A Penny Valentine! For Real, Honest!

The lady on the left with the dark hair, always "just so", is Penny Valentine. When I first met her in the late 1960's she ran the North Miami Chamber of Commerce, organizing the luncheons, visiting new businesses to get them to join and bugging old members to pay their dues, attend the monthly luncheons, advertize in the directory, all that stuff, including hustling up door prizes for the luncheons! She also ran the Miss North Miami Pageant which was sponsored by the Chamber back in the old days. Now the city sponsors it.

Back then her husband Bill was a North Miami city councilman but to pay the bills they had a real estate business. Now, nearly forty years later she's still in the Chamber office five days a week, still goes to city council meetings, and you can count on her to be sitting at the front table at various Chamber functions collecting money and handing out name tags. Tonight she was doing just that at a business card exchange at Great Florida Bank. Meanwhile Bill is doing his damndest to pretend that he's retired, but she drags him everyplace anyway.

At the business card exchange I ran into a guy I haven't seen in quite awhile, years actually, Herb Otey, but everybody calls him Otey. These days Otey is a music promoter and now I'm shooting one of the groups he represents this Saturday! And to think, I almost didn't go out in the rain to attend the business card exchange. I not only picked up a gig but I got to munch out on roast beef sandwiches, crab salad, and freshly sliced fruit. Sure beats Burger King!