Winter Park’s Most Influential
Randy Noles Honored at Mead Botanical Garden
On January 24, dozens of Winter Park “influentials” gathered to celebrate the work of Randy Noles, long-time editor and publisher of Winter Park Magazine. The crowd assembled to honor Noles’s contributions as community builder and, in particular, his support of Mead Botanical Garden, Inc., which hosted the reception.
The Gazebros provided the music. L to R: Jack Byrd, Trevor Hall, Craig Taylor, Sheila Verde and Chip Weston. The Gazebros play at the Gazebo in Albert Park in College Park, at 6:30 on Tuesday evenings, weather permitting.
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To mark the occasion, this character drawing by Rafael Diez was presented to Noles. Mead Botanical Garden Executive Director Cynthia Hasenau learned that Noles, himself, had an abbreviated career as a character artist. “That,” she said, “led me to commission this rendition of Randy enjoying a stroll in Mead Garden.”
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By: Anne Mooney
Anne Mooney has assumed the editorship of the Winter Park Voice from founding editor Tom Childers.
Mooney got her start in New York as a freelance line editor for book publishers, among them Simon & Schuster and the Clarkson Potter division of Crown Books. From New York, she and her husband and their year-old toddler moved to Washington, D.C., where the two ran a newswire service for Harper’s magazine. “We called it Network News,” said Mooney, “because it was a network of the Harper’s writers, whose work we edited into newspaper style and format and sold to papers in the top U.S. and Canadian markets. We were sort of like a tiny UPI.”
The newswire ceased operation with the death of Mooney’s first husband, but Mooney continued to write and edit, doing freelance work for Williams Sonoma cookbooks and for local publications in D.C.
In 2005, Mooney moved to Winter Park, where she worked as a personal chef and wrote a regular food column for a south Florida magazine. She took an active interest in Winter Park politics and was there when the Winter Park Voice was founded. She wrote occasional pieces for the Voice, including the Childers bio that this piece replaces.
The Winter Park Voice is one of a large number of “hyper-local” publications that have sprung up across the U.S. in response to the decline of the major daily newspapers and the resulting deficit of local news coverage. The Voice’sbeat is Winter Park City Hall, and its purpose is to help the residents of our city better understand the political forces that shape our daily lives.
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Well deserved recognition! Thank you Randy… for building community, reminding us of our heritage and calling us to greatness. You are the best!
I’m so sorry you left out Billy Collins. I know I am partial, but I would argue that he was the most influential person there. = )