Chris Cate: Welcome to the Fluent In Floridian Podcast, featuring the sunshine’s state brightest leaders talking about the issues most important to the people in Florida and its millions of weekly visitors. In this episode created by SalterMitchell PR, our Executive Produce Heidi Otway, the president of SalterMitchell PR talks to David Lawrence, former publisher of the Miami Herald and current chair of the Children’s Movement of Florida.

Heidi Otway: So David, thank you so much for joining us for this episode of the Fluent in Floridian Podcast. I’m so thrilled to have you on the show today.

David Lawrence: It’s great to be part of it.

Heidi Otway: You’re not a native Floridian in the sense of being born and raised in Florida. You grew up in the Upstate New York area. Tell us about your childhood.

David Lawrence: I come from a strong Irish, Roman Catholic family. One of nine children. I’m the second oldest of nine, and eight are still on this side of the planet earth. My father was a newspaperman. In fact, the House Press Gallery in Tallahassee is named for my father. I went into the newspaper business because I so loved and admired my father. At the end of World War II, my mother and father had five children at that time. They were romantics, in the very best sense of the world. They had read a book called The Egg and I, which was very, very popular. Sort of a comic treatment of a city couple going to the farm, and they were very much New York and Long Island people. So for not much more than $3,000, working from a reality catalog, they bought 33 and a half acres in way Upstate New York in the cold country where the lake effect off of Lake Ontario can produce three or four of snow in 24 hours. I’m talking about drifts.

David Lawrence: I lived there from the time I was six until I was 14. I came from a generation where at age 10, I was driving a tractor. You were expected to work hard. We all, the whole family sat around the dinner table, and my father would quiz us on government and politics, and woe upon you if you didn’t know who the governor was or who the senators were. You were expected to know these kinds of things and what was going on. We had two newspapers in a very rural part of the state; two newspapers came to the home every day. Three on Sunday. The books we got… The presents we got for Christmas and Easter and so forth and birthdays were mostly books. I was the kind of child, as were my siblings, who when we got the World Book Encyclopedia, all 21 volumes, I would sit there and turn it page by page because it was sort of fun learning about things I had never about or didn’t know almost anything about.

Heidi Otway: Yeah.

David Lawrence: When I was 14, and in the eighth grade, we ended up moving to Florida. One, the farm wasn’t doing great, and number two, my mother had Raynaud’s disease, a disease that hits your extremities, and cold is terrible for it. The doctor said, “You really should not be living in this kind of climate,” so we moved to Florida. And my father, for eight years a chicken farmer, started all over again and ended up going back in the newspaper business. I went to high school in Manatee County, Manatee High in Bradenton. It was a white school. There were totally black and totally white schools at that time. Though the Supreme Court decision had occurred two years earlier in 1954, it really hadn’t made much of an impact in most of the south, and Manatee County was certainly the south. Then I was the kind of child… We were all told you’re supposed to make something special of yourself. You’re supposed to give to others. You’re supposed, to tell the truth. You’re supposed to try to be fair, and you’re supposed to stretch yourself. You can see almost anything in this world.

David Lawrence: So, for instance, in 1960, I’m a senior in high school. Two people are running for president; one’s named Richard Nixon, one’s John Fitzgerald Kennedy. So I invited them to my high school graduation. Now, there are two parts to this story. Part one is they didn’t come. Part two is here all these years later, 60 years later, I still have a letter from Nixon saying, “Sorry, I can’t be there.” And I have an autographed copy of Profiles in Courage by John Fitzgerald Kennedy. So take a risk, try some things, you’ll stun yourself with what’s possible.

Heidi Otway: So, David, I had the opportunity to read your book, and a lot of what I took away from your book is that you took a lot of risks to live your fullest life and do the things you wanted to do for you and your family. Can you talk about that? Who installed in you the belief, yes, you should take a risk?

David Lawrence: I had extraordinary parents. Boy, were they, good people. Boy, did they work hard. Boy, did they have great human values. So there were great expectations for all of us. We end up moving to Florida; frankly, we didn’t have a lot of money, yet all nine children were graduated from either Florida or Florida State. We weren’t going to Dartmouth or Yale or Stanford. Those were way outside our wherewithal, beginning with financial means. But we were expected to make something of ourselves. That’s how I got started. Here our parents, who themselves took a big risk. My mother was in the New York Social Register, Mayflower Society. One of the scholarships I had to college was from the Colonial Dames of America. You had to trace your lineage I think either 10 or 11 generations in this country. So it was a lot of history and things to live up to and so forth.

David Lawrence: Here are people who, boy, they could have stayed on Long Island and raised all these children and had a good life and go sailing and crabbing and whatever else. And they say, “Nah, what would be good for our family, for the children to grow up on the farm. Then they’d learn what was important in this world.”

Heidi Otway: What was the important thing for you all to learn?

David Lawrence: To stretch ourselves.

Heidi Otway: Yeah.

David Lawrence: And frankly, simply to learn. I can vividly remember my own parents having discussions about issues that children wouldn’t usually hear about. I can remember my father talking about Douglas MacArthur being relieved from command by Harry Truman and my father’s sense that MacArthur was too big for his britches. I can remember my parents were Republicans, and Republicans in that day were maybe a good deal different from what many are today. I can remember in 1948 in the midst of eviscerating chickens, and we all participated in this all the way down to children who were five years old. I was six years old… Maybe four years old. I was six years old in 1948, and I can remember my parents weeping in November of 1948 that Thomas Dewey, who was expected to be president, had lost the election to Harry Truman. So all of this about government and politics, these were really important issues. We were told you need to participate in this republic.

Heidi Otway: At a young age.

David Lawrence: At a very young age.

Heidi Otway: And you all had to work too at a very young age.

David Lawrence: Yeah, but we never, at least in my memory, we never resented it.

Heidi Otway: Right.

David Lawrence: We also got to play a lot. I can remember playing. We had enough people in the family who could play softball and have a pretty darn good full team within our own family. We went to school on a school bus. We lived on a dirt road, so school was nowhere near next door.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. And that was the same when you moved to Florida? When you moved to Florida, did you all live… Tell me about it.

David Lawrence: We lived down another dirt road.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. That’s what I recall.

David Lawrence: We were clearly big dirt road people, but there was never any sense of our poor.

Heidi Otway: Yeah.

David Lawrence: And no one ever went hungry in our home. Of course, if you had a big garden which we did, there was plenty of food. But my mother never drove in her whole life. I can remember her when we lived in Bradenton; I can remember her walking to the grocery store, which was six miles away.

Heidi Otway: Wow.

David Lawrence: I was walking there. My father was working all day newspapering in Sarasota, and my mother went grocery shopping. There wasn’t a sizeable grocery store near us, so she would walk six miles into Bradenton to get groceries and carry them back. It sounds pretty strange now, but it was the real world for us. I don’t remember any life of resentment of any of this.

Heidi Otway: Let’s talk about when you finished high school in Florida and your desire to be like your dad, who was a very well known and respected journalist. Tell us about your transition to being a college student to a journalist.

David Lawrence: Well, I was so eager to be a newspaperman. We wouldn’t have used the word journalist in that era. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to go to college, and my father said, “Well, this would be beyond stupid for you not to go to college.” He, of course, was a college graduate himself. My mother was not, though she was extremely intelligent. So it was we were going to chose between FSU and the University of Florida. The University of Florida is now the seventh-ranked public university in the United States of America. It wasn’t seventh, and I’m not even sure it was 70th. You basically had to have a high school degree and not much more form a Florida high school in order to be admitted into the University of Florida, and so I was. I didn’t know anything about going away from home, et. cetera. My sister had gone before me and was clearly doing well, and she was always a more diligent student than I was.

David Lawrence: I did have a good time at the University of Florida. I did learn some things. I met a lot of interesting people. I was the editor of the student newspaper. I was the first student newspaper editor ever fired at the University of Florida. I played a lot of pool. I belonged to a fraternity.

Heidi Otway: Tell our listeners about why you were fired for those who may not have read your book. I read it and so I kind of know, but that would be great.

David Lawrence: Well, there were a bunch of things. Remember, this was a very different time in Florida and things that we see as so natural and right now were seen as pretty radical. I can remember when the Americans for Democratic Action was thought by a lot of people, “boy, this is awful close to communism.” Of course, it wasn’t anywhere close to communism. They weren’t interested in rabble-rousers. At my time, the president of the University of Florida was J. Wayne Reitz, for whom the student union has been named for decades now. A good man, but he wasn’t looking for troublemakers. I had done several things that were troubling to him and to others, including the initiation of a weekly common from the state NAACP. Well, this was seen as a radical act. Then there was that letter to the editor that advocated free love. I mean, sure I knew what free love was, but somebody had written a letter, and so I ran it in the newspaper. Well, that caused a crisis. There were a number of things that really upset people.

David Lawrence: It was interesting, years later I have a lot of respect for J. Wayne Reitz, in fact, I have enormous respect for his daughter Marjorie Turnbull is a very significant citizen in Florida and served several terms in the state legislature. So the family was a very good family, but J. Wayne Reitz just didn’t need troublemakers or his version of troublemakers. Years later, I am named a distinguished alumnus. I think it was in the early ’80s and at that time, I was at the Detroit Free Press, and I would have either been executive editor or publisher. I’m not sure which at that point. When I was honored, along with two or three other people, J. Wayne Reitz gets up in the audience and says, “I always knew that he would amount to something.” Well, he was the guy that had gotten me fired. I’m not suggesting that he was dishonorable or dishonest in any way, because he wasn’t, but we have our own perspectives of history and certainly, as time goes by. I do take some joy, if I can be pardoned this, in being the only fired Alligator Editor that has an honorary doctorate from the university, which I love and respect and have raised a good deal of money for.

David Lawrence: I think people are blessed to be able to go to places like Florida and Florida State and so forth. I’m now on the board of another state university. Indeed, when our family moved to Florida, there were three state universities. There are now 12. One was Florida, another was FSU, both of whom admitted only white folks. And a third one that admitted only black folks, Florida A&M. Well, I’m now on the board of Florida A&M, and to be honest about it, it’s my very favorite board. I love helping others make a difference and I fully understand why an HBCU is really important in so many people’s lives and futures.

Heidi Otway: Well, as a graduate of Florida A&M University, I think I shared this with you before, thank you for serving on the board. It’s truly making a difference. I want to go back to your time at the University of Florida and the honor of being the only fired editor of the Alligator and the term troublemaker at that time. What was your thinking when you were doing these things that folks considered radical for that time period? What were your motivations? What was your thinking in doing these things?

David Lawrence: Well, I think some people would say I wasn’t thinking. So I’m not sure how good at thinking I was. But the fact that young people are a bit obstreperous, unruly, et. cetera shouldn’t surprise anybody. It’s happened throughout history, and it’s good for renewing the soil, as it were. There were several editors who were fired subsequent to me, and ultimately the university decided, my gosh, we don’t need this stuff. So that’s how the Independent Florida Alligator comes to be an off-campus publication. The political climate at that time was quite extraordinary. We had the Johns Committee, named for a state senator named Charlie Johns, which was determined in the late ’50s to make sure we didn’t have homosexuals and communists in the state universities. Well, the idiocy and the evil of that ended up destroying lots of professorial and other lives. In fact, it was evil itself by people who were sure they weren’t evil and only trying to be “American.”

David Lawrence: Well, it wasn’t American at all. Some people are very courageous, some not so courageous, but there were people that stood up and said, “This is wrong.” And there were people who paid an enormous penalty for standing up and speaking to what is, in fact, right and decent.

Heidi Otway: Right. You know, in your book, you talk a lot about fairness, and I want to talk a little bit about your role in journalism, and what do you think if you were to look back at your lasting legacy as a newspaperman? The Miami Herald won five Pulitzer Prizes during your tenure. You turned around the newspaper up in Philadelphia. What do you feel like, wow, that’s the one thing that I felt was like that I did in the realm of fairness and decency and delivering the news accurately and truthfully?

David Lawrence: Well, a lot of people really don’t want to be fair and my mantra, as you will, was, is this fair? Even bad people deserve fairness. I’m not telling you that they deserve more than that, but they deserve at least fairness. I also all my life have believed in redemption. I have visited no few number of people in prison. You do something wrong in this world; you get punished. What so frequently happens is then people step on your neck. That isn’t how I approach the world. I, for instance, am deeply upset that the amendment that I most wanted to pass, Amendment 4, which restored the rights of people who had paid the price in prison, has been trifled with, meddled with, minimized by all sorts of folks including in the legislature. Most certainly in the legislature, two-thirds of people voted that rights ought to be restored for people that had completed their terms. A simple matter of decency, fairness, justice, and redemption ought to have been quite simple for folks to say, “Oh, okay, now they can vote and do other things.”

David Lawrence: It is unhealthy for this country, for people to live without hope and there are an enormous number of people who live without hope. That’s dangerous for this country. Then you add to this, I’m not a left-winger, I’m a centrist. You add to that we have an enormous problem of inequity in this country. I know people get uptight about the words white privilege, et. cetera, but to be honest, I’ve had some “privilege” that I wouldn’t have if I were a person of color, et. cetera. I’m not running this out the window. I’m simply telling you a matter of fairness would say we need to overcome some things. One of the things we need to overcome is racism. I’ve been to 56 countries. I’ve never been in a country that didn’t have a problem with racism, but it’s not the same everywhere, and so in the Democratic Republic of Congo is different from Haiti is different from Bangladesh is different from Malaysia is different Guatemala is different from Argentina, and the list goes on and on. All of those places I have been.

David Lawrence: I’m not telling you it is the same as what we experience in the United States, but we will never conquer racism, we’ll never minimize it as much as we need to unless we confront ourselves. And if I told you that I knew what it’s like to be black or transgender or gay or a woman, you should say, “God, this guy is dangerous. He doesn’t even know himself.” So my lifelong struggle is to learn about other people, to respect differences, learn about differences cultural and otherwise. I have long said to people; I think a great test for any of us is, whom did you have in your home in the last six months? People still are most comfortable with people like themselves.

Heidi Otway: Right.

David Lawrence: Well, here we got a country of 330,000,000 people, boy we need to figure out how we get along with, respect, celebrate other people. By the year 2045, I read just two days ago, what we call minorities in this country will be in the majority. We need to get with it and find out what we can do together. Of course, I won’t be political, but we’re not being helped a whole bunch on that subject from Washington these days.

Heidi Otway: Yeah.

David Lawrence: We’re being divided more and more. I’m more troubled by this country than I ever have been.

Heidi Otway: You worked as a newspaperman, and we have the rise of social media, do you think that that platform has strengthened or created this divide in America right now? What are your thoughts on that?

David Lawrence: I certainly think it has significantly aided and abetted it. I like the internet myself. I do have a Twitter account. I have 25,000 plus friends on Facebook. I like to look at Facebook. I started because I wanted to see more pictures of grandchildren and children and so forth, but now I see lots of things about other people I know, so I like all of that. I learn things from Facebook and other places. I look at websites every day. Twice a day, I get things from Politico. I look at the Washington Post online. I look at the Wall Street Journal online. We get The Times. We get the Miami Herald. I got lots of sources, so that’s the positive of it all. And no really intelligent or informed person could get all that they need from one resource, one source. But I also see a lot of things that are fake and sometimes in ways they’re simply awful.

David Lawrence: There’s a new book called Antisocial by Andrew Marantz, and it’s all about clicks and C-L-I-C-K-S, and what people do to get more clicks and how some of it not just reckless, not just hurtful, but deliberately cruel to other human beings. And some of the bad stuff is actually very sophisticated, and unless you were an informed consumer, you wouldn’t even know that it was wrong.

Heidi Otway: Right. So does that, based on what you’re saying, do you think folks should start reading again? I remember the first time I met you in person you asked me, “What books have I read?” And I was so taken aback, and I think I shared with you I was reading like three business books. And you said, “No, what are you reading for fun?” It really got me because I had not read in such a long time. I still remember that conversation, and I’ve talked to other people who’ve met you, and they’ve said the same thing about reading. Tell me, how did that come about where you ask people that question? Is it to get us to read more? Do you think that changes our perceptions and understanding of cultures and people?

David Lawrence: First of all, I think there’s a joy in learning.

Heidi Otway: Yes.

David Lawrence: And as you’re “getting ahead” in this world you got ladders to climb, rungs on the ladders to climb and okay, that’s all fine but there are going to come points in this world where you’re not going to have the next rungs on the ladder and so forth, so there ought to be a lifelong joy in all of that.

Heidi Otway: Right.

David Lawrence: There’s a lifelong joy and frankly great value in building relationships. One of the ways you build relationships is you have more things to talk about. And if this is true, if two-thirds of millennials had never heard of Auschwitz, wow, that’s scary for the future of the world. So I do a book group in my home for people who are in their 20’s and 30’s. There are about 25 people who come every four to six Sundays, and I ask one person to lead a book discussion. I give them three books that I have read before, you chose one of the three. And they’re just people who are going to do wonderful things in the world. But on the other hand I also tell you that I was talking to a student at a very prominent high school here in the IB program and I asked him how many people there were in the U.S. House of Representatives, well he guessed about 50. Then I said, “Well, how many senators does Florida have?” And he first guessed one and then he guessed three.

Heidi Otway: Oh my goodness.

David Lawrence: That is deeply worrisome to me, and this is not some person from up an impoverished home who is so focused on other things, can’t afford a book or whatever else. This is a person from a family who can afford books and is a good human being. He subsequently got a book from me. So I frequently give away books. And anyone can set a quota. If I can read one or two books a week and I read no less than one or two books a week, and I have a full life besides that, anyone can read a book a month.

Heidi Otway: Right.

David Lawrence: And I’m not counting business books. I’m not counting self-help books.

Heidi Otway: Yes.

David Lawrence: There’s not real books to me.

Heidi Otway: Right.

David Lawrence: Real books are history, biographies, great fiction, and so forth. It’s one of the joys of my life. I go walking four days a week and for about 80 minutes each time. Number one, I get somewhere around 9,000 or 10,000 steps in, and number 10, I’m listening to a book.

Heidi Otway: Yeah.

David Lawrence: Then I’m separately reading on my Kindle another book. Then I’m buying the book as well because I like to be surrounded by books.

Heidi Otway: Right. Then you have the book club.

David Lawrence: Right.

Heidi Otway: I love that idea because, again, it’s an opportunity for people to talk to other people of different cultures, ages, genders, and conversations.

David Lawrence: Yeah, and this is a group of people who represent, reflect the rainbow of America. Different faiths, different colors, different ways of looking at the world. it’s a privilege to be part of this, and it’s now been going on for seven or eight years.

Heidi Otway: When you ask people to come, is there a sense of fear? Because I think sometimes people are afraid to have a conversation with someone who may not look that same color or may not be the same gender or may not be the same age. Do you see this as a way to conduce that?

David Lawrence: I did not start this group.

Heidi Otway: No? Oh.

David Lawrence: In fact, I was invited to a young person’s book club, and there were five or six people would come, and they asked me if I would come and discuss the book, et. cetera. Well, I came a couple of times, and they were really selecting if you pardon this, bad books. Not good books. So I said, “I’ll tell you what, I’ll host it at my own home, but you got to let me pick the books.” And then I have somebody bring white wine, and somebody brings dessert, and I bring carrots, celery, and stuff. And for two hours, and the mark of the group is everyone has to participate. I don’t want to folks sort of sitting on the sideline. The book club is now such an honored compelling ticket, as it were, that the only way you can get into that group now is you have to read three books that I assign and then come to me and talk about the three books.

Heidi Otway: Wow.

David Lawrence: Now, why do I do that? I do that because if you… My father used to say talk is cheap, and it’s easy enough to say, “I’d love to be in the book club.” Well then show me you want to be in the book group.

Heidi Otway: Right. How bad do you want it?

David Lawrence: They’re wonderful people in this group. I like them all.

Heidi Otway: I love that. I love that, and I hope some of our listeners decide to do something similar if they’re not doing it already.

David Lawrence: Yeah, and my wife and I both belong to another book group that I co-chair now: people my age and people of a different standing and experience in life, et. cetera. It’s just fun to be with people to talk about books. Now, I mentor a couple of young people. One I’ve mentored for four-plus years who has been shot twice, that is on two different occasions he’s actually been shot three times.

Heidi Otway: Oh my God.

David Lawrence: He’s a wonderful young man. I think he’s going to do very well in this world, but he had decided he wanted to be a sports star, particularly in the NBAs, quite athletic, but I doubted he was going to be in the NBA. And I told him about going to a White House State Dinner. You’re beautifully dressed. Your spouse is at another table, and I said, “You’re seated between a famous author and a famous United States senator. What the hell are you going to talk about?”

Heidi Otway: Yeah.

David Lawrence: Because they’ve never heard of Lebron James, you need to know more things to build stronger relationships with other people.

Heidi Otway: That’s amazing advice. I think I’m going to share that with my children when I get home.

David Lawrence: Good.

Heidi Otway: We David, we did talk a little bit about your transition. You transitioned from being a newspaperman, a publisher of the Miami Herald into the Children’s Movement. And I know that for a lot of younger people, that’s why they primarily know you for. Talk a little bit about what’s happening now with the Children’s Movement and what direction you’re taking it.

David Lawrence: Okay, so I get into it first because Lawton Chiles asked me to chair a statewide task force on school readiness, and though I had five children I had never heard of this subject. I didn’t know that brain growth is 85% done at age three. I didn’t know that if you have 100 children at the end of the first grade who are lousy readers, that at the end of fourth grade, 88 still of them are still lousy readers. I didn’t know that 40% of fourth graders still can not read at minimally proficient levels. I didn’t know all this. And the two years work while I was still publisher of the Miami Herald on this led me to believe that the very future of the United States of America depends on children getting off to a good start in life and then school. And I certainly didn’t know one other fact, which is three out of four, this is so startling that some people need to look it up to get it confirmed, but three out of four young people ages 17 to 24 can not enter the American military. They have a substance abuse problem, a criminal justice problem, an academic problem, or a physical challenge.

David Lawrence: Well that’s worrisome for the future of the country. So I’ve always been idealistic and optimistic, sometimes naïve. I went to journalism because I wanted to make some difference in this world. I went into this because I wanted to make some difference in this world. To be honest, I’ve never known how to relax. I regret that I don’t know how to relax. I know how to have fun. I know how to have joy. But if you ask me, am I happy, I’m sort of bothered by the question. Are there moments when I feel real joy and even exhilaration? Yes. But are there moments when I am fully at peace? I don’t think I’ve found it yet. And I’m not saving my energy for the next world.

Heidi Otway: Yeah.

David Lawrence: So whatever I’ve got I’m going to use up. So I decide after a couple of years of work on this, I decide for two reasons that I will “retire.” One of the reasons was this subject really interested, and I took my understandings of history and building a movement, and a movement by definition is about everyone. The Civil Rights movement is about everyone. It’s not a certain set of people. It was about all of us and the American sense of equity. So part of it was the lessons of history, my sense of what America needed in the time to come, and the second part of this had to do with you could even then see the signs of the newspaper business in trouble. I did not realize at the time, but I had lived and worked in the golden age of journalism, but I didn’t know it at the time. I now know it, but the paper was owned by Knight-Ridder, which a big public company. And since the business wasn’t going and you needed to remain significantly profitable, then you cut expenses. What’s the most expensive thing? Well, it’s people.

Heidi Otway: It’s the people.

David Lawrence: And you’re sort of eating your seed corn. So I think there are lots of good people that remain in newspapers and journalism, but I think the evisceration of the American newspaper business is pretty awful news for the republic and nothing seems to be replacing it. People now think this is painful to me; they get two things on the iPhone they sort of know what’s happening. And that ain’t enough.

Heidi Otway: So in the Children’s Movement, what do you all move? What’s your big push right now with the Children’s Movement?

David Lawrence: Well the big push at the Children’s Movement right now, there are several of them, but I’ll give you a couple off the top. One is to get pre-K to be of a much higher quality everywhere in the state of Florida. There are 6,000 providers of voluntary pre-kindergarten for four years olds. Many, many of them are really high quality. Some of them are okay. And some of them are not okay. And everything ought to be okay and preferably much better than okay.

Heidi Otway: Right.

David Lawrence: You only get really quality outcomes by having really quality programs, so that’s part of it. Legislation now moves very significantly, led by Senator Gayle Harrell, steward and Representative Aaron Groll of Vero Beach and Vance Aloupis of Miami and Palmetto Bay. But I would also tell you that Vance Aloupis who came to work with me ten years ago, is now a Republican state representative and a very significant one and is also carrying much of the water on this legislation. But he’s also the CEO of the Children’s Movement. He’s a remarkable human being with a remarkable future. One of the issues is quality for pre-kindergarten.

David Lawrence: Another is involving more and more parents. One of my central theses is that if parents knew what to do, they would do it. Parents do love their children. Another area that I’m very optimistic about is building real relationships and understanding with the business committee. With having remarkable ties in the Children’s Movement, beginning with Mark Wilson in the Florida Chamber, which sees not only the moral imperative in all this work but understands that if you’re trying to build the workforce of 2030 or 2032 or whatever, boy you’d better start in these early years. So we are about building relationships throughout the business committee, throughout the state of Florida, and we’ve gotten remarkable help from lots of places. One that comes to mind is Publix, which is the state’s most important purveyor of groceries.

Heidi Otway: Yes.

David Lawrence: I’m a regular shopper there myself.

Heidi Otway: Me too. I love Publix.

David Lawrence: Carol Jenkins Barnett and her husband Barney are huge apostles, and their son Wesley are huge apostles of this, and in fact, Carol to me, is a sainted figure in this and has been for 30 plus years. There are lots of good people throughout this state who are now invested in this issue. That includes not only the Florida Chamber, but it includes the Florida Council of 100, it includes TaxWatch, et. cetera. It also includes places like Leadership, Florida. There are many folks signing up for this, and there is a burgeoning movement in Florida and frankly pockets of this all over the country. I do a lot of speaking around the country, so I can see this. I was in Greensboro in the last year or so. Wow, what a public-private partnership. I’ve seen it in Fresno, California, up close. I’ve seen it in Charlotte, North Carolina. I’ve seen it in Atlanta. I’ve seen it all throughout Florida. I think there’s much to be encouraged about on this topic.

Heidi Otway: That is so exciting to hear. You’ve done so much to really be a game-changer for the state of Florida and David, and I could ask you probably about 12 more questions, but we’re a little limited on time, so I really would like to take this time to ask the four questions that we ask of every guest that comes on our show, okay?

David Lawrence: Okay.

Heidi Otway: So the first question is, who is a Florida leader that you admire? It can be someone from any different industry or field, from the past or someone who is still active in their work.

David Lawrence: I’ll give you someone I admire and love deeply. I can give you a bunch of them, but one of them would be Dr. Pedro Jose Greer Jr. Who lives in South Florida, lives in Coral Gables. Who is the associate dean of community medicine at FIU. An extraordinary human being with as deep a soul as anyone I know and has about the best sense of humor of anyone I know with a great blend of both a Cuban and Irish heritage. Recipient of the Medal of Freedom. It doesn’t get any better than that, but the sort of doctor who himself bodies really listening to people in every corner of the community and teaching colleagues and doctors to be of the real value of respecting the people you serve.

Heidi Otway: I need to call him and ask him to be a guest on our Podcast. He sounds like an amazing person.

David Lawrence: Well, he would be spectacular. Pedro Gree is one of God’s best people as far as I’m concerned.

Heidi Otway: Oh, wonderful to hear. Our next question is: What is a person, place, or thing in Florida that deserves more attention than it’s currently getting?

David Lawrence: A person, place, or thing that deserves more attention. Well, I need to fall back on the absolute imperative of early learning. It is so crucial. You know if I’m uptight and nervous and insecure at times, I think that’s okay. In fact, I think it’s healthy. I like to be nervous a bit. But if a five or six years old has already decided, I can’t do this work, what an American tragedy that is. And then because each of us needs to express himself or herself, people act up and out. Then teachers decide who is a troublemaker. Children get triaged, sometimes rather than taught. The best thing you could do for public education reform in this country, and 90% of children still go to public school, the best thing you could do for public education reform in America deals specifically with getting children ready for all of this. Do the early years right. The years of crucial brain development and language development do those years right, and children will have a momentum all their lives.

Heidi Otway: I like how you frame that. It’s very simple. Do it right very early on. So the next question, what is your favorite Florida location to visit?

David Lawrence: Favorite Florida location to visit. Wow, I have been in every corner of Florida, and I love people. I love to be with people, and I see so much we have in common. I love the sense of the history of Florida. I love the sense that there are good people trying to bring people together. A political scientist would tell you we are five states.

Heidi Otway: Yeah.

David Lawrence: Miami is one of the five as a matter of fact.

Heidi Otway: Right, exactly.

David Lawrence: But we’re all in this together in this country. So I’ve worked as a newspaperman in Miami and West Palm Beach, St. Petersburg, and went to college in Gainesville. And two of our five children were born in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Heidi Otway: Your sister lives here in Tallahassee.

David Lawrence: More people in my family went to FSU than Florida, so I know Tallahassee very well. I serve on the board of FAMU, so I get to know it better. But I love to be in Pensacola and Panama City, in Key West and Sarasota and Fort Myers and Vero Beach, and the list just goes on and on. I can be up for any part of Florida.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. I feel the same way. I love Florida. And finally, do you have a favorite Florida sports team?

David Lawrence: I have one professional and one non-professional.

Heidi Otway: Okay.

David Lawrence: Okay, so I love the University of Florida, and I can root for a lot of things, but it would start with the University of Florida football.

Heidi Otway: Okay.

David Lawrence: And I grew up separately. I grew up in an era where baseball was the national game, and I was the kind of child who could read a box score for a half hour and imagine certain things, et. Cetera. So I would probably tell you the Miami Marlins would be my favorite professional team.

Heidi Otway: All right.

David Lawrence: But I can root for the Heat, I promise you. I can root for the Panthers, and I can root for all. I can root for the Dolphins. I can root for a lot of different things.

Heidi Otway: Well, you’re just an all-around Florida guy.

David Lawrence: Yeah, I am a Florida guy as a matter of fact and feel blessed to be here, and we’ll live the rest of our lives here.

Heidi Otway: Well David, thank you so much for being a guest on our Fluent in Floridian Podcast. I learned much more about you, and I definitely have a lot more admiration for who you are what you do to make Florida a better state to live, work, and play. So thank you for being our guest today.

David Lawrence: Thank you. It means a lot to be here. Thank you so much.

Chris Cate: Thanks for listening to the Fluent in Floridian Podcast. This show is executive produced by April Salter with additional support provided by Heidi Otway and the team at SalterMitchell PR. If you need help telling your Florida story, SalterMitchell PR has you covered by offering issues management, crisis communication, social media, advocacy, and media relations assistance. You can learn more about SalterMitchell PR at saltermitchellpr.com. You can also learn more about the Fluent in Floridian podcast and listen to every episode of the show at fluentinfloridian.com or by searching for the show using your favorite podcast app. Have a great day.