DESTIN — The 4th Annual Paddle at the Porch, featuring a $6,000 cash purse, will take place Aug. 15 in waters behind The Back Porch Seafood & Oyster House in Destin.

The event features 1-mile and 3-mile recreational races, a 6-mile elite race, and a kids’ fun race.

A cash purse will be split among first-, second- and third-place racers in the 12'6" Men's Elite and 12'6" Women's Elite races. First place will receive $1,500, second place will receive $1,000, and third place will receive $500.

The kids’ fun race, new to the event, allows 12-year-olds and under to compete on a shorter course. Medals will be awarded to the top three racers.

For the 3- and 6-mile races, the cost is $60 before Aug. 15, and $75 on race day; for the 1-mile race, $48 before Aug. 15; $55 on race day; and for the kids’ fun race, $12 before Aug. 15; $15 on race day.

Some proceeds will benefit Building Homes for Heroes, a national non-profit organization that constructs or modifies homes for people who were injured while serving the country during wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The nonprofit gifts mortgage-free homes to veterans and their families.

Registration may be completed on Active.com. The first 200 to register in the 1-, 3- and 6-mile races will receive T-shirts. There is no T-shirt for the kids’ fun race.

Follow Facebook.com/PaddleAtThePorch to learn more about the event.

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Destin Paddle at the Porch purse increases to $6K

CRESTVIEW — The Crestview City Council will give the Mae R. Coleman Citizen of the Year award to an area resident next week.

The meeting is 5:30-6 p.m. Aug. 10 in the city hall council chambers, 198 Wilson St., N.

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Crestview Citizen of the Year award presentation scheduled

CRESTVIEW — Having helped clean a beach themselves, Girl Scouts in Crestview Troop 676 encourage other organizations to help tidy Okaloosa County's top tourist attraction.

“As part of the Girl Scout Law, the girls promise to ‘make the world a better place,’ and that is what they were trying to accomplish" Aug. 1, parent volunteer Amanda Converse said.

Cleanup at the Gulf Island National Seashore’s Okaloosa Area was organized through the Emerald Coast Convention and Visitors Bureau, which provided trash bags and other equipment. 

“We collected and disposed of 20 bags of trash which consisted of glass, cigarette and cigar butts, lighters, batteries, water bottles, soda and beer cans, fishing reel lines, lures and hooks, chip bags and other food item trash, plastic grocery bags, rope, leftover fire debris including coal and cooking supplies, an oar, boogie board, plastic tire tube, as well as other many unidentifiable metal and plastic objects,” Converse said. “Many metals were rusted.”

The girls toted trash bags and wore protective gloves as they combed dunes and vegetation for debris that shouldn't have been there in the first place, Converse said. “Our beaches need help being maintained,” she said.

“Many people are not practicing the ‘Leave No Trace’ concept and leave behind trash that could have easily been picked up if they just brought a little trash bag along with them.”

Groups may organize beach cleanups through Nancy Hussong, Emerald Coast Convention and Visitors Bureau. Contact nhussong@co.okaloosa.fl.us or 609-5387 for more details.

WANT TO HELP?

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Crestview area Girl Scouts help clean Gulf Island Seashore beaches

FORT WALTON BEACH — One Okaloosa County park has potentially hazardous bathing water, the Florida Department of Health in Okaloosa County stated this week.

East Pass, Okaloosa Island failed tests based on EPA-recommended enterococci standards.

Enteric bacteria’s presence indicates fecal pollution from stormwater runoff, pets and wildlife or human sewage.

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: One Okaloosa park receives advisories for hazardous water

CRESTVIEW — Crestview Boy Scout Troop 773 members have learned about the many similarities, and differences, between their troop and scout troops in Sweden.

On Aug. 3, a Swedish boy scout,  Axel Borgdén, visited assistant senior patrol leader Christopher Schultz and his fellow scouts at their weekly troop meeting.

He and the group began to compare notes. Here's what they learned:

Both American and Swedish scouts have a love and respect for the outdoors.

One difference between the two is that Swedish scouts don’t follow U.S. and British scouts’ military-inspired rankings.

And outdoor activities in winter differ from Crestview’s troop, where few of the boys have seen snowfall as excessive as Sweden’s.

In addition, Crestview troop members may have never experienced the thrill of digging a hole in an ice-covered lake and leaping in the frigid water before dashing to the warmth of a nearby sauna.

Email News Bulletin Staff Writer Brian Hughes, follow him on Twitter or call 850-682-6524.

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Valkommen! Crestview scouts welcome Swedish visitor

CRESTVIEW — The City Council will field residents' concerns about the Confederate battle flag during a special meeting on Thursday.

The 5:30 p.m. meeting at Warriors Hall is expected to attract representatives from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's Okaloosa County branch and Southern Strong, a growing Facebook group with 477 members from Okaloosa, Walton, Santa Rosa and Escambia counties.

Southern Strong's administrator, Tony Vance, of Pensacola, wanted "to have a group of people who wish to see the Confederate flags kept flying as a representation of history and heritage," the Facebook page states. "This is not about hate. No white supremacy groups."

Members have rallied to show their support for the rebel flag, which started disappearing from a number of public places, including Alabama and South Carolina's state Capitols, shortly after Dylann Roof, a white man, admitted to killing nine black people mid-June at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C.

The city of Crestview recently removed the battle flag from Confederate Park on East First Avenue, but resurrected it following public outcry. The Crestview Lions Club established the memorial in 1958 to honor William "Bill" Lundy, whom many people believe was Florida's last surviving Confederate soldier. Some Civil War historians, citing census records, dispute the claim and say he was just 5 years old at the end of the war.

More than 180 cars on Sunday caravanned from Almarante Cemetery in Laurel Hill, to the Walton County Courthouse and then to Confederate Park in Crestview, Vance said.

The 3 p.m. Crestview gathering featured prayer and a number of guest speakers including Delano Lundy, Bill Lundy's grandson.

"Our main goal was to show support, to show the mayor and the City Council that there are people that want that flag and that monument to stay," Vance said on Tuesday.

Since 1996, the City Council has heard numerous requests — particularly from the NAACP's Okaloosa County branch — to remove the flag from public property.

Resident Mae Reatha Coleman has been among those leading the effort.

"It is a symbol of racism and hatred, and to me it is a blood flag for the black generation," Coleman said in a letter to the editor. "Honoring it is the same as honoring a swastika flag flying against Jews."

Vance understands critics' concerns but disagrees.

"The Civil War was not started over slavery, it was started over states' rights," he said. "I believe the history is not being taught like it should be … the flag was stolen by the Ku Klux Klan and the neo-Nazi movement."

As for the NAACP, he said, "We respect their heritage, with Martin Luther King Day and anything that's their heritage. I just ask them to respect my heritage."

Southern Strong members will have more rallies, and they plan to expand on their mission with community service projects such as cleaning veterans' abandoned graves, Vance said.

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Southern heritage group rallies for Confederate flag

CRESTVIEW — The Emerald Coast Children’s Advocacy Center will host Designer Purse Bingo, an Aug. 29 fundraiser. 

Doors will open 1:30 p.m. at Warriors Hall, 201 Stillwell Blvd., in Crestview. Tickets — $25 — are available at the center's Niceville or DeFuniak Springs offices, 401 McEwen Drive or 256 U.S. Highway 90 W., respectively. They will also be available at the event for raffle prizes or additional games of bingo.

In addition to food and beverages, guests will receive a chance to win a door prize and 12 games of bingo for 12 chances to win a designer purse or a gift basket.

The Emerald Coast Children’s Advocacy Center provides services to help identify, treat and support children in abusive situations. The organization helps prevent child abuse through education, protects child victims from future abuse, and provides resources to restore the lives of the child and the child’s family.

Contact Katie Crowell, 833-9237 or email katie@eccac.org, for more information.

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Designer Purse Bingo in Crestview to benefit Children’s Advocacy Center

LAUREL HILL — With a ragtag army of local militias, farmers, armed slaves and pirates, Maj. Gen. Andrew Jackson’s force defeated a vastly superior, well-disciplined British force on Jan. 8, 1815, in the last fight of the War of 1812.

Jackson’s first venture through present-day Okaloosa County was a November 1814 foray on the way to the Battle of Pensacola, a prelude to that better known Battle of New Orleans.

History doesn’t say much about Jackson’s 1814 route through today’s Okaloosa County, but it details his return four years later.

BACK TO PENSACOLA

Leaving Fort Gadsden — in today’s Apalachicola National Forest — on May 7, 1818, Jackson again marched west to Pensacola; this time to subdue Seminole Indians and escaped slaves who threatened Georgia.

“The Heritage of Okaloosa County, Florida," a book available at the Baker Block Museum, states the force almost certainly followed “the perhaps centuries-old road from the Upper Creek Nation to Escambia Bay.”

A stop at David’s Lake resulted in the Florala landmark on the Florida-Alabama border being renamed Lake Jackson.

The force crossed Horseshoe Creek's upper reaches near present-day Svea and headed west toward the Yellow River, which the Spanish called Rio Almirante. It inspired the name of the Almarante community, which predates neighboring Laurel Hill.

The force probably crossed the river at Oak Grove, later called Barrow’s Ferry.

“This would have brought the army nearer, if not through, the present day Laurel Hill,” the book states.

While Jackson’s exact route through the area is uncertain, “it is certain that they followed a route that brought them nearby the site of Otahite,” a now defunct town on present-day Okaloosa County's western border.

ALMOST A WAR

Jackson’s second foray through Okaloosa County nearly caused a war with Spain, which wasn’t pleased that an American force was marching through its colony.

The mission forced a political solution negotiated by President James Monroe’s secretary of state, John Quincy Adams. He essentially told the Spanish to control their citizens or cede the territory to the U.S., knowing Spain, weakened by war with Napoleon, likely would do the latter.

Meeting with Spanish Minister Don Luis de Onís, Adams negotiated the February 1819 Treaty of Florida, also called the Onís-Adams Treaty or the Transcontinental Treaty. It gave Florida and West Florida to the U.S. and gave Spain control of Texas.

As for the absence of any “Andrew Jackson slept here” historic markers in North Okaloosa County, “The Heritage” states Jackson and his army probably did the 27-mile march in one day, meaning Old Hickory didn’t lay his famously wild mane down in our area.

Email News Bulletin Staff Writer Brian Hughes, follow him on Twitter or call 850-682-6524.

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: OKALOOSA CENTENNIAL: Andrew Jackson in Okaloosa County

CRESTVIEW — Take Off Pounds Sensibly has helped millions of people nationwide lose weight over the past 60-plus years.

Now, the nonprofit's Crestview Chapter 0325 has new officers who can help local members achieve their goals.

Florette Murchison, leader, Jane McConnell, co-leader, Kimberly Cook, secretary, and Grace Bratton, treasurer, will lead the group. Agnes Parker, lead, and Mary Bell, assistant, will record members' weight.

TOPS' network includes thousands of weight-loss support groups across the United States and Canada. These chapters provide a judgment-free zone where people learn how they can make life changes to responsibly shed pounds.

TOPS' two Crestview chapters meet as follows:

•TOPS FL 0325: 8 a.m. Tuesdays, First United Methodist Church, 599 8th Ave, Crestview

•TOPS FL 0504: 6:30 p.m. Tuesdays, First United Methodist Church Fellowship Hall

See www.tops.org for more information.

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Crestview weight-loss group installs new officers

As the Crestview Public Library wraps up a superhero summer, we’d like to thank our superheroes:

•Applebees and Whataburger for coupons for free food

•Henry, Viviana, Theron and Orlan Lasher for providing and serving snack at our recent Reader Awards

•Audrey Milcarek for teaching summer stories to 6- to 8-year-olds

•Meghan Hansen and Pam Pannasch for teaching art to 9- to 11-year-olds

•Ms. Jean Lewis, library director, for supporting summer programming and for her summer reading outreach at Mount Zion AME Church

•Library staffers for checking out, checking in and shelving all of those books and movies

•Volunteers for shelving, shelf reading and helping me in various duties as assigned

•Friends of the Library for providing craft supplies

•Officers Wanda Hulion, Sam Kimmons, Shawn Kriser, and Jerad Mullinix, and K9s Cody and Sonic, of the Crestview Police Department, for teaching us about keeping the community safe

•Okaloosa County Health Department and Nurse Practitioner Heather Overton for teaching us about health heroes

•City of Crestview Fire Department for teaching us about firefighter heroes and for coming when we smelled something burning

•Everyone who donated goodies throughout the year for the funny money store

Heather Nitzel is the Crestview Public Library's youth services librarian.

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Crestview library thankful for summer superheroes