FLORIDA WISHED UPON A STAR AND DREAMS CAME TRUE
To appreciate what Walt Disney has meant to Florida, you must believe in fairy tales. Orlando, for those who believe, is a small-city-turned-metropolis that bursts with opportunities because Disney sprinkled pixie dust on a cow pasture and created a Magic Kingdom in Orlando's back yard.
CHASING CHESSIE; THE WANDERING MANATEE
The vacation season's over. The heat wave has passed. Autumn is coming, and Rhode Island, picturesque as it is, is no place for a Florida manatee when the temperature drops. Chessie, Florida's seafaring ambassador to the Northeast, is on an incredible, record-breaking journey up the East Coast, an area no manatee has ever been seen before. In his 10-week adventure, he has traveled more than 1,600 miles.
LEARNING THE HARD WAY AT WASHINGTON ELEMENTARY
You can't teach innocence. No one knows that better than the teachers at Washington Elementary School. Their children have seen too much blood, suffered too many losses. They've watched fathers go to prison, sisters die of AIDS, a brother shot and killed by police.
ONE GIANT LEAP; 50 years later, the small step is still big
The spacemen were jabbering to Launch Control in technospeak, and their 36-story flying machine was groaning and purring, and NASA had announced, in its monotone voice, that Apollo 11 was ready to go. Everyone, especially the 1 million Americans clogging Brevard County's bridges and highways and beaches this muggy July morning, was anxious, excited, straining to see the rocket about to be shot off to the moon.
TOBACCO; THE SCORNED CROP
Steve Lamm's farm is a place of backaches and sweat, belly-shaking laughter and home-grown vegetable suppers. It's a place where loyalty is more valuable than a good, hard rain, and being independent is better than having money in the bank.