Alumna Summer Bozeman’s passion for St. Augustine’s past turned into a paying gig when she was tapped to author a pictorial book on the Nation’s Oldest City.

When Bozeman graduated from Flagler in 2007, she bought several books on St. Augustine history and found herself fascinated by many of the historic photos.

One of the books the communication major bought was “St. Augustine in the Gilded Age,” from Arcadia Publishing. The book was chock full of Flagler-era photographs featuring St. Augustine landmarks and landscape. Bozeman began walking around the downtown area comparing the old pictures to what’s currently in those spots.

“I thought it would be really cool to make myself a scrapbook with old pictures and then the new pictures,” she said. “And maybe someone else would want that, too.”

Aracdia’s “Then & Now” series fit the bill. When Bozeman called the publisher, she found they had already been looking for someone to take on the project. Within a month she was digging through old photos and papers.

Bozeman did all the research for the book — searching archives and selecting photographs. Then she went out and recaptured the locations in her own photos. She climbed walls, moved branches, and even once had to lie down on top of a wall to get the shots. She says a lot of the shots were hard to get because the landscape has changed so much.

“In the past 100 years, a lot of people have planted a lot of trees,” Bozeman said. “No matter what shot I wanted, there was a big tree in the shot.”

She spent many hours working with the St. Augustine Historical Society and the Florida Archive in late 2008. With just four months to complete the book, Bozeman found it was the passion for the work – and a little help from her mother – that helped her stay on track.

Bozeman currently works as an intern for the Convention and Visitor’s Bureau in Macon, Ga., but she says she wouldn’t rule out working on another project like her St. Augustine book in the future. In fact, she recently helped her mother with a “Then & Now” book on Macon.

“I loved going through archives … putting my hands in all those letters and newspaper clippings, and the research was so much fun,” she said.

College President William T. Abare Jr. recently approved the updates after a study of existing logos and visuals used by the college. Abare says the need to redesign was largely driven by confusion over which college logo was the “official” visual identity.

“It became clear to me that we need a single, universal College logo,” Abare said.

The college has chosen a logo that reflects the best of Flagler’s heritage, history and traditions. At the same time, it also attaches itself to the hearts of the Flagler College family by retaining a part of one of Flagler’s previous logos that students, faculty, staff and alumni have embraced over the years: the rampant lion.

“We found that many of our constituents have a deep-seeded attachment to the lion, but we also knew it wasn’t distinctly Flagler,” Abare said.

For that reason, the new logo combines the familiar rampant lion with a new shield element that signifies strength and stability.

“We now have a logo that truly reflects the prestige of Flagler College,” Abare said.

Also, the school colors were updated from the yellow and red of the Spanish flag to a more sophisticated crimson and gold. A warm gray was added as an accent color to provide additional depth and to permit some flexibility for the athletic teams, who were looking to achieve a more consistent color scheme for uniforms and facilities.

The changes will go into effect on March 1. The athletic teams will also roll out a new logo later this year using the new Flagler crimson and gold.

In a secluded graveyard, simple labels like “mother” and “grandmother” peek out from slabs of cement, colored brightly with shades of pink and blue. Love is apparent there, as is the lack of money loved ones have to spend on deceased relatives.

But right next to the makeshift plots, separated only by a transparent fence, sits the pristine and modern Evergreen Cemetery. Visitors would have to move branches and step through weeds and overgrowth to get back to this “other” area, where the dates on the markers are as recent as 1990.

Audio Slideshow: Photo Essay by Haley Walker

Senior Haley Walker found this stark contrast between the haves and have-nots in West Augustine while completing a project for a Flagler College photojournalism class that also ran in The St. Augustine Record’s monthly publication, Drift.

“[The plots are] old, but not from a time when people should have to be doing this to bury their loved ones,” Walker said.

The communication major and editor of the Flagler newspaper, The Gargoyle, wanted to learn more about the cemetery and its lonely neighbor, but she wanted to tell the story in a different way.

“I didn’t want to interview anyone and intrude to ask what this [area] was,” Walker said. “So I started taking photos to document the difference between the areas.”

The link she found between the life a person lives and his ability to pay for a final resting place comes across in her photos. In this, the poorest community in St. Augustine, some could only afford simple concrete slabs, plastic fencing and acrylic paint, while others had granite monuments and manicured lawns.

“The things we see in life will also carry over into death,” she said. “They’re still in poverty. The people who cannot afford to buy a house can’t afford to pay for a gravestone for their loved ones. So they have to make their own gravestones … right next to beautiful, granite stones.”

Armed only with a “pterodactyl” dance and a stuffed dinosaur strapped to his head, alumnus Andy Hirko, ’02, competed on national television for $50,000.

“My wife (Kristy, ’02) and I were praying for creative ways to pay off debt,” said Hirko, who was one of five finalists in a dance contest on “Live with Regis and Kelly.”

“So when Kristy saw this dance video contest, she said that we had to spend some time to enter in the competition.”

Hirko, a college ministries director at a St. Augustine church, credits his wife with their good fortune. She choreographed a routine for herself, had Andy film it and then insisted he make his own video.
“I took two minutes and I did my crazy dance,” he said.

Three weeks later the show’s producers called to tell him he would be on the show via telephone to answer a trivia question. The question came from the previous day’s show, which Kristy had fortunately recorded. With only about an hour to study the show, Andy got the question right and won $10,000.
After his video was chosen as a top-10 finalist, he was eligible to compete live for the $50,000 grand prize, but only if he was one of the top five in a 24-hour online voting competition. So Andy launched a grass roots campaign.

He tapped the Flagler community through his connections with students who attend his church. He called and e-mailed everyone in his contact lists. He even had the local Chick-fil-A store stuffing professionally made fliers into customers’ orders. His efforts prompted local media coverage and, most importantly, got him the votes he needed.

“We had a ‘Regis and Kelly’ viewing party,” he said. “We were all going crazy [when I was named as a finalist].”

Although Andy didn’t win the grand prize, he had the most original costume. His ensemble consisted of colorful plaid shorts and a stuffed dinosaur attached to his head.

“I know I was probably not the best dancer, so I wanted to stand out,” Hirko said. He told host Kelly Ripa the dance was inspired by a pterodactyl.

In all, he won $15,000 and a five-year supply of Quaker Oats. Plus, he can say he knows a bit more about the show’s hosts.

“Regis [Philbin] smelled like a combination of Old Spice and the inside of a used Cadillac,” he said. “Kelly smelled better, but she didn’t smell better than my wife.”

Video: Andy Hirko on ‘Regis and Kelly’

Not many people would call up Kevin Costner and ask him to help kick off a major rebranding effort. But as alumnus Brian Killingsworth, ‘00, saw it, the star of epic films like “Field of Dreams” and “Bull Durham” was a perfect fit for a major league baseball team looking to reinvent itself.

“We wanted to create an unforgettable event to kick off our new logo and new era in the history of our franchise,” the communication grad said.

The team, known as the Tampa Bay Devil Rays since its franchise debut in 1998, changed its name, logo and color scheme this season as part of a two-year-long project aimed at reinvigorating the ballclub’s infamously small fan base.

Killingsworth, director of marketing and promotions for the American League East-leading Rays and a former catcher for the Saints, said research found that fans still had positive reactions to the team name.

“When fans referred to the team negatively, they called us the ‘Devil Rays,’ but when they referred to us positively, they chose to call us the ‘Rays,’ ” he said.

The new brand drops the fish and the word “devil” from its logo and focuses instead on a “burst of energy and light.” The color scheme — two shades of blue and a splash of gold — represents the water, sky and sunshine of the southwest Florida coast.

But how do you spark interest in a major league team that was struggling for attendance even with a new logo and uniforms? It’s simple: ask one of the sport’s biggest fans to headline the launch party. Killingsworth called up Costner, who along with his band Modern West performed at the launch.

And it worked. When Costner took the stage in the new Rays cap, the crowd went wild.

“Costner was the perfect fit to represent our brand for the new launch,” Killingsworth said. “He is an iconic Hollywood baseball legend.”

But this isn’t the first time the 2000 grad’s efforts have helped the Rays fill the seats at Tropicana Field. While studying for his MBA at the University of South Florida, he presented a proposal to attract college-aged students to games. The premise: special discounted tickets and concessions at Friday-night games.

“This program was very successful in helping to form a new group of Rays fans,” he said.

And it helped land him a job any baseball fan would love. After working his way up from an entry-level job, he now plans each year’s promotional schedule. This summer, the calendar boasts events such as themed Saturday-night music concerts and a “turn back the clock” game where players wear retro jerseys and then auction them off for charity.

Still Killingsworth — who once dreamed of a career in the major leagues and even played a season in the Cape Cod league with Rays first baseman Carlos Peña — believes it is the game of baseball itself that keeps fans coming back.

“No two baseball games are alike,” he said. “And each game you are guaranteed to see something you have never seen before.”

For more on the Rays, visit http://tampabay.rays.mlb.com/

The English major spent years dreaming about traveling to China after seeing a television special on Chinese adoptions when she was in elementary school. By middle school, she was telling anyone who would listen that she hoped to live in China one day.

Finally, with the last summer of her undergraduate studies looming, Griner decided it was time to “test the waters” and see if living in the communist country was really for her.

“The whole country intrigues me,” she said. “I had to go there for myself and walk the dirt roads and shake hands with farmers to really understand what China is all about.”

Griner spent seven weeks there training in Beijing, taking classes at a teachers’ college in north central China and living with a rural Chinese family, which turned out to be her favorite part of the trip.

She took a four-hour bus ride to a remote village that had a reputation for being hostile toward outsiders. But Griner said the people in that small town were some of the most warm and caring she met during her trip.

“They loved me not for my flowery words or grand ideas, because they couldn’t understand me,” she said. “They loved me just for existing, just for being me.”

Despite having to help kill a chicken for dinner, sticking out like a sore thumb with her bright red hair and white skin, sharing a concrete slab bed with an entire family and using a “town bathroom” – which meant a concrete block wall surround and two bricks to stand on to keep the user’s feet clean – Griner says the rural experience was rewarding.

“I now know there is really nothing I cannot do,” she said. “There are only boundaries that I set for myself. If I have to eat scorpion, or chicken feet, or shower with 40 other people, I can.”

Most Chinese live on farms and are very poor, Griner said, in stark contrast to the images of Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong portrayed by magazines. But she believes the country has a lot to offer.

“China is a place of extraordinary contradictions, and this generation of Chinese college students has an incredible future,” Griner said. “My impression of China is one of incredible natural beauty, a rich and spiritual history and a people whose kindness has invigorated my soul.”

Griner finds the “hustle and sensory overload” of America exhausting after spending her days cultivating sunflowers and getting to know people with more basic needs. She still appreciates the United States and the freedoms it offers, but she plans to make the move to China this summer after she receives her degree.

“I strive to become more Chinese each day – which means lessening my need for identity, control and independence,” she said.

Even so, Griner is unsure of her ultimate plans.

“I don’t know who I will be in 20 years,” she said. “But I know that my experience in China has changed my life forever.”

For Flagler alumnus Tim Krajewski, ‘03, the decision to go on NBC’s hit game show, where contestants have a one-in-26 chance at winning $1 million, was a no-brainer. Now he has $180,000 in winnings to show for it.

A long-time fan of the show, Krajewski jumped at the opportunity to audition when an open casting call was held in Miami, just miles from his home in Ft. Lauderdale. But as one of 5,000 other hopefuls, he had to stand out.

“I had 30 seconds to ‘sell’ myself,” Krajewski said. “I ran my mouth like I have never run it before and was chosen for a full audition.”

He was featured on the show Sept. 26, 2007 — the first episode to feature the “Million Dollar Mission,” where an extra million-dollar case was added. Krajewski had two possible shots at the money, but that didn’t change his approach.

His only strategy was to go with his lucky number — two — in picking the cases, and then to pick the first numbers that popped into his head.

During the first round, he picked all small amounts. His supporters – his mom, cousin Kristin and best friend, Flagler alumna Dawn Peterman, ‘03 – helped him keep his cool.

“My mom was conservative,” Krajewski said. “She didn’t want me to get carried away. Dawn and Kristin were being more fun. They helped me take risks.”

As a third grade teacher, Krajewski says the amount of money they were offering him was “life changing.”

Watch Krajewski on Deal or No Deal at http://www.nbc.com/Deal_or_No_Deal/video/#mea=160917

svgallery=deal