Great American Teach-In another "Pride"-filled event

IMG_7741The Great American Teach-In (GATI) isn’t just a day Pride Elementary school principal Cindy Land uses to squeeze in a few speakers for students to listen to and gawk at, a day for kids to see the uniforms their parents wear to work or to pet a few animals.

For Land, it’s always been about something bigger.

“I think it excites the kids about their future careers,” Land said, “and it’s just a great way to get your community involved.”

That may explain why Pride rolls out the red carpet with a hot breakfast and a catered lunch for its GATI guests, which this year numbered more than 100.

GATI Pride copyFrom firemen to artists, television anchors to local politicians — with a good number of furry critters thrown in between — the Great American Teach-In appears to have been another success not only at Pride, but all around New Tampa.

At Chiles Elementary in Tampa Palms, the guests who came speak to students about their careers included photographers, cooks, physical therapists, hair stylists, authors, experts on Chinese culture and USF cross country head coach Dena Reif.

At Liberty Middle School, also in Tampa Palms, the USF Sun Dolls appeared, along with a comic book artist, commercial pilot and others.

IMG_7751At Pride, there seemed to be almost every job imaginable represented, including Hillsborough County Commissioner Ken Hagan, who has participated at Pride for 10 straight years.

“The 5th grade kids do really well with that, because government is what they are learning right now,’’ Land said.

There were also nurses, doctors, hot air balloons and the always popular animal rescues and certified therapy dogs.

Julie Van Acker, who works for Organicgirl, made healthy green smoothies for the kids in her class, while Kristen Gefre from Busch Gardens showed her kids a screech owl named Emmett and a baby american alligator named River.

IMG_7772The three-page handout with all of the guests and their teaching times was like a treasure map for the Pride students, who have been treated to a number of famous guests in recent years, including former Tampa Bay Bucs coach Tony Dungy.

At Pride, it’s getting bigger and bigger every year.

“It’s one of our largest events that we hold here at Pride,’’ Land said. “We contact everyone the prior spring, and any contacts we make throughout the year, we are consistently sending emails to them. We kind of eyeball the date we expect it to be and go from there. We love to have the community involved.”

 

Junior Woman’s Club Members Accompany Vets On ‘Honor Flight’

honor3Tampa Palms resident Melanie Otte remembers her grandfather’s stories about World War II. He would regale the family about his wartime exploits, as they leafed through his photo albums, and proudly show off a picture of the Enola Gay — the first aircraft ever to drop an atomic bomb — that he had to jump a fence to take the photo with a small spy camera.

It never really hit her, though, what his service meant to him until she recently chose to take part in an Honor Flight.

Otte and Wesley Chapel resident Jennifer Lee, both members of the Greater Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC)’s New Tampa Junior Woman’s Club, served as volunteer guardians to a pair of U.S. Military veterans on Sept. 22, an experience that left both amazed, appreciative and very much in awe.

honor2
Jennifer Lee (left) and Melanie Otte

“I had been to Washington, DC, as a kid, but this was a much more moving experience,’’ Otte says. “I mean, standing there with a person who lived it, that was just something totally different.”

Honor Flights are one-day trips organized by non-profit organizations dedicated to providing a way for veterans to visit the monuments created in the name of their service scattered throughout the nation’s capital.

Last year, the New Tampa Junior Woman’s Club donated $400 so one veteran could make the trip. That inspired Otte and Lee to get involved as Honor Flight volunteers this year.

Otte served as a volunteer guardian to 80-year-old Korean War U.S. Air Force Military Police veteran Frank Kynion, who lives in St. Petersburg, while Lee escorted Laura Tilton, a 92-year-old Venice resident and World War II veteran.

The day of the Honor Flight began with alarm clocks going off at 3 a.m. for the volunteers, a donated breakfast from McDonald’s at the St. Petersburg-Clearwater Airport, and a 4 a.m. flight to the Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport with about 80 other veterans and their guardians.

When they got off the plane, the spunky Tilton asked Lee if the wheelchair had a speed limit, and Lee asked if she was pushing too fast.

“No, pick it up, we got things to see,’’ Tilton told her with glee.

honor4A contingent of military personnel was there to greet the veterans at the airport, setting off a whirlwind day of emotional sightseeing.

“When we were at the Korean War Memorial, it was very somber,” says Otte. “Frank was visibly taken aback. You could tell he was welling up.”

Otte said the listing of the Korean’s War’s U.S. fatalities (almost 40,000, with more than 100,000 injured) and the 19 haunting seven-foot-tall stainless steel statues standing in a patch of juniper bushes at the memorial was overwhelming.

Lee pushed Tilton around, although the former Naval Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN)/pharmacy maid, was able to stand and walk for short periods of time.

“She was a lot of fun,’’ Lee says. “I think a lot of them just appreciated the one-on-one attention. She told me, ‘I had so much fun. I like to giggle, you like to giggle. She told me I was now her third daughter.”

honor1As the vets returned to Florida, they read dozens of letters written to them by school children and adults, thanking them for their service and dedication. When the plane landed back in Clearwater, a throng of roughly 800 people, including a band, were there to greet them.

Kynion, who married a Japanese woman after the war, says he faced discrimination as a result, and also lived through the anti-military era of the Vietnam War, so he was humbled by the support. In fact, many of the veterans, on multiple occasions, asked why everyone was doing this for them.

Otte told him the answer was simple: “Because you are our heros.”

The GFWC New Tampa Junior Woman’s Club meets the second Monday of every month at 6:30 p.m. at the New Tampa YMCA (16221 Compton Dr. in Tampa Palms). For more info, visit GFWCNewTampaJuniors.org.

Caetano running for school board post

CaetanoWEBAfter filing last year to regain his old Tampa City Council District 7 seat, New Tampa’s Joseph Caetano ended up not running, saying he had a change of heart.

Now, he says, he is following his heart.

Caetano is one of five candidates who have (so far) filed to replace Carol Kurdell in the District 7 seat on the Hillsborough County School Board in 2016, returning to what he says are his roots.

Caetano says he was a school board member in Woburn, MA, from 1981-85, and he plans on taking some of the things he championed then and using them to build his platform now for the District School Board election, which will be held during the Primary Election on August 30, 2016.

(Note-Unless one of the five Dist. 7 candidates garners at least 50-percent of the vote on Aug. 30, the two candidates with the most votes will advance to a runoff during the General Election on November 8, 2016.)

Specifically, Caetano, 82, says he will run on vocational education, which he says was the backbone of the school district he served up north.

“I know vocational education is a dirty word (to some people),’’ he says. “But it’s a very good system.”

Some other concerns Caetano said he hopes to tackle: the financial woes of the Hillsborough school district, graduation rates that he says remain far too low and increasing the pay for the District’s bus drivers.

This won’t be the first time Caetano has run for the Hillsborough School Board. In 1996, he was unsuccessful in a deep field of nine for a countywide that included winner Sharon Danaher, although Caetano says he received 20,450 votes.

“I know they (the voters) are going to end up loving my message when I come out again,’’ he said.

“They” had better love him, because Caetano already faces four other candidates for the District 7 seat — a little less than a year before the Aug. 30 Primary Election.

If he ends up following through this time on his filing, this will be Caetano’s first campaign since he served on the Tampa City Council from 2007-11. He was unseated in March 2011 by current District 7 Council member Lisa Montelione, finishing third of four candidates and attracting 19 percent on the vote.

Caetano, a longtime Tampa Palms resident now living in Grand Hampton, owned the Bostonian Hair Studio in the City Plaza at Tampa Palms shopping center for more than two decades (and a second salon in the New Tampa Center plaza for several years), before filing for bankruptcy in 2008 and closing both of those salons. He later opened and closed two salons in Wesley Chapel and helped his daughter, Jacquie, open the Urban Renewal Hair & More salon in the Pebble Creek Collection a couple of years ago.

The always-colorful Caetano promises that his age won’t hold him back. He said he works out at a gym every day and is in top shape.

“I think I can make a difference; I’m a hard worker,’’ Caetano said. “I’m going to win the election, I’ll tell you that now. I’ll work my (butt) off. And I’m running from here down to Apollo Beach. I’ll be knocking on doors and advertising.”

Caetano said he plans on forming a committee in the coming months to plan his campaign and begin his fund-raising efforts in earnest.

For more information, email Joseph Caetano at caetanobim@aol.com.