- November 17, 2024
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One of my favorite memories associated with Carl Laundrie, who retired this week after 27 years at the News-Journal and then the past 11 years as the Flagler County communications manager, is a memory when he was actually not in the room.
It was in August 2013, right after he had nearly died: He had a seizure that caused him to steer his Ford Escape into a retention pond near the Emergency Operations Center. Thanks to the brave efforts of five county employees, he was pulled out of the pond and recovered completely.
Days later, our office passed around a card to wish him well, and when it got to me, I couldn’t help but notice the irony of the cartoon-style picture on the inside of the card: It was a view from under the surface of the water, with and some kind of pun about fish or frogs.
For a second, I questioned whether we should really send the card. Obviously whoever bought the card hadn’t realized that we were sending it to someone who nearly drowned? But then I remembered to whom we were sending the card, and suddenly it seemed perfect. Carl is someone who loves to laugh, and if no one else is telling jokes, he’s more than happy to tell a joke on himself. The next time I saw him, he was laughing about his “wrong turn” into the pond. In fact, for his retirement, he was given a sign that is now at his house, but he said it could someday end up at the scene of the accident; it says, “Lake Laundrie.”
To honor Carl for his decades of community involvement and service, I also asked for some stories from his son, Carl William Laundrie III, or as his friends call him, Willy. Now 36 years old, Willy had a different perspective on the crash. He said his father is so frugal and was such a good mechanic that he always drove cars that were paid off.
“My mom (Wanda Laundrie) and dad didn’t buy their first brand new car until I was 30,” Willy said. “I think they hated car payments so much that Dad intentionally drove into that retention pond.”
Carl laughed about that too, but, being a former newspaper editor, he had to set the record straight. The Escape was brand new when he bought it in 1998, but it was paid off, or close to it, by the time it was crashed. The replacement for the Escape? Carl bought his next car from Willy, in cash. No payments.
“He doesn’t have to have something that’s brand new,” Willy said. “He’s happy being who he is. Not a lot of people are like that in today’s society: It’s about what you have. And with my parents, it’s not about that. It’s about good relationships and good friends and family.”
Harmless, but smart as can be
Carl Laundrie was one of the first people I met when I moved to Palm Coast in 2010 to help launch the Observer. He brought me into his office and gave me a whirlwind tour of the county offices. Little did I know that this was the guy who knew everything, the guy who for decades had written a slice-of-life newspaper column called “This Week,” a column that County Commissioner Frank Meeker later told me he always loved to read, even though Meeker didn’t understand everything in it when he first moved here from the north. “Crackers, up in Wisconsin, are things that you eat with cheese,” Meeker said.
Carl has salt-and-pepper hair and a full beard and is not one for pleasantries. He usually answers the phone by saying only two words: “Communications, Carl.” He is also not one for fancy clothes or gadgets; as his son points out, “He’s probably one of the only (public information officers) who still had a flip phone.”
Meeker said Carl Laundrie’s unassuming demeanor reminds him of Peter Falk playing Columbo. “The thing about Columbo was he looked harmless, but he was as smart as he could be,” Meeker said.
One of the reasons behind his no-nonsense work ethic is that he has been through it all before. Whereas today, setting legislative priorities is an exercise in formality, with officials visiting from Tallahassee and local officials meeting in the Government Services Building, one of the first legislative priorities meetings he covered took place at the parking lot of Charlie T’s truck stop. Flagler County’s Lewis Wadsworth came prepared only with some notes on a pad. Carl was the only other person in attendance.
When I asked three commissioners (Meeker, Barbara Revels and Nate McLaughlin) about Carl’s impact on the community, they all said he provided invaluable historical perspective because he had been there to experience it all.
“At town hall meetings, you can’t take enough documents with you, and there could be a citizen there to ask you a question,” Revels said, “and (Carl) can keep a commissioner from stepping in a pot of doo. ‘In 1982, they did this because of this.’ And he’s usually spot on with that information. He’s a huge assistant in keeping things correct, so commissioners and other staff members can move forward with the proper knowledge.”
‘Within reach of everyone’
Willy Laundrie told me a story about coming home from school one day and finding an unusual sight: There, in front of his family’s house, on John Anderson Drive, was a fire truck. The only way to the beach side in those days was a drawbridge over the Intracoastal Waterway, and the bridge was being repaired. So the Flagler Beach Fire Department kept a fire truck at the Laundrie home, in case there was a fire on the west side of town.
Why? Because Carl was a volunteer firefighter for more than a dozen years — all while he was a reporter and bureau chief. In fact, by the time he resigned in about 1993, he had risen to the rank of assistant chief at the Fire Department. Not a typical hobby for a journalist, but it was just one of the many ways Carl was fully embedded into the community.
One philosophy in the news business is that you need to keep professional distance from the sources so that you don’t compromise your objectivity. Another school of thought is that you should get as involved as possible to know what really matters to the community. Carl subscribed to the latter view. In addition to being a firefighter, he has been a long-time member of Rotary, volunteered with beach cleanups, organized the annual Creekside Festival, helped McLaughlin with Pinewood Derbies, played guitar for his church (Flagler Beach United Methodist Church) every week, participated in mentorship programs and Chamber of Commerce activities.
And he was heavily involved all while managing three full-time reporters and 25 correspondents as the bureau chief, a job that kept him so busy that he described it to me as “an octopus, with lots of tentacles.” He worked a lot of hours, covering government meetings and elections after dinner, because he was passionate about the community.
He said Flagler County was so small when he first moved here in 1978 — about 5,000 residents — that he had no choice but to be involved. “You’re among them,” he said. “Even if you didn’t join organizations that you felt mattered, you would still be within reach of everyone in the community.” He said the Flagler Palm Coast High School graduating class that included his daughter Tara was just 65 students. On Friday nights, he said, “you would go to the football stadium, and you’d know everyone in the stadium.”
Carl taught me the saying that a community newspaper should print a picture of every resident once a year. It’s an impossible goal, but it has been helpful to me as a way to think about how we can make the Palm Coast Observer’s slogan come to life: You. Your Neighbors. Your Neighborhood.
There is a lot of doom and gloom surrounding the newspaper world because the Internet is gobbling up more and more of the advertising revenue. But community newspapers will always survive, according to Carl. Where else can you get reports of birthday parties and government meetings and Little League games?
“If print doesn’t do it, who’s going to do it?” he said. “Who’s going to be there?”
‘A lifestyle’
Now 67, Carl plans to take it easy for a while in his retirement. He told Willy his agenda for his first day off was simple: “absolutely nothing.”
But is that really true? Not for Carl.
“I’ve been splitting wood the last couple of days,” he told me. He had a log splitter and had taken down a handful of oak trees for a reason that only Carl would say in a matter-of-fact way: “I had to widen my driveway, to make sure an ambulance can get in.” Apparently, the driveway of his home out in the country in west Flagler is too narrow for an ambulance, and, as he said, he’s getting older, so this is the kind of thing you have to prepare for. Then he quipped: “I hope next winter is a cold winter because I’ve got a lot wood.”
But I don’t think Carl Laundrie will become a hermit out in the sticks. Flagler County has been in his blood ever since he moved here, and he won’t be able to keep away from the “action” of a growing, but still small, community. In the end, he’s still a storyteller.
“To tell a story about the community, you had to be a part of the community,” Willy said of his father’s journalism philosophy. “That’s a lifestyle. That’s not something that’s going to go away.”
