JANUARY
• The Broward Times becomes the South Florida Times, and expands its news coverage and distribution into Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties.
• Gwen Hankerson, chairperson of the African-American Research Library and Cultural Center’s Elder’s Council advisory board, organizes a group that successfully challenges the firing of the center’s former executive director, Alicia Antone.
• Miramar City Commissioner Fitzroy Salesman is removed from office for the second time in three years after being charged with pulling a gun on another customer in a grocery store.
• Broward Sheriff’s Office investigators and a prosecutor falsely claim that city of Deerfield Beach employee Wayne Adams is distributing child pornography over the Internet so they can obtain subpoenas for his cell phone and Internet activity records.
• Linda Horne and other workers at the North Broward Hospital in Pompano Beach are sent home after wearing Martin Luther King Jr. T-shirts to work on the MLK Day holiday.
FEBRUARY
• Deerfield Beach civic leader Theodore Roosevelt Mitchell Sr. dies at 83.
• Lois Wright and other residents of a low-income apartment complex in northwest Fort Lauderdale are quietly evicted with no relocation compensation after the city of Fort Lauderdale purchases their complex for redevelopment.
• A judge upholds a ruling that Broward County Commissioner Josephus Eggelletion does not have to make support payments to a woman with whom he fathered a child outside of his marriage.
• Lee Macon shoots and kills his next-door neighbor, Jerome Jackson, after Jackson confronts him about cutting grass on Jackson’s side of the property line between their Lauderhill homes.
• Charles Earle Boothe, founder of the Lauderhill-based chain Charlie’s Pastries, passes.
• Simmie Williams, who is believed to have been a male prostitute, is shot and killed on Sistrunk Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale.
MARCH
• James O. “Jim” Hill Sr., a retired Fort Lauderdale public administrator, publishes his book, The Emancipation of Eight Generations, which chronicles his ancestors’ history dating back to slavery.
• Miami Police Officer Rondal Brown is charged with allowing his K-9 police dog to starve to death.
• The Westside Gazette community newspaper bars white candidates from a political forum held at Broward County’s public African-American Research Library and Cultural Center.
• The Broward State Attorney’s Office opens an investigation into the Broward Black Elected Officials, Inc. organization, which spent most of the hundreds of thousands of dollars it raised in the name of scholarships on lavish parties. The investigation found no criminal wrongdoing.
APRIL
• The Rev. Gaston Smith, pastor of Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in Liberty City, is charged with one count of grand theft over his alleged pilfering of $10,000 from grant monies provided to the Friends of MLK, Inc., a non-profit organization he heads.
• Community advocate Margaret Haynie Birch, chairwoman of the Sistrunk Historical Festival, celebrates her 70th birthday.
• Percy Lee Campbell, now a 27-year-old felon, who was known as the infamous “crime boy” in the 1980s, is arrested after being caught with a stockpile of weapons and ammunition.
MAY
• Pompano Beach Community pioneer and City Commissioner E. Pat Larkins resigns his seat due to deteriorating health conditions.
• A judge sets a trial date in a lawsuit filed by Kevin Mitchell and other former board members of New Mount Olive Baptist Church in Fort Lauderdale. They allege that the church’s pastor, the Rev. Mack King Carter, and his wife took church funds for their own personal use without authorization.
• The Edison Park Elementary School Rooks win first-place in the national chess championships in Pittsburgh, PA.
• Daisy Black, former president of the Democratic Black Caucus of Florida, is elected vice chair of the Miami-Dade Democratic Executive Committee.
JUNE
• The Rev. W. J. Ford, pastor of Bethlehem Missionary Baptist Church in Deerfield Beach, holds a meeting to address the escalating crime in the city’s black neighborhoods.
• Christine Brown Jouini, a teacher at Center Academy in Coral Springs, is charged with having a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old student.
• Four men, including Broward Sheriff Office deputies Richard V. Tauber and Kevin D. Frankel, are charged with conspiracy to sell and distribute cocaine for what they thought was a Colombian drug cartel.
JULY
• Adrienne Laflamme, a 60-year-old teacher at the Brevard County Juvenile Detention Center in Cocoa, is charged with having sex with a 14-year-old and a 15-year-old boy.
• A teacher’s union calls for the ouster of then-Miami-Dade County Schools Superintendent Rudy Crew over stalled contract negotiations.
• The Rev. John F. White, pastor of Mount Hermon A.M.E. Church in Fort Lauderdale, is appointed bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal church organization.
• City of Wilton Manors’ Community Services Department Ann Barnes is suspended after distributing a racist email from city hall. She was named in a racial discrimination complaint in an unrelated matter by her department’s only black employee, Lisa Wiggins.
• Evergreen Missionary Baptist Church, in Fort Lauderdale faces a foreclosure lawsuit and Internal Revenue Service liens.
AUGUST
• Leola McCoy, the northwest Fort Lauderdale environmental activist and community advocate, passes.
• More than a dozen employees at Broward County’s water and waste water treatment plant in Pompano Beach file discrimination complaints.
• Veta Mae Peterman, 90, the Dania Beach educator and community activist, is laid to rest.
• The South Florida Times wins three, first-place awards in the South Florida Black Journalists Association’s contest.
• Justin Lloyd Sharp, 18, of Palm Beach Gardens, is charged with possessing child pornography and molesting the family dog.
• Lois Brady Howell, the longtime civic advocate in the central Broward communities, dies.
SEPTEMBER
• Arthur Robinson, 46, is shot to death as he sits on his porch in northwest Fort Lauderdale.
• The Rev. Mack King Carter, pastor of New Mount Olive Baptist Church in Fort Lauderdale, announces plans to retire in June 2009.
• Henry and Andrea Bonner, along with their children, are evicted from the temporary home a city of Fort Lauderdale housing program rented for them after the Bonners refuse to accept new terms to have their old home, which the program demolished in 2005, rebuilt.
• The Rev. Dr. O’Neal Dozier, pastor of the Worldwide Christian Center in Pompano Beach, publishes his book, Who's On The Lord's Side Politically.
OCTOBER
• John Green, a former official with the Fort Lauderdale branch of the NAACP, and his wife file complaints after Broward Sheriff’s Office deputies enter their home with guns drawn, looking for their grandson, who once lived there. The grandson was wanted for not making payments on car rims he rented.
• Deerfield Beach resident Steven Feagan, a former high school and collegiate football standout, is arrested after DNA tests link him to rapes in South Florida, and in Illinois, where he attended college.
NOVEMBER
• Albert R. McWhite Sr., a community leader and owner of McWhite’s Funeral Home in Lauderhill, along with his son and daughter, are arrested and beaten by Fort Lauderdale police.
• Rupert A. Thompson, 32, and his nephew, Kenron M. Thompson, 18, are arrested on child neglect charges after police find children in their Fort Pierce home, living in squalor.
• Teah Wimberly, a 15-year-old Dillard High School student, is charged with murder after shooting her longtime friend, Amanda Collette, in school after Collette reportedly rejected Wimberly’s sexual advances.
DECEMBER
• William Douglas is arrested after writing nearly $1 million in bad personal checks for goods or services, including a down payment on a luxury home.
• Deerfield Beach Mayor Al Capellini and City Commissioner Steve Gonot are arrested in separate, unrelated incidents, and charged with public corruption crimes.
Happy and Healthy New Year!
EJones@SFLTimes.com
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