Let's get right to it: Today is my wife Serafina's birthday and I love her very much. NSBNews.net would not be what it is today without her help, talent and guidance. All of the news makers in New Smyrna Beach know who Sera is. They know she's the eye behind the video camera at all of the community events on Flagler Avenue and Canal Street and city government meetings we have covered in three years.
I also joke with Sera that we are the "first media couple" of New Smyrna Beach. Whether we're in the white convertible Audi TT or the red TT coupe or in Sera's Jeep Liberty, we've logged the miles in covering the city we call home. Besides producing all of the nearly 500 videos she shot, she uploads the county jail dockets and lawsuit filings as well as the New Smyrna Beach and Edgewater police logs. She's also drawn a few editorial cartoons and is excellent with online graphics.
Sera is a quiet person with a big smile and an even bigger heart. When she's not working on the website with me or out with me covering the news, she's always beautifying our home in Sugar Mill.
She is an excellent role model for my 17-year-old son who lives with us full time. They have never had a bad word between them because Sera doesn't try to mother or smother him.
Sera has a way of making people feel at ease. She's great at calming the beast in me, Mr. Intensity. She also loves animals, especially our Yorkie, "Napolean."
One of my proudest moments with Sera before we were married two years ago this month was her graduation in Orlando with "high honors" for her bachelor's degree from the Ana G. Mendez College of Puerto Rico. She just lit up the room with her smile and long, curly hair.
One of my saddest moments with Sera was at my 30th high school graduation in Connecticut. One of my snobby classmates had a little too much to drink and while Sera stepped away to return a call to her mom, he made the following statement: So Henry, your wife is an immigrant..."
He knew she was born in Puerto Rico, and thereby just as American as him, but he obviously had difficulty accepting the fact that I was with a beautiful Latina woman and he was divorced and alone.
A couple of other classmates seated on each side grabbed onto me as I unloaded a bunch of expletives at him across the table and was ready to fly across and knock him into Kingdom Come.
Sera returned a few minutes later and everyone was embarrassed and ashamed. Sera was hurt when I told her what happened at our hotel room, her smile turning to tears. But she quickly put it in perspective, saying: "He's just ignorant."
The next day, Sera and I drove to Taunton, Mass. to my old stomping ground at the Taunton Daily Gazette. I was an award-winning city editor there for nearly two years after I left the Daytona Beach News-Journal at the end of 2004. She was amazed at how small the newsroom was. I loved my job in Taunton, as Sera learned from talking to some of my former reporters, but the weekend round-trip commutes from Providence to Orlando were too much.
One of the things I discovered about Sera was her interest in photographing the rich architecture of the churches in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. She loved joining me in New Britain for a return visit to my college, Central Connecticut State University. She saw the newsroom in the Student Center where I was editor of the college paper for two years. She saw some of my stories in the college library's reserve room, from my interview with Billy Idol, to those with Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.
She was impressed to say the least and learned a lot about my passion for journalism.
Sera is very close to her family in Lake Mary and in Puerto Rico. It's amazing how she jumps fluidly from English to Spanish and back to English again. We always enjoy the family gatherings there and her mom loves our home here. We were married on the beach just off the Flagler Avenue ramp and had our reception at Clancy's Cantina.
When I was covering the Horsin' Around fundraiser for the Atlantic Center for the Arts, I found the perfect gift for Sera's birthday: A beautiful wooden hand-carved wall sculpture that I could barely fit in the red TT, even with the back window open.
It was far more than I wanted to spend, but money means nothing to me when it comes to the people I love, especially my wonderful wife. I even hired a trusted handyman to mount it on the wall. It's 5 feet across and weighs more than 50 pounds.
Suffice to say, she loved it when she returned from visiting her family in Lake Mary
Happy birthday, Sera. Te amo.