Tom Loury Publisher raises his OBL cup to the Ocala Business Leader friends for many years, Photo by Tammy Portrait Artist, Inc.
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Conner Hoff the missing young man has been found. Conner turned up missing June 17, 2020. He is well and that is all I know. Thanks to all you people out there that helped find him!
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To you historians out there! Let’s go back 100 years. A guy named Jon (John) Mines lived near a place called Brown’s Mountain here in the United States. I think that it is in Penn / West Virginia / Ohio area. Mines was a timber surveyor. I would like to locate his family. Anyone out there have a way of tracking history in there computer? tloury@att.net
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Sir Nicholas Winton saved 669 Human Lives from Nazi Concentration camps. His wife Grete found a note book with a list of the Children he had saved and offered to
BBC television station. They surprised Nicholas by honoring him and inviting all the people he saved to a thank you event. He was over whelmed.
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Some years back we had a writer who was retired military. His name was Robert Balfour. He was a writer for the Stars and Stripes military newspaper. He also was under Ike Eisenhower’s command, one of his top men. and a friend. I saw many pictures of him and Ike together. Robert did not write about politics, but he did write about life in the Villages, war stories, golfing. He worked as a PR man at a large Golf Cart manufacturer.
He wrote for us for probably four or five years. He was an avid golfer, really loved the game. He called me one day and said I want you to do me a favor, I said OK. He started with I went to the doctor last month and have been going back two and three times a week ever since. The Doctor says I have cancer and need an operation to extend my life, but I would never be able to play golf again. The operation might give me another year. He said I’m not going to do that. So what I want from you is let me do two and three story per month and you put run one and put two of them in a file and run them after I’m gone. I was in shock. He said I don’t want to tell anyone, let’s just do this. I’ll play golf as long as I can and write. We did just that. Robert played golf for six or seven months, wrote three story per month, on the eighth month I received notification that he had passed away.
The last story wrote he said to me…You can tell the story if I wanted too. I ran his stories for a year all unseen unread stories from my file. Then I picked out some of my favorite stories from the past and ran them for another year.
It made me feel special that he would as me and trust me with his stories.
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We have been advertising a cart in our papers. It’s called the CLAX not sure what the named means. I received one ands it is really handy. It was easy to put together I assembled it in minutes.. I pushed one button and it opened up to a cart. It’s very light and is very handy. I have used for laundry, carrying newspapers, outdoor market shopping, carrying things. When you are through using it push one button and it folds up into nothing . You should really take a look at this cart.
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Famous people I have met… Actually when I was very young a hundred years ago…I grew up about three blocks from the Barefoot Artist. We ran around together as kids. His name was Harry Guy LaBree and he hardly ever wore shoes. They sent him home one day for not wearing shoes. He had holes in his means (hand me down) Long hair before any of the other kids in school. I went snake hunting and alligator watching before there were laws about catching alligators. One day my new bicycle got stolen while Harry and I were sneaking up on alligators. Harry said thats why I don’t have a new bike. They don’t get stolen as often.
Harry became friend with some of the Seminole Indians in Dania Elementary School where he went to school and lived. He would later visited the reservation in Hollywood Florida. We went to school with the seminole Indian students 1 thru eighth. Jimmy Jumper / One of the Osceolas, Tank Bowers, Judy Osceola, Princess Pracila Doctor. Harry was always drawing people, faces, animals and etc. Later in life he would become the Artist hired to do a lot of the tribal artistry. He hand painted the chief and the trial leaders.
I tracked him down and called him on the phone. We talked for a long time, he lived near a swamp. He had a mobile home tucked in behind a Cypress head. He had his same wife, his girlfriend from middle school. He quit school early and worked some jobs. He decided to go to Australia. They were advertising great opportunity and the wild country intrigued him. He said that was an adventure but he was promised a job that did was not real. He found another job and worked their way back to the states.
He past away a few years ago but he left some fond memories for me. I have a lot of stories about him but I say Google him he was a great artist! Harry Guy LaBree The Barefoot Artist. A childhood friend from Dania Fl.
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Our country is in great turmoil, I believe it is being created first and mostly the blame is China, but our supreme United States of america Law Enforcement Agencies have been caught spying on the President of the not so United States. Our country was founded as “WE THE PEOPLE!” It time once again WE THBE PEOPLE rise up and vote down Communism / Socialism. There are a couple of people in the world that want to take our country into socialism so they can gain control of us. There a couple of countries that want to take us over from within. We must not let that happen.
It was interesting fishing talk one day not to long ago. The sitting next to me while fishing and talking he explained he did not like Trump, he was a life long Democrat. He is now a Republican and he said he will vote for Trump because in his estimation he is the one that can straighten it out. He said he served his country and never thought he would see his party let him down. I said thank you for serving and thank you for sharing your story!
