Community Archive

School is almost back in session and NAS Whiting Field wants military families to be ready.

On Thursday, July 25 from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. at Whiting Park, NAS Whiting Field Morale, Welfare and Recreation (MWR) is hosting a Back-to-School Bash to give supplies to students and their families.

United Way of West Florida is excited to announce the return of the “Stuff the Bus” school supplies collection drive, dedicated to supporting students in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties. This year’s event is set to take place on Thursday, July 25, at six Walmart locations across both counties.

Rainy weather couldn’t stop the kickoff to Operation Dry Water at U.S. Coast Guard Station Destin on Wednesday, July 3.

The University of West Florida celebrated the planting of a “Moon Tree” seedling that flew around the moon on NASA’s Artemis 1 mission in 2022. UWF was selected from hundreds of organizations that applied to receive a seedling.

Volunteer Santa Rosa Day was held at Benny Russell Park in Pace Saturday, June 22. The event featured multiple organizations such as Pace Fire Rescue District, Legal Services of North Florida and the American Red Cross.

A staple of the East Milton food scene is back for summer. Gator’s Seafood, which has been serving customers since 1975 at its 4030 Farrington Road location, reopened its doors Friday, June 7. The restaurant operates seasonally, opening each June and closing in late summer.

The Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office has two new faces and they won’t be donning a badge. They are public information officers, responsible for releasing pertinent information concerning the agency to the public. For the past few years, Jillian Durkin has held the role, helping facilitate press conferences, interviews with the Sheriff, and being a public face of the agency at community events. To replace Durkin, who left the agency in June, the Sheriff’s Office has named Mikiko Tucker as public information officer (PIO) and Kylie Blankenship as assistant PIO.

As the Blue Angels roared through the sky off in the distance, the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition introduced its Healthspan Resilience & Performance Complex in downtown Pensacola on Tuesday.

The University of West Florida is launching a Master of Science in Behavior Analysis beginning in Fall 2024, pending approval from the Florida Board of Governors. The UWF Board of Trustees approved the program at a meeting held on May 16.

If you were at Bear Lake, the popular recreation area in Blackwater State Forest, on Sunday, June 2, you might have noticed multiple Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office K9s and large groups of people carrying out individuals on makeshift stretchers. While this might have looked like a pretty serious situation, there was no need for alarm. The Sheriff’s Office K9 unit wasn’t searching for someone lost and those people carrying others on stretchers weren’t carrying anyone that was hurt. It was all a simulation.