'Overwhelming': Cheering MLB crowd welcomes Space Coast Honor Flight veterans home from D.C.
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Like a patriotic parade, a procession of U.S. military veterans from the Vietnam War era and other conflicts walked and wheeled through a crowd of hundreds of cheering well-wishers who were waving American flags, shaking hands and holding signs at Melbourne Orlando International Airport.
Space Coast Honor Flight's first group of veterans to use the Melbourne airport emerged from the gate concourse just before 10:50 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 6, returning home from a Washington, D.C., tour behind an honor guard and a bagpiper playing "You're a Grand Old Flag."
Despite the late hour, lines of Space Coast spectators stretched shoulder-to-shoulder along the passenger-terminal parade route, stretching from the concourse past the rental car counters to the TUI welcome center. That's where the veterans and their "guardian" escorts passed one-by-one beneath an honor-guard saber arch.
Activists, Brevard Sheriff Wayne Ivey agree: New animal shelter needed
Over this summer, a group of advocates started an online petition demanding the Brevard County Sheriff's Office's public animal shelter off Eau Gallie Boulevard remedy hot, crowded conditions.
The petition, created on Aug. 10, has more than 1,400 signatures.
Sheriff Wayne Ivey says the shelter already has or is addressing the concerns raised by the petition and plans to build a new, larger, cooler shelter within the next two years at the same site off Eau Gallie Boulevard.
But some of the petitioners point to what they see as a bigger pattern of neglect and say their concerns often have been ignored. With an almost $6 million budget and a decade running the shelter just west of Interstate 95, the sheriff's animal services ought to have by now forged more humane conditions for homeless dogs and cats, some of the petitioners assert. So for them, a new shelter can't happen soon enough.
SpaceX launches Starlink 10-57 flight
The Space Coast weekend kicked off early with a SpaceX Starlink launch Sept. 5.
SpaceX launched its Starlink 10-57 mission on a Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Pad 39A. The liftoff occurred at 8:32 a.m. after an initial delay.
The mission was SpaceX’s latest batch of 28 Starlink internet satellites.
Crosswalk crosshairs: Street art removed at 4 Brevard schools following state, federal mandate
For a little less than five years, students at Endeavour Magnet Elementary School in Cocoa crossed a street covered in paw prints, purple lines and an encouraging message.
It said "Path to success," at one end of the crosswalk, with the phrase "Believe in you" painted on the other side.
It was a message both students and the city hoped would inspire kids.
But on Aug. 26, only a little more than two weeks after school began, the crosswalk outside the building was painted over following a federal mandate for roads to be stripped of any "distractions," as well as a state mandate that all nonstandard crosswalks and street art be removed by Sept. 4 or see funding withheld for noncompliance.
But its removal was just part of following the state's procedure, according to a spokesperson from Florida Department of Transportation.
Smaller sidewalk or crosswalk-based art at other Brevard schools — including Golfview, Fairglen and Roosevelt elementary schools — had also been removed as of Sept. 4.