Community Archive

The Arc of the Emerald Coast announced that on Wednesday, Jan. 31, it received a generous donation of $25,000 from the Fort Walton Beach Rotary. The funds were raised at the North Florida Pickleball Brawl, the Rotary’s annual pickleball tournament.

Consider the variety of needs in our community: beds for children who are sleeping on floors. food, clothing and care for at-risk foster children, STEM and mentoring programs to spark brighter lives for children and teens, marine and wildlife conservation and protection programs.  

Residents who love choral music singing and enjoy sharing their talents with like-minded folk — and the public — are invited to come to the Crestview Community Chorus’s weekly rehearsals as the ensemble prepares for its spring concert.

Crestview optometrist Edward Mitchell Jr. has a compassionate vision to help others. As the owner of Cabana Eyes Optical, he takes care of people who are on Medicare or Medicaid and have a hard time paying for optometry services. As a leader of the Crestview Lions Club, he helps provide eyeglasses for folks who cannot afford them. “He’s involved in so many things, but the thing he’s probably the most proud of is his compassion for feeding our people here in Crestview,” Mayor J.B. Whitten said at a ceremony on Monday.

When you star in your own hit television show and act alongside the likes of Vin Diesel, Jennifer Lawrence and Helen Mirren, it might go to your head but for Alan Ritchson, 41, he’s still just the kid from Niceville.

Hurlburt Field will ring in the holiday season with the annual Winter Wonderland Celebration Friday, Dec. 1 from 4 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. The event, hosted by the 1st Special Operations Wing (SOW), is at Hurlburt Field’s Memorial Air Park.

Over the last two years freshwater fisheries researchers and managers with the FWC have successfully released more than 11,000 shoal bass.

It’s part of an ongoing recovery effort for the shoal bass population after Hurricane Michael devastated the Panama City area in 2018 and depleted more than 90% of it.

The Northwest Florida Health Network told church and faith-based nonprofit leaders last week that it can fund their community-based social services without interfering in how those services are provided.

“Governor DeSantis has had his people do all the legal work,” the Rev. Rick Hazelip of First City Church said Thursday, Oct. 19, at a “Faith Summit” at Brownsville Church. “All we have to do is open up our services to anybody, regardless of their beliefs. And then we do what we do.”

Ken Knight, who grew up in Crestview from 1948 to 1958, fondly recalls swimming in a clear, chilly creek just south of the city limits and west of State Road 85. “Whenever I talk with someone from that area, I always call it ‘God’s country,'” Knight, who is now 77 and lives in Alachua in the Gainesville metro area, said on Oct. 13. “I would love to live there again. When I was a kid, I used to swim in Turkey Hen Creek. The water was freezing! My fingers would shrivel up.”

A suspension bridge, an historic gristmill and abundant serene scenes of nature thrill hikers on a 6.5-mile roundtrip trek by Krul and Bear lakes within the Blackwater River State Forest in northeast Santa Rosa County.