Orlando Author Joanie Schirm of Adventurers Against Their Will is feature interviewee
When my family moved some twenty years ago to the charming Orlando downtown neighborhood nicknamed “College Park”, for the first time in my adult life, I felt really at home. Since I’d left home at 17 for college, I’d always lived in what felt like the busiest parts of cities like Miami and Atlanta where there was for me no sense of place. For ten years before moving to downtown, I’d lived in a suburban neighborhood. When we decided to move downtown nearer our jobs, we gave our real estate agent/good friend Joan Matthews one request: get us on water. Joan did it!
In College Park we moved on to a lot overlooking luscious Lake Concord facing the luminous sky line of Orlando. Since I grew up in the 1950/60s overlooking the water of the Indian River, which faced the about-to-happen skyline of Melbourne, Florida, I felt a sense of calm that comes only for me with a water view.
So it was great pleasure twenty years hence when the well-read College Park Community Paper decided to make me their third choice in a new series titled: The CP Interview. The first two interviews were with gentlemen I hold in high regard – Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, who lives in the hood and is a good hearted, visionary leader…and Jimmy Hewitt, the man whose strong positive spirit was instrumental in Orlando being able to host an NBA franchise – The Orlando Magic. They are a tough act to follow but Publisher Debbie Goetz did a fine job in bringing my story forward. Czech it out: Orlando College Park interview with Joanie Schirm April 2013
