It began 40 years ago with a plan that must have seemed a bit crazy to some: Take a former luxury hotel that had seen better days and convert it to an all-women’s liberal arts college in the heart of the Nation’s Oldest City.

With fewer than 200 students, Flagler first started classes in 1968 and the college struggled through its early years before it was reorganized in 1971 under the leadership of new President William L. Proctor.

But 40 years later — with a rising reputation, thriving enrollment and award-winning programs — no one would doubt what an incredible idea it was to put a college in what is today a National Historic Landmark.

As Flagler celebrates its 40th anniversary, take a look back at those formative years when cars still rolled through the breezeway and students sent letters — not e-mail — to folks back home.

More Info: 40 Years of Flagler

“I still get a rush every time it happens,” Thomas Graham said. “Every time I see a student out in the world, achieving something, and I realize that’s the same quiet girl who sits in the back of my class. These students are high achievers — they’re doers. I’m always pleasantly surprised by the capabilities of my students.”

His sentiment rings true for all three retirees, each of whom has seen tremendous changes in the size, technological capabilities and culture of Flagler College. When Graham started in 1973, the college enrolled just 300 students.

“In those days, we all knew each other,” he said. “Today I see new faces all the time, but I think the culture of the College has prevailed, and we are still at our core a group of supportive and creative people.”

When Lou Preysz joined the faculty in 1982, Kenan Hall was still a vacant building.

“We had classes in Ponce Hall, in Markland House, in the Billiard Room,” Preysz said. “There was an old Coast Guard building where the gazebo is today. There was no Proctor Library, no Student Center. It was a different place.”

Graham realized the importance of being involved in the early growth of the college.

“Flagler gave us a chance to invent something,” he said. “We were a part of something. We were creative. We made it happen.”

Graham, a native of Miami, was debating several job offers when he threw his hat into the ring with the 5-year-old college in St. Augustine. “I saw this as an opportunity to get in on the ground floor — literally — and write the future,” he said.

When Preysz took a pleasure trip to St. Augustine in 1982, he was feeling burned out from a long career in banking. The former Florida Army National Guard Captain had been teaching part-time and looking for a full-time position. As he drove down Cordova Street he saw a faded sign: “Flagler College.”

“I have to admit, my first reaction was, ‘My gosh, there’s a college here?’” he remembers. “I pulled in and started wandering the campus. I ran into Dean [Robert] Carberry and pitched him right there on the spot. The rest, I guess you would say, is history.”

In addition to his role as associate professor of business administration, Preysz is known for his service as adviser to Flagler’s Society for Advancement of Management. Preysz recently led the Flagler SAM team to an unprecedented eighth national championship.

By the time Tom Pace signed on in 1996, the college was celebrating the grand opening of Proctor Library. He served as an education professor throughout his tenure and as Chair of the Education Department until 2004. A key force in securing Florida Department of Education accreditation and the state-mandated ESOL endorsement for Flagler, Pace remains unassuming about his professional achievements.

“When I came, all the faculty had been here a long time,” he said. “Now we see much
of the old guard handing over the reins to a younger generation of faculty. I think that’s a good thing. I like progress. It’s very exciting to think about where Flagler is going to be in the next 40 years.”

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/

Flagler opened in 1968, and just 170 female students were enrolled during that first year. When Gibbs first started working at Flagler in 1969, she and some other professors lived on campus.

“When I reflect back and view those first classes, merely a handful of students, and how successful all of them have become, I am still in awe,” said Gibbs, who has stayed in touch with most of her students throughout her career. “I would hear knocks on my door, and when opening would find that one of the girls wanted to borrow a book or needed some help … we became a very close-knit family.”

Before moving to St. Augustine, Gibbs earned her MFA in Modern Drama from the University of Eastern Illinois. At Flagler, her passion for theatre led her to develop a Theatre Arts program with Tom Rahner. They started producing a play each semester.

“I remember having our first plays in the dining room or the Rotunda,” she said. “We had great support from the community, too.”

Gibbs has dedicated her life to expanding and improving Flagler’s theatre department. The workload has increased with time, and she juggles with multiple activities: She is not only professor and chair, but a friend and even a second mother to many of her students.

“I don’t know another person who could run this department the way she does,” said senior Kelley Smith, 21. “I’m marveled at how she does it.”

Gibbs often receives letters, cards, e-mails and phone calls from her previous students, saying hello or telling her about a new baby or job. She continues to collect memories and create strong bonds with as many students as she can.

“The college has grown exponentially,” Gibbs said. “It’s a true gem in a very congested world … I feel privileged to work here. People ask me when I plan to retire, and I say, ‘Retire? What about all the young people I would never meet?’ ”

CNN Senior Correspondent Candy Crowley was one of several prominent media speakers at Communication Week this past March. The annual event brings to Flagler a variety of professionals working in journalism, public relations and new media. Crowley spoke on the frenzied pace of TV
reporting and the presidential race.

“On the Democrat side, we never get a chance to see anyone up close. The public has not been as well-served because it doesn’t know who these people are,” she told The St. Augustine Record. “Something in me says, ‘Do we know enough?’ It’s hard to find a moment when we think ‘This is the person, not the candidate.’ We don’t have a chance to flesh them out.”

Other speakers included Cheryl Diaz-Meyer, a senior staff photographer for The Dallas Morning News, was a co-recipient of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography for her work on the invasion and aftermath of the war in Iraq.

Communication Week is organized by Flagler’s Communication Department and is hosted by the Flagler
chapter of the Public Relations Student Society of America.

The early 1990s was no time to break into the world of investment banking. That’s the way Cinda Sherman remembers it. She had just lost her job as a financial analyst in Jacksonville, Fla.; the market was tanking; and all around her, banks and brokerages weren’t hiring, but instead laying off workers.

Things got so bad that when a few friends offered her a basement to live in until she got back on her feet, she took it.

“It was literally concrete floors — no bathroom,” she said. “I had to go in with candlelight.”

It was during that down-and-out period that the ’86 grad hatched a plan that must have sounded crazy to some: launching an arts and culture magazine in a Florida market that was practically void of the material she wanted to cover.

But the business major with a love for the arts went ahead, founding her “Arbus” magazine in 1995. Today, the arts and business publication has grown with Jacksonville’s blooming arts community and counts as many as 100,000 readers an issue.

To top it off, two years ago Sherman won the Women in Business award from the Women Business Owners of North Florida. She won primarily because she had started the magazine without any money, help or knowledge of the publishing business.

“I about fell out of my seat when they called my name,” she said. “It was really quite an honor to be recognized after all those years of hard work.”

Sherman grew up in an artistic family. Her father, Michael, was a Flamenco guitar player and an associate professor of sociology at Flagler. She crafted her own appreciation for the arts into her concept for “Arbus,” which also partly stemmed from her own experiences with the few galleries that did exist in Jacksonville. She found them intimidating and a bit elitist. As a student at Flagler, she visited a gallery where a woman followed her throughout the gallery, peering over her shoulder the entire time.

“I just remember how much I hated it,” she said, “and I swore that I would never try to have the magazine come across that way — as though you were being looked down upon.”

Sherman said the magazine struggled for three or four years before really taking off.

“It took a long time for ‘Arbus’ to kind of get its own skin and create itself,” she said. “I’ve tried to let the community and the magazine create itself based on what people are looking for and what they are interested in.”

When the magazine first started out, Sherman said there were a lot of naysayers. Some even told her that it wouldn’t make it more than two years. This only made her work harder to make it succeed.

She believes the magazine fits well with the thriving arts and cultural scene across the First Coast, which she says now attracts people to the city and “gives it a heart and a soul.”

Sherman attributes her education at Flagler with the idea for “Arbus.”

“If I didn’t have that liberal arts background — that love for studying art and then the business side of it — I don’t think this would have ever come about,” she said. “It was the catalyst when I was looking for a way to get out of that hole or that basement, if you will. I hope one day to be able to have a legacy that I can leave behind with the magazine.”

Visit Arbus online at www.arbus.com.

At Surfari Charters, the workday itinerary goes something like this: Surf. Fish. Have lunch and a siesta. Surf or fish some more. Soak in natural hot springs. Relax in a hammock.

If you long for a career outside a cubicle, read on for some perspective from Flagler College graduates Lance and Kristin Moss. They went from waiting tables to operating a successful surfing and fishing charter business on the Pacific coast of Nicaragua and, as they put it, “living in an unbelievable place doing what you love.”

1. Get really lucky.
Writer E.B. White once said no one should move to New York City unless he is “willing to be lucky.” The same thing might be said for Nicaragua.

When Lance was a junior at Flagler, he started dating Kristin. He also pooled together money with friends and entrusted it to a guy who was “on a mission to build the first surf camp in Nicaragua.” Investors got an acre of land and a two-week stay at the camp for buying 1,000 shares of $5 stock.

“We bought the property site unseen and probably should have lost all our money,” Lance said. “Turns out, when we went down a few months later, we could not believe our luck. It was paradise: beautiful land, offshore wind all day, great surf, friendly locals and nobody around.”

2. Plan, invest, commit.
After he graduated with a major in accounting and business in 2000, Lance waited tables to save up $4,000. Cash strapped to his stomach, he promptly went to Nicaragua to build a house on his property; when he got there, he spent a summer washing dishes at the camp, surfing and realizing there was an opportunity to start a business guiding people to the best waves.

When Kristin graduated with her major in Spanish and Latin American studies in 2002, the couple moved back to Nicaragua and launched Surfari Charters. They had no competition or business plan: “It was just a way to stay in Nicaragua and surf and fish every day.” The couple got engaged in 2003, and Lance decided to use his graduate school money to buy a 25-foot boat that would allow Surfari Charters to take people fishing.

“With myself doing all of the boat trips and Kristin handling all of the organizational aspects, we made an awesome team,” he said. They provided guided transport and tour services for guests at the surf camp, and business kept growing.

3. Be tough.
Lance and Kristin’s success attracted some attention. A corporate surf travel agency offered them a lucrative contract that would mean working directly for the agency and giving up their independence. “The money was tempting,” Lance said, but they wanted to “not have to be part of the whole corporate routine.”

“The agency was furious … [they] told us, ‘If you don’t accept our contract, we’ll find someone else who will, and we will put them in your area.’ We were stunned.”

It was a turning point for Surfari Charters. The owner of the surf camp decided to take the corporate contract, so Lance and Kristin had to build their own facilities. Today, their guests sleep in cabanas with beds, televisions, hot water, private bathrooms and, in some cases, air-conditioning – amenities not taken for granted in Nicaragua. The Mosses also maintain a Web site with photos, videos and detailed information about Surfari Charters’ services: www.surfaricharters.com.

“We decided that our goal was to remain a small operation,” Lance said. “The whole experience taught us to be true to ourselves, and that even down in the depths of Nicaragua, the corporate monster could come and hunt you down.”

4. Have fun.
The Mosses will likely face even more competition in the coming years; tourism recently bumped coffee to become Nicaragua’s highest-earning industry, according to a market report by Euromonitor International. But Lance and Kristin are still managing to love their jobs.

“We work 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day,” Lance said, “but since we’re doing exactly what we want to be doing, it doesn’t feel like work. If we get a day off, we usually take the boat out.”

Of course, life in the Third World isn’t perfect. The Mosses have encountered some problems, most of them related to Nicaragua’s super-slow pace.

“A lot of things just take forever,” Lance said. “The biggest dangers are probably getting pounded while you are surfing … the hospital is a two-hour car ride at best.”

For more on Surfari Charter’s, visit www.surfaricharters.com

Gabrielle Gould didn’t plan on becoming an artist. The 1986 Flagler graduate majored in graphic design – known as commercial art at the time – and figured her fine arts studies would feed her personal, rather than professional, life.

Then she took a jewelry class, and her new hobby turned into a career.

“It was a sheer whim that Enzo [Torcoletti] offered that class,” Gould said about the now-retired Flagler sculpture professor. “Jewelry is almost like miniature sculpture … It’s great because it’s my work and my income, and it’s my art form.”

Today, Gould’s handmade necklaces, brooches and earrings are sold in roughly 45 boutiques nationwide. She’s been featured in an exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Jacksonville, as well as a National Endowment for the Arts grant and an Award of Excellence from the American Craft Council. Last year she was also featured on the cover of Ornament Magazine.

It’s a level of success she never anticipated when she first started handcrafting her jewelry, combining natural materials like feathers with more traditional silver and gold. At first, Gould sold her work out of her parents’ downtown St. Augustine shop, Gabrielle’s Contemporary. Soon, she had a sales representative teaching her the business of wholesaling and distributing her work all over the country.

At one point, Gould had several employees helping her hand-reproduce pieces. She’s scaled her business back in recent years to devote time to her daughter, but Gould continues to make a variety of popular items and create artisan, one-of-a-kind pieces.

“I try to bring the past into a contemporary feel,” Gould said, adding that her pieces are inspired by everything from walks on the beach to architecture to archaeological finds. She said more and more people are viewing jewelry as art or a form of self-expression, and many craft jewelers are shying away from traditional, status-symbol materials like diamonds.

“In the craft world today, so much is influenced by design, not materials,” she said. “So it would be the design that’s precious, not the semi-precious stones … What could be better? You don’t just put it on the wall and forget about it. I love that you can touch it and it’s functional. That’s the definition of a craft – it’s functional art.”

The new Crisp-Ellert Art Museum hosted Flagler’s first juried student art show this spring, giving students from all majors a chance to show off their talent, have their work judged by professionals and – in a few cases – make some money.

Nearly 300 students submitted artwork created in a variety of media, from sculpture to paintings to looping film displays. “It was one of the best shows we’ve had so far,” said Sarah Kelly, director of the Crisp-Ellert Art Museum. “Their work was of the highest caliber and really showed some great inventiveness and creativity.”

First place and $100 went to Sierra Strasburger for her oil painting, “Il Futuro.” Addie Hassel won second place for an intricate wire piece entitled “Grandma’s Lace,” and Kaitlyn Thompson took third place for her graphic design entry, “Billy’s (Mid-life) Crisis.”

None of the artwork on display was priced, but Kelly said she put several interested buyers in touch with the student artists. Several pieces sold.

The museum on Sevilla Street opened in December. Artist and author Dr. JoAnn Crisp-Ellert and her husband, Robert Ellert, donated the historic property and art collection to the college.

Kelly said she’s planning a variety of public events at the museum. A faculty show is scheduled for this fall, and nationally and internationally acclaimed visiting artists will exhibit their work, lecture and work on projects with students during the next year.