the Bears in 1986. He was paralyzed for a short time and retired three days later.
Taking a shower last month, Lewis had his right arm go limp.
After a series of tests, surgeons relieved pressure on his spinal canal. While he still is undergoing some rehabilitation, everything seemingly is OK.
Coughlin is glad to have Lewis back.
"Not that I would ever stand in the way of his advancement, but I think it has given us one more plus for this year," Coughlin said. "And I think Tim knows that if he continues to work hard, and we succeed as a team, that he will have his opportunity."
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Woman of controversy: Williams' leadership of NAACP in S.L. earns support and criticism
By Doug Robinson
Deseret Morning News
For 14 years Jeanetta Williams has served as president of the Salt Lake chapter of the NAACP, a position that has earned her honors ' and enemies.
Michael Brandy, Deseret Morning News
Jeanetta Williams, left, talks to April Hollingsworth after an NAACP general membership meeting this month.
That isn't surprising, given her position. What might be surprising is that her major critics come from within; they are from the black community.
Observers say she enjoys being in the spotlight as a public figure and is quick to claim credit, but she is also aloof, maintaining a veil of secrecy about herself.
Often wary, she has been known to call reporters after a news story appears and scold them for not using more of her quotes and fewer quotes from other sources.
It took nearly a year to arrange an in-depth interview with her. After answering initial phone calls and agreeing to the interview, she stopped returning calls. Then she returned a call earlier this year and agreed to meet. After the meeting, she again didn't return calls.
She arrived a half-hour late for the interview and from the start was reluctant to answer even the most basic questions.
"I don't like to get into a whole lot of personal stuff on myself," Williams says. She says she's cautious because she has had threats on her life.
With some urging, though, she gives the barest answers to simple questions about her youth, family, education, etc.
She grew up in a small Oklahoma town called Boley. Her father was a construction worker. Her mother died when Jeanetta was a girl.
Her husband, Thomas Williams, died in 1985 of what she says was a rare lung disease. They had one daughter together.
Williams says she has remarried. Asked about claims by disapproving black peers who say she is not married and that she merely lives with a man, she pauses and replies, "Well ' I'm more married than not."
Her partner is Ed Lewis, president of a tri-state area for the NAACP that includes Utah, Idaho and Nevada. In other words, he's Williams' boss.
Williams attended Idaho State University because she had friends in the Pocatello area and took a job with the telephone company US WEST. Her employer transferred her to Salt Lake City in 1988. She now works for the Utah Transit Authority in community relations.
She became involved in the NAACP while in Pocatello. She says this did not stem from any personal experience with racism but because "it was a civil rights organization that I always had heard about, and I wanted to be involved."
Besides working at UTA and serving as NAACP president ' which she says is nearly a full-time job, without compensation ' she attends school. Since the fall of 2004, she has pursued a master's degree in business management at the University of Phoenix.
"I thought it was a good thing to do," she says. Her evenings are filled with classes, papers and research. "I sneak in a little NAACP work in the evenings," she says.
And that is about all she reveals about herself.
What she is eager to do is send e-mail to a reporter containing a couple of "articles" about herself, one of which is a puff piece written for AdNewsonline.com that begins, "When Jeanetta Williams met President Nelson Mandela, he wept as he shook her hand and thanked her for the good work she is doing with the NAACP."
Later, the unidentified writer makes this grandiose statement: "She stands for justice, opportunity, goodness in all and equality. Her belief is pure and grants power in all she does."
Upon request, Williams riffs through a list of her accomplishments while in office.
Keith Johnson, Deseret Morning News
Jeanetta Williams, left, president of the Salt Lake Branch NAACP, presents Eva Sexton with the Rosa Parks Award during the NAACP's 21st annual Martin Luther King Jr. luncheon at the Grand America Hotel in January 2004.
She led efforts to change the name of Human Rights Day in Utah to Martin Luther King Holiday. "It was my idea," she says. "I contacted legislators to get sponsors. There was a lot of lobbying late at night."
She gave her support to a successful effort to name a street in West Jordan after the late Rosa Parks, as well as other streets around the valley. She persuadedconvinced Parks herself to visit Salt Lake City a few years ago to receive the chapter's Rosa Parks Award.
"She didn't like to travel to cold areas in the winter, but I kept being persistent," Williams says. "She kept saying, 'Let me think about it.' I kept calling her back. I told her about the mountains and scenery. Lo and behold, when she came we had the inversion. She stayed an extra day because it was my birthday, and she took me to dinner and gave me gifts and a card and flowers. I talked to her for hours at a time."
Williams, who served on the NAACP's national board of directors from 1996-2002, says that under her leadership the NAACP's Salt Lake chapter has filed class-action lawsuits against Fruit Heights, Bluffdale and Summit County over zoning ordinances because "those areas have large lots and there is no affordable housing." She says her office fields 10 to 15 calls, e-mails and letters a day with complaints of racism. Williams says her office monitors prisons, housing, education and employment, looking for discrimination.
Recently, she undertook the high-profile case of Alvin Itula, who died after being Tasered by police.
Williams says she would give Utah a "D" for the way it handles discrimination "because, for instance, a person filing a discrimination lawsuit in employment has no opportunity of winning a case in Utah because the judges favor the employer. And there is a glass ceiling.
"There's a good-ol'-boys system here. I'm speaking just of African-Americans.
Scott G. Winterton, Deseret Morning News
Williams, center, joins Tyana Williams, left, Shaniqua Cooks, Dee Cooks and Shaunt Megerdichean last January as they ask the West Jordan City Council to rename a street after Rosa Parks.
"Our congressmen, except (Jim) Matheson, all receive F's for their voting in civil rights and voting with the NAACP. That is unacceptable.
"That's why there's a lot of work that needs to be done here."
Her opponents don't disagree with her; they just don't believe she's the one to do it.
After moving to Salt Lake City, Williams was groomed for NAACP leadership by longtime president Alberta Henry, who was seen as a kindly, maternal figure in the community.
Later, after Williams became president, she and Henry had such a falling out that Henry tried to reclaim the office in 2002 at the age of 82 but lost a controversial election.
Henry died last year. She would not discuss Williams for an article written by Don Merrill in 2002 for Salt Lake City Weekly but did comment about how people were feeling about the organization under Williams' leadership:
"They mad at it," she said. "Ooooh, they mad!"
They're still mad.
"I am so disgusted with that group under her that I refuse to have anything to do with them," says Ron Stallworth, a former chairman of Utah's Black Advisory Council. "I do not support (Williams and Lewis). The NAACP is a necessary, viable group. I do not think that of them. Everyone recognizes she is wrong, but nobody wants to challenge her. I've been very outspoken about how wrong she and Ed are."
James Evans, chairman of the Salt Lake County Republican Party, who also happens to be black, says, "Nothing is being accomplished with the organization. . . . People in the African-American community are frustrated."
"She should be a recognized leader in the black community, but she's not representative of the black community," says Charles Henderson, a longtime NAACP member who serves on the Minority Advisory Committee and the Martin Luther King Commission.
Michael Brandy, Deseret Morning News
Donna Brazile, right, talks at 2003 luncheon with Jeanetta Williams, president of the Salt Lake Branch NAACP, and Williams' husband, Edward Lewis, who is president of a tri-state area for the NAACP that comprises Utah, Idaho and Nevada.
There also has been frequent turnover on the NAACP Salt Lake chapter board. Two of the most enduring members, Allen Holmes and Curley Jones, refused to be interviewed. Lewis explains that this is a matter of NAACP policy ' only the president can speak for the group.
Charlotte Starks, a former NAACP vice president, said, "I'd rather not talk about my experience at the Salt Lake branch of the NAACP. It wasn't a great experience. I'd just like it to support people who can't support themselves. It doesn't do it."
When contacted at her home in California, Bonnie Dew, a former member of the Salt Lake NAACP board, said, "Is there something positive happening there? I don't think there is. I'm skeptical anything will change."
She believes Williams needs to be taken "to task for misusing the power of the office and the name and not respecting those before her. It just breaks my heart to have this happen and her continued leadership. The community would be much better served with someone new at the helm, someone like Charles (Henderson) and Larry (Houston) and Alberta. I challenge you to find someone who believes Jeanetta embodies the values of a leader of the NAACP. It's more about personal gain and notoriety that she serves and not as instrument to bring change."
Dew was one of four board members who resigned within weeks of each other in 1997, along with Leslie Reynolds, Henry and Houston.
"Jeanetta has done some good things in economic development and putting time in the national arena," says Houston, "but I disagree with the way they're serving our community. In our community, African-Americans have been abandoned by the NAACP."
Unlike others who spoke on the record, Josie Valdez says she had "a productive experience" with Williams while serving on the NAACP board for five years. As assistant director of the Small Business Administration at the time, she joined the NAACP to facilitate the creation of business opportunities for minority-owned businesses.
Jeanetta Williams
"We got a lot done," she says. "Jeanetta was very instrumental in making that happen."
Valdez notes, "She is and was very controversial. I knew that going in. I had heard a lot of negative things. But my experience was a good one, even though I saw firsthand the tremendous division that exists between Jeanetta and the rest of the black community. I saw her as an effective leader with the limitations of a divided community. . . . I must have been one of the few. She never rubbed me the wrong way."
Also rising to Williams' defense, Lewis says, "There's only one side; there's the NAACP side. These people who are complaining don't come to the meetings and don't participate."
Lewis says the Salt Lake branch is "one of the best in the NAACP and by far the best in my tri-state area."
Several consistent themes emerge as Williams' critics speak out:
? One claim is that Williams and company will not grant NAACP help to people who are not dues-paying members of the organization.
"That's totally false," says Williams. "That's how people start lies. You don't have to be a member for the NAACP to help you. You get people who always want to be negative and stir things up."
Williams' denial notwithstanding, it's difficult to ignore a charge that is so widely repeated. "It's always been a concern," says Houston. "The first thing they ask when someone calls is, are you a member? Membership is the blood line for certain, but the NAACP addresses issues and civil liberties whether you're a member or not."
"I can attest to the fact personally," says Stallworth. "I had an incident with my former employer trying to fire me. I appealed to the NAACP for support. I was told that as soon as I paid my membership dues they would get their lawyers on this. That's contrary to the NAACP (mission)."
Says Dew, "I would get calls from people telling me, '(Williams) won't respond because I'm not a member.' (Williams) denies it. But there were people who were refused help because of membership."
Lewis says none of this is true and that usually membership isn't the issue. He says the NAACP receives frequent calls from people who want help with an issue that has nothing to do with civil rights.
"I get a call from someone saying, 'My son is in jail. Will you get him out?' I say, 'Why is he in jail?' 'Robbery,' they say. Fifty, 60 percent of the time it's not even a civil rights issue! Ninety percent of the time they're not even members, and they're demanding our help!"
? Another charge is that Williams will not cooperate with other individuals and organizations in the black community. That issue came to a head about a year and a half ago when the Martin Luther King Human Rights Commission solicited funds in the community to raise scholarship money for minority kids. Williams filed a complaint with the Utah Attorney General's Office claiming that they were illegally competing for the same funds and taking potential NAACP dollars.
This rankled other black leaders, who saw it as counterproductive for a group whose purpose was to help minority youth.
According to Henderson, the AG's office told them no laws were violated and that they needed to work together to mend the rift. As a compromise, Henderson says the commission tried to get Williams to meet and agree to split the scholarship, but she refused.
"The NAACP does not take direction from other organizations or churches," says Williams. "We have our own policies." Says Henderson, "We're not trying to tell them what to do. We just want to work together for the betterment of the community. I was a member of the NAACP in Utah and Virginia, and I can tell you it has always worked with other organizations to solve problems. It's Jeanetta's way or no way, and her way is not working."
"We were raising 20 scholarships a year at $1,000 each for high-achievement students in the black community," says Stallworth. "We did this every year. (The AG's office) said she should work with us. She never has and never would. She chooses to go it alone. She views (working with other groups) as a threat to her authority."
? The rift in the black community has become so onerous that on several occasions local black leaders have tried to organize a meeting with Williams to attempt to mend the rift.
"We had several meetings to resolve the rift and decide how to bring the NAACP to the table," says Henderson. "We knew we were getting a bad reputation for not getting along. She refused to come to the meetings."
The Rev. France Davis and Phyllis Carruth, director of the Martin Luther King Commission, were among those who were asked to mediate. So far, their efforts have been rebuffed.
"I'm still working on it," says the Rev. Davis. "I don't want to close the doors." Asked to comment on Williams' performance, he says, "I don't have any comment on that at this point."
Says Carruth, "I don't want to say anything to close doors. We're still working on things. But there are some communication issues."
Lewis blames much of this issue on Williams' policy of turning the NAACP from a group dominated by blacks to a group that represents all races in matters of civil rights.
"They want it to be a black thing," says Lewis. "We fight for the civil rights of everyone."
He also defends the chapter's refusal to work with other black groups by saying the NAACP, as a nonprofit group, cannot affiliate with partisan groups. The Utah Black Forum, for instance, was headed by Democratic state legislator Duane Bourdeaux. And they can't affiliate with government groups because it is the government they often take on in the courtroom on civil rights issues. Whatever the reason, Williams' independence and refusal to cooperate with others has created many of her problems in the community.
"She's self-reliant, not inclusive," says Valdez. "It has created a lot of animosity. It's the style she has adopted, her modus operandi. She knows she's not loved by everybody. She's got to know it. But in spite of it, she keeps getting re-elected."
? Critics also say there needs to be more financial disclosure in the local NAACP under Williams' leadership.
"When I left there hadn't been an official audit since Miss Henry left," says Houston. "There should be independent audits regarding funds."
Says Dew, another former board member, "I was trying to keep things accountable. Jeanetta would not account for it. She wouldn't even tell me how many members the chapter has. That should be public information. It's a nonprofit group that collects money. We should know where it's going. There should be a proper accounting of funds, and so we asked questions. She was very reluctant to provide the information."
? Williams' relationship with Lewis is also viewed as problematic. Ask Houston why he resigned and he says, "It was being dominated by two people, Ed and Jeanetta. It was no longer a board. It was a very closed loop."
"Everyone was very supportive at first," says Dew. "Then she paired up with Ed Lewis and started antagonizing members of the board. She was disrespectful to Alberta and changed the direction of the NAACP from a community advocate."
Lewis, 58, was born in Mississippi and grew up in Chicago. (He describes himself as a "country boy from Chicago.") Lewis says he served six years in the Air Force as a nuclear weapons specialist, including a stint in Vietnam, and then attended college. He says he has degrees in engineering and physics and an MBA from Pepperdine. He says he is now working on a doctorate. His career brought him to Utah. (He worked for Bell Labs and Motorola, among other corporations.)
After retiring, Lewis says he became more active in the NAACP as payback for his success. He met Williams through their NAACP work.
Williams' detractors say her personal relationship is a conflict of interest. But, says Lewis, "There is no rule in the NAACP that two people who are married can't serve together. I was elected president of the tri-state area by disparate branches, not Jeanetta."
However, opponents note that all complaints about Williams and the local NAACP go to Lewis.
That includes complaints about the 2002 election. The anti-Williams' camp mounted a campaign to unseat her. Henry returned to run against Williams and lost a close race that was dogged for months by widespread charges of voter fraud.
Henderson, as a member of the election supervisory committee, witnessed the voting.
"There were people voting there who had never been to a meeting," he says. "Some of them didn't even speak English. They were Polynesians. You have to be a member to vote. I had gone to all the meetings and had never seen them. I heard one ask, 'Who do I vote for?' There were memberships purchased for people. Obviously, if they're buying members, who are they going to support?"
Says Dew, "Charles was a witness. He wrote a complaint alleging voter fraud, along with others. Of course, the complaint goes to Ed Lewis.
"He drafted a letter, saying there was no fraud. It went no further. A complaint was filed in behalf of Alberta Henry saying there was fraud. What happened was there was a Tongan church down the street from the voting place. If you happened to be there, you were thinking, 'Where did they come from?' We'd never seen them before. Some were not able to speak the language or write, and Ed was pointing and telling them, put your mark here. The results were very telling. Jeanetta won, but in instructing the nonmembers, they didn't tell them to vote for her vice chairperson, so Alberta's vice chair was voted in. They forgot to tell them to vote for both."
Lewis says simply, "There was no election fraud." He continues, "We're not violating any rules. They're welcome to go over my head if they need to. The complaints have lacked merit."
Williams doesn't plan to step down anytime soon from her NAACP post. Duane Bourdeaux, who recently retired as a state legislator, urges others to support her.
"I know people have concerns," he says. "It's not my job to criticize. There are positive things she's done, too. The thing I always say ' and I get asked this a lot ' is we've got to do everything we can to support her."
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061806 sports23The News-HeraldDriver of the No. 55 Napa Dodge Charger, Michael Waltrip is one of the biggest names in NASCAR — not just for being a two-time Daytona 500 champion and brother of Darrell, one of the sport's legends, but also for having one of the league's most colorful and likable personalities.-->
Michael Waltrip: Moving ahead
Daytona 500 champ talks MIS, Toyota and parity
News-Herald Q&A by Nick Brandon
PUBLISHED: June 18, 2006
Driver of the No. 55 Napa Dodge Charger, Michael Waltrip is one of the biggest names in NASCAR ' not just for being a two-time Daytona 500 champion and brother of Darrell, one of the sport's legends, but also for having one of the league's most colorful and likable personalities.
Waltrip, victorious at "The Great American Race" in 2001 and '03, returns to Michigan International Speedway this weekend in a major career conversion ' after five years with Dale Earnhardt Inc. (DEI), Waltrip has established his own team, Waltrip-Jasper Racing, now driving the No. 55 built by Bill Davis Racing.
However, starting in 2007, Michael Waltrip Racing will pioneer the entrance of Toyota into Nextel Cup Racing, as Waltrip and Dale Jarrett, current driver of the No. 88 UPS Ford, will steer two Toyota Camry's next season. While Toyota's entry is a hot topic in the NASCAR community, Waltrip and company are leading the way for one of the sport's most anticipated stories.
NB: How are you looking forward to coming back to Michigan? It seems like a track you've had past success at.
MW: Yeah, we've done well. I won the Busch race there a couple years ago ' that was pretty cool, and the race last spring we wound up finishing seventh and really had a competitive run. It's just a fun track, the fact that it has multi grooves in the turns. It's like baseball ' in baseball, you're supposed to hit 'em where they ain't; when you've got a track like Michigan, if you want to pass a guy you just go where he ain't. Race car drivers love options, and Michigan gives you lots of options in the turns.
NB: What's with you on the giant tracks? Daytona, Talladega, MIS ' the big long tracks. You seem more comfortable at those?
MW: It comes down to the fact that we've been fortunate enough to win the Daytona 500 a couple times and have so much success down there, people talk about that. I enjoy racing everywhere; it doesn't matter where we line up. The most difficult thing about our sport is the competition. The track doesn't really matter; it's the 42 other guys you've got to beat that matter. Maybe I've had more success on those, but I've also enjoyed success at Bristol, Richmond and those tracks as well. I like tracks that give you options so you can move around, hunt a lane and try something different. Michigan definitely offers you that.
NB: It's been an interesting year for you, your first year away from DEI with your own race team. Next year is going to bring about some really big changes with the Toyota deal ' what are your thoughts about doing your own team in this first year?
MW: This year is really a transition year ... with our eyes toward, and all of our team building Toyotas and infrastructure we need to have our own team. This year, we sent the Napa sponsorship to Bill (Davis Racing) and said 'You provide us cars so we can get ready for next.' This year's been very disappointing, I didn't realize we'd do as poorly as we have. We're working very hard to try to support and do all we can to run better this year, but at the same time using the folks that are going to build up Michael Waltrip racing and build our Toyotas for '07 and beyond. I can't really lean on them too much, cause they've got an important job to do as well. We're trying to help all we can to make my cars run better this year, but we also understand next year is going to be a huge challenge and opportunity to have winning race cars with Dale (Jarrett) and I driving. We're struggling a little bit this year, and that's not good, so as we head to MIS this weekend, believe me, all the thought and hard work and effort that we can possibly muster with Bill Davis Racing will be up there. Hopefully it will be good enough to run well.
NB: You're team is leading the way to bring Toyota into the sport ' NASCAR is such a big part of Americana, has there been any backlash, or is it controversial that Toyota's coming into the sport? Why did you want to be one of the first drivers to drive Toyotas next year?
MW: Obviously, anytime something changes people are going to freak out. That's human nature, and when Toyota came to NASCAR, (people were) like 'This is terrible.' But, as you said, NASCAR is Americana, and Toyota have been selling cars in this country for 50 years, and they employ thousands and thousands of Americans to build their cars ' not to mention all the vendors that supply them with parts and pieces for their cars that Americans are employed by. It's just important to understand, and remember, that this is a global society these days: You can go to Beijing and get a Whopper on the corner! You can't be closed-minded and think it's a travesty, or it's not right, that Toyota's a part of NASCAR. Especially with the respectful way they've come into the sport. I just appreciate their wanting to blend in and be part of the landscape of NASCAR, and have so much respect for the sport. That's why I wanted to be a part of it, because I saw a tremendous opportunity for me, and my sponsors to be a part of something that would make a difference in the sport. Toyota's entry into Cup racing will being more fans to the sport, because people are going to say 'Well darn, let's see how that all works out,' and they'll tune in and come out to the track to see. Obviously, my sponsors, and all the folks that are going to be a part of our deal going forward, will benefit from that.
NB: I think adding Dale Jarrett to your team is going to bring a lot of credibility and a lot of success, you guys should make a pretty good duo. But I'm wondering, will you and him have the acting chemistry that you and Dale Jr. once had?
MW: (laughing) I don't know, I usually do pretty good on that part with whoever I'm teamed with. Dale Jr. was a lot of fun; Dale (Jarrett) and I have a great deal of fun when we make commercials, (his) commercials with his sponsor now, UPS, about driving the truck, the job he's done with those lead me to believe that he and I can have a lot of fun together. We're looking forward to see where this takes us: The paper's clean, so whatever direction we head as a team, or Toyota heads as a manufacture, to market the fact that their coming to our sport, it's a wonderful opportunity to know the only thing that's limiting you from building everything you want to build is your mind. If your mind can think it, then we have the opportunity to do it. That's a wonderful feeling.
NB: As a fan, if I have any complaint about NASCAR ' and it's a great sport and an awesome brand, but I think one of the current issues is there's not enough parity. What makes the NFL so great is anybody can win on any day ' this past weekend, it was great to see Denny Hamlin win because, frankly, it's a new name, a new sponsor, a new car in victory lane. Lately, it seems like it's those same 10 guys that are always up front and winning races. How do you feel about that from the driver perspective?
MW: There's a pretty good bet that the winner's going to come out of a group of ten or twelve, but you have to realize that a rookie won a race (this past week), you don't see that every day. The same cast of characters were there for him to beat ' he had to outrun Tony Stewart, Kurt Busch, Greg Biffle and he did it. I think Toyota coming to sport will help in that perspective, because they didn't just go over to Rick Hendrick and say 'We want you to race Toyotas.' They came to me and asked me to have a team; they went to Red Bull Racing, and they're going to start a team; they're going to support Bill Davis Racing. They've taken the opportunity to come into the sport and create new ownership groups, and when you create new ownership groups, that's another philosophy, or another way to go about racing cars. Things will definitely diversify with Toyota's entry, and that's a good thing, and I think it will give you an opportunity to see more guys with a chance to win as we go forward.
NB: With Waltrip Racing being a start-up team with, what's going to be, two drivers, from a fan perspective, I just want to make sure the playing field is even enough where your team can have just as much a chance as the giants.
MW: We're going to be a giant team ' we're going to build our team just like those other organizations have built theirs, and I think NASCAR smiles upon our team and likes the fact we're going to have another ownership group. They're thankful to Toyota for the way they decided to come into the sport, which was to start new teams ' that's a whole lot like they came into the Truck Series, and Darrell was one of the first teams they announced to be one of their truck organizations. Darrell's team is still success, and right up front in points, so their formula has worked and I think it will continue to work. I know I've got a charming personality, but if Dale Jarrett didn't believe we could build cars for him to win races in, he wouldn't have joined our organization, nor all the other top crew guys we've hired onto our team. They wouldn't be there if we didn't think we knew what we were doing. I think your concerns are valid to a point, you do know that one of thse six, eight, ten guys are going to be in the top ten or able to win, but I think the Toyota entry into Cup will address that.
NB: Lastly, about your brother Darrell, having a legend for a brother is a big deal, especially in NASCAR where people emulate the stars of the past. What's the biggest thing you've learned from him about racing?
MW: What he taught me was that there's two sides to every story ' you go out and race your butt off, use your grit, determination and never say die attitude to win races and to fight through what it takes to be successful; then you get out of the car, and it's o.k. to be entertaining, it's o.k. to talk about your sponsors ' it's OK to have fun. He defined that role back in the '70s, he was outspoken and talked a lot of crap, but when he got in his car he forgot about all of that, he just raced his butt off. The most important thing he taught me was you can be entertaining and someone the fans enjoy seeing or hearing, and your sponsors appreciate the way you go about business, but when you get in the car you want to beat their brains in. It's almost like a split personality.
For more, visit www.michaelwaltrip.com or www.michiganinternationalspeedway.com.
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The inside covers feature a smattering of dull flowers against a black background, with the back cover featuring creepy renditions of Takako and Sakae's faces. The title page and table of contents are without illustration, but each chapter opener features a rather provocative illustration. There are three chapters that end on an odd page and the extra page always features a new illustration, all of which are extremely bizarre. There are four pages of 4-panel comics at the back of the book, as well as a four page mini comic, a page dedicated to Toru Yamazaki's photo album, and the last page featuring something of an author's talk. I was really pleased with the amount of extras in this volume, and the volume ends with the comic, so there's no ads or anything like that in the back.
Text/Translation:
I was actually quite impressed with the translation here. This is an extremely bizarre series with a fair number of quirks and cultural references, and it reads extremely well in English. I'd be lying if I said I never got lost, but I think that's just the nature of this title. There were no grammar or spelling errors either, which I also appreciated. The sound effects are left in Japanese, with an English translation alongside them matching them stylistically.
Artwork:
As I said earlier, this volume shocked and surprised me. I expected a gristly horror comic, and while this series delivers on the gore moreso than almost any of the other Dark Horse horror titles, it does so in the most humorous way possible. He shifts between two or three different ways of drawing throughout the volume. His usual style is pretty clean and very cutesy, with lots of round corners and flowers and whatnot, then there's an ultra-cute style which gets played up whenever Takako is trying to please and also towards the end when we get a shoujo manga chapter. The other style is also used fairly frequently, and that's the sort of grotesque horror style. Any scene with Sakae is inevitably drawn in this style, because I think it's hard to make her look cute with her moray eel teeth and her hairy mole. But there's also plenty of other opportunities for gore, as Takako and others will take every opportunity to slice and dice. The contrast between the cutesy style and the gore is quite shocking, and I think is a large part on why this series struck me as so bizarre. It helps that the story reinforces it, but the art's extremely complimentary to what's going on. I love the style, I love the character designs, and I love the little flourishes that frequently found their ways in, such as Sakae's mole hair, gross folded skin on many characters, weird faces, textured vomit, and fluids that frequently flew out of noses. There's a lot of character to his style, and I'd love to see how another series works as well as Octopus Girl using the same sort of art.
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