Our area has been a world-renowned family vacation spot for years. Many who vacationed here have come back here to be married and many return year after year for anniversaries. They dream of moving here in retirement and for many, those dreams come true.
This issue is the first in twenty-five years with a matrimony themed cover story as the Post Card Inn celebrates completion of a $5 million makeover with a Wedding Showcase on Wednesday, April 24th.
Our favorite steak and seafood restaurant, Mad Fish, is setting out to host bridal, bar-mitzvah and anniversary parties, as well as smaller business meetings and company celebrations and events.
In this issue, we also celebrate the life of June Hurley-Young, the last of her generation of Hurley’s, famous as a ‘Webb City Girl,’ a local host of Romper Room and a journalist credited with saving the Don CeSar.
We also say thanks and farewell to Lance Peterson, who will be missed.
This month we begin to reach out each month to introduce Paradise News to 5,000-7,500 new readers. If you have just received your first copy in the mail, this is your one chance to embrace it or ignore it. We promised our advertisers outreach for our 25th Anniversary, and over the next year we will introduce 50,000 more homes and businesses to Paradise NEWS. If you like it, embrace it. You can order a subscription for $30 $15 for 10 issues or $125 $75 for 5 years. (Just $2.50 $1.50 each, delivered to your mailbox ten times a year.)
Paradise NEWS typically arrives in 25,000 mailboxes around the 15th of the month, so we try to give you all the information readers need until the middle of the next month when the new issue arrives in the mail.
If you prefer to read online, where all the internet links are active ones, be our guest. Visit our website www.paradisenewsfl.com to see the new issue online near the first of each month. While you are there, look around. If you think there is a lot of information in the print edition, you are in for a treat on our website. Subscribe to our weekly electronic newsletter. We’ll email you a link directly to the new issue on the first Thursday of each month.
The first quarter of a century as publishers of Paradise NEWS has been one of the most rewarding periods of our lives together. We have worked together on this publication, helping businesses reach the residents of and visitors to the barrier islands and adjacent waterfront communities of south St. Petersburg for half our married lives. We moved here for our son to become a day student at Admiral Farragut Academy for his final 3 years of high school, never intending to stay, but we discovered a different world here on the islands.
Our labor here has been one of love. Paradise NEWS has made us wealthy. You cannot tell by looking at our bank account balance, but we learned long ago that while money is necessary, there are many more valuable things in this life. Our greatest rewards come when people tell us how much better we have made their lives.
We are collecting our Social Security and enjoying a Medicare Advantage Plan, but not planning to quit any time soon. As a matter of fact, we are looking at ways to keep Paradise NEWS coming for many more years.