by Beth Kassab | Sep 2, 2025 | Arts and Culture, News
Winter Park D-Day veteran, 103, to get Gold Medal for Army Ranger service
John Raaen, a resident of the Mayflower, joins a list of recipients of a Congressional medal first given to George Washington
Sept. 2, 2025
By Stephen Hudak
This story is part of the News Collaborative of Central Florida, a group of 10 local news outlets working towards a more informed and engaged region. It was originally published by the Orlando Sentinel.
Medals didn’t matter on D-Day to soldiers like John Carpenter Raaen, Jr.
“Never occurred to me,” said Raaen, now 103, a Winter Park resident and the only surviving Army Ranger who stormed Omaha Beach in France on June, 6, 1944, in a pivotal battle often regarded as the beginning of the end of World War II. “As a matter of fact, medals didn’t mean a lot to any of us.”
He and thousands of Allied troops who faced fortified German artillery fire hoped just to survive the firefight.
“We didn’t think many of us would be alive June 7,” he said.
About 4,400 Allied troops died in the battle, including 2,500 Americans.
Raaen, whose name is pronounce “ron,” moved to Central Florida after retiring in 1979 at the rank of major general. Among the many recognitions he earned during his 36 years of service was a Silver Star for valor in combat on D-Day when he was 22.
Now he is about to receive another prestigious honor: a Congressional Gold Medal.
The award, the nation’s highest civilian honor, is intended to serve as a lasting symbol of the nation’s gratitude, recognizing the U.S. Army Rangers of World War II for their unwavering, extraordinary bravery and critical contributions in key battles in the war.
Raaen’s vivid D-Day memories, recalling the perils his Rangers faced, are memorialized in interviews posted on Youtube by the World War II Veterans History Project and the American Veterans Center. He has said the grim opening of the World War II drama “Saving Private Ryan,” which recreates the Allies’ bloody landing on Omaha Beach, “offers a little hint of what it was like.”
“It was just plain out and out hell,” he said.
Oil, steel, rubber and human flesh were all ablaze.
Dead and dying soldiers were scattered on the beach like seashells.
“The machine gun firing, the rifle firing went over our heads like a bunch of bees,” he said in the History Project interview. “I’m talking thousands and thousands of small arms rounds every minute, passing over your head and occasionally hitting somebody next to you.”
His military career seemed inevitable. The son of an Army officer, Raaen was born at Fort Benning, Georgia.
He was raised on army posts and graduated from the Military Academy at West Point in January 1943.
Nicknamed “Red,” for his once red hair, Raaen authored his own first-hand account of the D-Day invasion, “INTACT,” which relied on his personal letters, official war documents and sharp memory to tell the story of the 5th Ranger Infantry Battalion as they helped establish a foothold for Allied troops and supplies to roll onto Berlin.
He provided oral histories for the BBC documentary series “D-Day: The Last Heroes” and for the Smithsonian Channel. He has been interviewed by more than two dozen war historians, who cite him in books and papers. Among those historians are presidential biographer Stephen E. Ambrose, author of the World War II best-seller “Band of Brothers.”
Raaen was involved in the development of anti-tank projectiles, armor-piercing small arms ammunition, artillery nuclear warheads and arming devices, according to his biography in the U.S. Army Ordnance Hall of Fame to which he was inducted in 2009.
A friend, retired U.S. Army Lt. Colonel Buck Leahy, listened with rapt attention last week when Raaen was interviewed again.
“I think over the course of my life, I’ve been fortunate enough to know a very small number of men who are genuine heroes,” Leahy said. “To a man, they are humble, unassuming, modest people, and John is…absolutely emblematic of that.”
Raaen could not attend the Congressional Gold Medal ceremony in Washington in June where he and the other four surviving Army Rangers from 6,500 who served in World War II were feted.
He will formally receive his medal this month at a ceremony at The Mayflower in Winter Park, the retirement community where he lives.
David Lyle Williams, president of the Descendants of World War II Rangers, read a note at the Washington ceremony from Raaen accepting the medal on behalf of all Rangers including the many who died in service to their country. Most who volunteered for the dangerous duty as a Ranger often said they wanted action and they got it, he said.
The regiment’s motto, minted on the gold medal, is “Rangers Lead the Way!”
“Many volunteered. Few were chosen,” Willliams said. “One man was rejected because he had false teeth.”
Williams said the soldier appealed, telling the colonel, “I don’t want to eat the Germans. I want to kill them.”
The appeal was persuasive. He became a Ranger.
The Congressional Gold Medal is a recognition of distinguished achievement and service.
The first recipient was George Washington in 1776, honored for his “wise and spirited conduct” in the American Revolution.
Originally conceived to honor the new nation’s military heroes, the award was created by Congress then expanded to recognize a diverse group of honorees and achievements in arts, music or sports; pioneering work in aeronautics and space, medicine and science.
The medal has been awarded to Civil Rights icons like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks.
Some are obscure like Michigan boat-builder John Horn, Jr. , honored in 1874 for reportedly rescuing more than 100 people from drowning over an 11-year span, many of whom had fallen into the Detroit River getting on or off ferryboats. Others are world renowned — golfer/philanthropist Arnold Palmer, singer Frank Sinatra and Catholic saint Mother Teresa.
Others recognized with the Congressional Gold Medal include:
- Aviation pioneers Wilbur and Orville Wright, recognized in 1909 for demonstrating to the world the potential of aerial navigation.
- Scientist/inventor Thomas A. Edison, recognized in 1928 for development of “inventions that have revolutionized civilization.”
- Dr. Jonas E. Salk, honored in 1955 “for discovering a serum for the prevention of polio.”
- Filmmaker and businessman Walt Disney, recognized in 1968 for “outstanding contributions to the United States and the world.”
- Baseball player Roberto Clemente, honored in 1973 for “outstanding athletic, civil, charitable, and humanitarian contributions.” He perished in a plane crash in 1972 on a humanitarian mission to deliver aid to the earthquake-ravaged nation of Nicaragua.
- Religious leaders Ruth and Billy Graham, honored in 1996 for “outstanding and enduring contributions toward faith, morality, and charity.”
- The U.S. Capitol Police, recognized in August 2021, for protecting the U.S. on January 6, 2021 against a mob of insurrectionists.
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by Beth Kassab | Aug 29, 2025 | City Commission, News
Proposed 10% electric rate increase dies
City staff concedes an outside analysis did not justify the increase and City Commissioners appear poised to approve a 2% jump in power prices
Aug. 29, 2025
By Beth Kassab
After a contentious back-and-forth in recent weeks between City Hall staff and members of the Utilities Advisory Board, the City Commission appears poised to reject staff’s original budget proposal to increase electric rates by 10% overall (or 15% on the non-fuel portion of the bill) to cover the cost of undergrounding power lines and other work such as upgrading substations, meters and street lights.
At a City Commission workshop on Thursday three out of five commissioners said they would support a much lower roughly 2% increase (or 3% increase in non-fuel costs) on residents and business owners’ electric bills as well as pursue issuing bonds to cover a portion of the expenses.
Commissioner Kris Cruzada appeared to be the swing vote after Commissioners Warren Lindsey and Marty Sullivan advocated for the 3% increase while Mayor Sheila DeCiccio and Commissioner Craig Russell said they would support a 7% increase in order to raise more revenue sooner and help cover other demands in the budget.
“I’m leaning toward the more conservative number because we don’t know what the new power contracts will be,” Cruzada said, referencing the agreements Winter Park has in place with the Orlando Utilities Commission and the Florida Municipal Power Association that will be up for renegotiation in just a few years. Winter Park doesn’t generate its own power, but buys power from those providers and sells it to its 15,000 customers.
Staff has warned that the current contracts are highly favorable and rates are expected to climb when the new deals are signed.
No formal votes are taken at commission workshops, but if positions remain the same the lower rate increase is likely to be voted on as part of the first budget approval on Sept. 10.
The proposal to increase customers’ electric rates starting in October is largely driven by the city’s plan to finish burying the remaining 20% of overhead power lines by 2030, the target leaders announced three years ago when it moved the date back from 2026.
DeCiccio advocated for the 7% increase, more in line with one of the revised proposals from City Manager Randy Knight, who conceded an analysis by advisory board member Michael Poole showed the original proposal for a 10% jump in rates was unnecessary.
Knight conceded that the need could be lowered after Poole pointed out that the city is keeping a large inventory of transformers on hand after pandemic-time orders — once backlogged by supply chain issues — came in and stacked up. Factoring in those already-purchased supplies helped lower the cost of the undergrounding project.
So did another recommendation by Poole to hold back on a $400,000 segment of the project, which will eventually connect buried lines along the streets with buried lines to individual homes. That will now be done after all of the main lines are undergrounded.
Knight also agreed to wait to factor in non-undergrounding projects such as new meters or street lights until the Utilities Advisory Board can evaluate and prioritize each one.
A map from the city of Winter Park shows the status of segments of the undergrounding project.
The debate exposed not only the complicated nature of how electric rates are set, but also the difference in philosophies in how the city-owned utility should be managed and the extent to which it should help cover other expenses across the city.
Poole, an investment banker, said his analysis showed the original large rate increase proposal was “unwarranted” and said he was happy residents will save some $4 million collectively next year as a result of the changes.
“We need to have a really good discussion on the purpose and priority of the capital expenditures and how we spend money compared to other municipalities,” Poole said.
DeCiccio said she favored the 7% increase because Winter Park customers would still pay less than customers who are provided power by Duke Energy, the investor-owned utility that is one of the largest providers in Florida and serves nearly 2 million customers across five states.
“We would still be about 30% less than Duke Energy and we’re the second-most reliable in the state and it would allow us to purchase the transformers and have the margin we need in the general fund to balance the budget,” DeCiccio said.
Under the original budget proposal the electric fund would have funnelled $800,000 to the general fund, which pays for police, fire and other essential city services as well as projects selected by the City Commission.
The reduced rate increase means that amount will drop by more than $500,000.
DeCiccio said if Lindsey pushed the 3% increase then the $4.2 million worth of projects he had teed up to add to the budget would be “off the table.”
“If that has to happen, then that has to happen,” Lindsey responded, about the projects he wanted to discuss such as a new fire station on Lakemont Avenue, gateway arches for the Orwin Manor neighborhood and a study about the feasibility of connecting the Cady Way Trail with the West Orange Trail.
Sullivan also had to let go of his hope to add $250,000 to the budget to match a private donation to make improvements to Howell Branch Preserve.
DeCiccio said adding that project would ultimately lower the contingency fund to $170,000, a figure she considered far too low.
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by Beth Kassab | Aug 28, 2025 | City Commission, News
New Rollins, Winter Park High leaders talk about being good neighbors
The City Commission also gave final approval to the Winter Park Playhouse lease and effectively banned new residential pickleball courts
Aug. 28, 2025
By Beth Kassab
The president of Rollins College and the principal of Winter Park High School, both barely a month into their positions as two of the city’s most prominent education leaders, stopped by the City Commission on Wednesday to make introductions and express a desire to be “good neighbors.”
“Reading about the history of Winter Park and Rollins College and how those things have come together since 1885, I do think we benefit each other,” said Brooke Barnett, who just arrived on campus to succeed Grant Cornwell. “I have not been able to be out and about in Winter Park as much as I would like, but am looking forward to being a member of the community.”
Barnett, who most recently served as provost, executive vice president and professor at Butler University in Indianapolis, IN, said she’s been learning her way around campus — partially via golf cart to beat the Florida heat.
She said that while many Rollins students are temporary residents of Winter Park, they are also engaged in the community and she is willing to address any concerns that arise.
“We want them to be good neighbors,” she said.
Barnett arrives at the private liberal arts college with about 2,600 students as significant projects are taking shape including a controversial off-campus apartment building not far from Park Avenue for early career faculty as well as new on-campus residence halls. Innovation Triangle, which includes the expanded Alfond Inn, a new Crummer School of Business and a new art museum clustered at the corner of New England and Interlachen avenues is also in the works.
New Winter Park High Principal Michael Meechin also reported a learning curve in finding his way around a campus that is also under construction and has about 3,200 students, including the Ninth Grade Center.
Michael Meechin
“What’s incredibly unique about Winter Park High School that I’ve learned in a very short period of time is the year and years of tradition,” said Meechin, who has also served as a principal in Osceola County and runs a company called The Principal School, which provides support and education to other principals.
Meechin said he grew up in the Boston area and attended the same high school as other generations in his family similar to how many parents of Winter Park High students also attended there themselves.
“Next year is Winter Park’s 100th year,” he said. “There are so many stories of just incredible excellence that have happened on that campus … in the classroom, on the field or on the stage … we, too, are looking to become great neighbors.”
Several city commissioners noted the increase in students riding electric scooters and electric bicycles to and from school and asked Meechin to help continue to safety campaign started last year by the police department and Commissioner Craig Russell, who works as a teacher and coach at the school.
WP Playhouse lease finalized
Commissioners gave final approval this week for the $1-per-year lease with the Winter Park Playhouse to occupy the theater building that will soon be owned by the city and undergo renovations before next season.
The nonprofit professional musical theater will also be granted bridge loans of up to $600,000 by the city if needed during the construction process. An $8 million grant from Orange County tourism development tax dollars is footing most of the bill for the project (including the purchase of the building), but a bridge loan may be required as the theater’s required private contributions come in.
Residential pickleball banned
Residents will not be able to build new pickleball courts on their property after a vote this week that made the requirements so onerous as to be an effective ban.
While only a few courts on residential property exist today, there is concern more could appear as the paddle sport has soared in popularity.
The rules, which are designed to prevent noise complaints related to the game’s trademark near-constant ball whacks, will not affect commercial or public pickleball courts.
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by Beth Kassab | Aug 27, 2025 | Arts and Culture, City Commission, News
Today Show footage, which snubbed Winter Park, used to defend Visit Orlando
The agency is under fire after a county audit of its spending as Winter Park also took exception to the way it used the city without promoting it
Aug. 27, 2025
By Gabrielle Russon
Visit Orlando promoted the Today Show coverage filmed in Winter Park to defend itself from a critical county audit, but the tourism association didn’t mention city officials’ complaints with the TV segment.
Visit Orlando leaders appeared before the Orange County Board of Commissioners Tuesday following Comptroller Phil Diamond’s audit last month that raised concerns about Visit Orlando’s spending.
Ultimately, the county board took no action Tuesday and will revisit the issues in December as county staff work with Visit Orlando to address the audit’s results and go over the contract.
Assistant Comptroller Wendy Kittleson said Visit Orlando may have misspent an estimated $20 million dating back to 2019.
Visit Orlando CEO Casandra Matej said her organization openly shared its records with the auditors and is already working with the county to address many of the audit’s findings. She defended her organization, saying it helps promote tourism that fuels a major economic impact to the region.
The county board spent three hours discussing Visit Orlando’s value and the audit’s findings.
The debate comes as some officials are pushing to free up the 6% Orange County hotel tax to be spent on public transit, housing and other community needs instead of going toward advertisements and marketing for tourism. Meanwhile, the tourism industry is fighting to keep the status quo.
Winter Park officials, for example, brought up during last year’s budget discussions whether the tourism development tax could be used to help pay for SunRail, which operates one of its most popular stops in the city.
This week amid the marathon debate during the county meeting, Visit Orlando played footage from when Today Show set up in Winter Park — just steps away from the train station — to cover Epic Universe’s grand opening in May.
The video showed off the Today Show’s set, celebrity weatherman Al Roker and the crowd holding signs.
“It’s not just the theme park aspect,” said Broadway star Michael James, a Central Florida native, who was tapped as guest in the segment. “We got culture here, y’all! We got culture in Orlando.”
For Visit Orlando, the Today Show was a big deal to tell Orlando’s story.
“This is so important because we’re able to reach a national audience from ecotourism to dining to our amazing sports in Orlando. We definitely have it all and this is an amazing opportunity,” Matej said in a clip played at Tuesday’s county meeting.
A local eye would recognize the scene as Central Park, the beloved green space in Winter Park’s popular retail and dining corridor along Park Avenue. But in front of more than 30 million Today Show viewers, no one actually mentioned that Winter Park was the backdrop.
“They didn’t say at all they were in Winter Park?” asked Commissioner Craig Russell afterward during a city meeting in late May.
“Not one word,” Mayor Sheila DeCiccio said.
The mayor said she supported no longer giving freebies to Visit Orlando “unless credit is given to Winter Park or they can pay fees like anyone else renting the park.”
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by Beth Kassab | Aug 27, 2025 | City Commission, News
Can Winter Park afford to finish burying power lines by 2030?
A rate increase, taking out more debt in the form of bonds or both are up for debate in the final weeks before the City Commission must approve the 2026 budget
Aug. 27, 2025
By Beth Kassab
Just two months ago, city officials extolled hitting the 20-year mark since Winter Park won ownership of its electric utility from what is now Duke Energy.
With a mini documentary and celebratory events, the city lauded the anniversary of the hardfought acquisition and its accomplishments — namely delivering on the promises to provide high reliability, low rates and underground all overhead power lines in the city.
In the background, though, a debate was already brewing over how the city would be able to continue to deliver on those pledges to residents, who voted in 2003 to purchase the electric grid.
Now that debate is reaching a boiling point with a vote by the City Commission on Winter Park’s $233 million budget for 2026 just weeks away and a recent 5-1 vote by the Utilities Advisory Board against a recommendation by city staff to raise electric rates for the first time since 2019.
The proposal to increase customers’ electric bills by 10% starting in October is largely on the city’s plan to finish burying the remaining 20% of overhead power lines by 2030, the target leaders announced three years ago when it moved the date back from 2026. (See map above and at this link to track the status the project by neighborhood.)
But critics say that increase will be just the beginning of more significant increases to come because the price the city pays for the electricity it sells to residents and businesses will likely go up in the coming years as contracts are up for renegotiation and as Winter Park is also planning additional big expenses to replace aging substations as well as install new streetlights.
“I’m all for undergrounding, but I can’t see charging my fellow residents [more] this year and then keep doing it in following years because it’s going to get higher and higher,” said Michael Poole, an advisory board member who is leading the charge against the rate increase, at a recent meeting with commissioners.
Poole, an investment banker who has served on the advisory board since 2020, said the purchase of the electric utility “was one of the greatest things the city has ever done.”
But the promise of finishing the undergrounding project by 2030 is unrealistic without taking out debt through bonds and spreading the cost out over a longer period of time.
“Undergrounding is a monumental pledge … we’re restringing every street,” he said. “That’s just an astonishing capital cost.”
Very few cities across the United States have undergrounded their entire grids because of the cost and time required.
City staff has said the proposed increase for a customer who uses 1,000 kilowatt hours will result in a $15 monthly increase and generate an extra $4.8 million in revenue. But homes and businesses in Winter Park typically use nearly double that amount of electricity so the actual impact to people’s wallets will be higher.
The cost of burying power lines, which looks cleaner and is heralded as a way to keep the system safer and more reliable, especially during storm season, has more than doubled from about $4 million a near to more than $9 million, according to city documents.
So far nearly 104 miles out of 128 total miles — as measured in overhead lines — that serve Winter Park’s 15,000 customers are now underground.
But work has slowed on those last 24 miles as well as the connections from feeder lines to individual homes.
The utility fell short of its goal this year and last year to complete five miles a year because there isn’t enough money to fund the projects.
“I could very easily meet that goal if I had funding to support that,” said Jamie England, director of the electric utility.
England has also said the 2030 target is for the main overhead lines and that finishing the connections to individual homes will likely take a couple extra years. Initially, the city charged residents for those connections but in 2022 decided to take on those costs as part of the overall project, which added to the pricetag and the time required.
Poole has said the city’s current “pay as you go” policy for financing the work is problematic because it puts too heavy of a burden on current customers.
City Manager Randy Knight has also discussed issuing bonds or doing so in combination with a rate increase.
But Knight has also taken exception to some of Poole’s figures and said in a recent meeting that some of the statements Poole made in a memorandum to the City Commission “defy logic.”
A memorandum prepared by Wes Hamil, director of finance, weighed the pros and cons of financing the project through bonds.
“The main advantage of borrowing is the ability to accelerate some capital improvements and reduce the necessary rate increase now,” the document said. “The main disadvantages of borrowing are the cost of interest on the debt ($28M) in the scenario presented which means customers pay more in the long-term. Flexibility is also reduced because rate revenue dollars committed to servicing debt cannot be used for other purposes.”
City spokeswoman Clarissa Howard said the latest recommendation is still being finalized ahead of a meeting Thursday scheduled for commissioners to talk about changes to the budget ahead of the first of two required budget votes on Sept. 10.
Knight has emphasized that Winter Park’s electric rates are lower than average among municipal-owned utilities in Florida and far lower than the prices charged by Duke Energy.
A comparison chart shows Winter Park charged just higher than $120 per 1,000 kilowatt hours for power in July, according to the Florida Municipal Electric Association. That was about even with the Orlando Utilities Commission and just under the average bill of $126.81 among the 32 municipal utilities.
By comparison, Duke charged customers more than $180 per 1,000 kilowatt hours in July, higher than the average of $160.86 among investor-owned utilities.
Winter Park last tried to raise electric rates in 2022 but backed away from the plan after upset among residents and concerns that the Russian invasion of Ukraine could send fuel costs higher.
Commissioners are also considering paying a consultant up to $109,000 to produce a new study on the city’s rates and, potentially, justification for future rate changes.
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