Mediaboss Marketing

By Dara Kam

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Updated: 11:39p.m.Saturday,May26,2012

Posted: 8:32p.m.Saturday,May26,2012

TALLAHASSEE Just back from a trade mission to Spain, Florida Gov. Rick Scott headed to the Cayman Islands on Saturday for Attorney General Pam Bondi's hush-hush wedding to her longtime fianc, Tampa ophthalmologist Greg Henderson.

Scott and his wife, Ann, were among the guests at the Ritz Carlton Grand Cayman affair. Bondi, 46, Florida's first female attorney general, had been divorced.

While it was no secret that Bondi and Henderson, who is about 15 years her senior and has four grown children, intended to marry this spring, the attorney general kept mum about the details. Bondi's press secretary did not respond to questions Saturday.

But Sen. Paula Dockery, R-Lakeland, spilled the beans on her Facebook page Friday, posting a picture of Bondi captioned "The blushing bride serving punch to her friends on Cayman Air." In a previous post, Dockery said: "The plane is filled with her wedding party."

Bondi was a Hillsborough County assistant state attorney who had never run for elected office before running as a Republican in the statewide race for Florida's attorney general in 2010.

dara_kam@pbpost.com

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Pam Bondi, doctor wed in Cayman Islands

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi and her fiance are waiting a few more weeks to tie the knot.

Instead of a wedding ceremony Saturday afternoon in the Cayman Islands, Bondi and Tampa ophthalmologist Greg Henderson will "make it official in several weeks when all our family members can be there," Bondi said when reached at the Ritz-Carlton Grand Cayman.

A gathering Saturday evening was a "celebration of upcoming nuptials," Bondi said, adding that she planned to wear her wedding dress at the event.

The wedding ultimately will be "small, private, and in a Baptist church soon" in the Tampa area, she added.

In the meantime, "We are thrilled to be here having the time of our lives," she said.

Bondi told the Tampa Bay Times last week that she was planning a beachfront wedding at the Ritz-Carlton. On Saturday, she declined to discuss what led to the change of plans.

Among those who joined Bondi and Henderson this weekend: Gov. Rick Scott and his wife, Ann; Hillsborough State Attorney Mark Ober; former Tampa Mayor Dick Greco and his wife, Linda; and Kim and John Kirtley. Kim Kirtley was the communications director for Bondi's campaign when she ran for attorney general.

The group also included Henderson's mother and four adult children as well as Bondi's parents and younger brother, Brad.

Bondi, 46, of Tampa, apparently tried to keep details about the trip quiet, but state Sen. Paula Dockery let the cat out of the bag in a Facebook post Thursday. Dockery, R-Lakeland, reported seeing Bondi at Tampa International Airport and being on the same flight to the islands.

Amy Scherzer can be reached at (813) 226-3332 or ascherzer@tampabay.com.

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Pam Bondi holds Cayman Islands event in advance of Tampa wedding

A train station is where passengers begin a journey, or change direction. For the past year, Freedom Station has been a place where San Diego sailors and Marines with broken bodies start their journey to a new life.

It looks much like many apartment complexes in old San Diego neighborhoods. A handful of cottages circle a courtyard.

But every detail is ready to pass a drill instructors inspection. The grass is military-style neat. There is a white picket fence in front of each door.

And the residents, most in their 20s, arent ordinary. Josue Barron is missing a leg above the knee, and one eye is glass and bears the emblem of his infantry unit 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines. Timothy Read also lost part of a leg, and one wrist bears scars where doctors stitched it back on after a roadside bomb blast.

Barron likes to sit on the small porch of his cottage in the afternoons. Other residents call out greetings as they come home from their doctors appointments.

Being combat wounded, with all these guys here, I felt comfortable. If I was living in any other neighborhood, I wouldnt be able to talk to my neighbors because they have nothing in common with me, said Barron, 22, who lives with his wife and their dog in the small house while waiting for his medical discharge.

Here, we all are transitioning, and we all have our own demons, said David Smith, 23, an injured Marine veteran who was one of Freedom Stations first residents. But were all doing it together, so its easier.

Operated by a grass roots San Diego nonprofit group, Freedom Station officially opened one year ago, on Memorial Day weekend.

Since that time, the quiet complex has been home to 15 injured service members, who were once resident patients at San Diego Naval Medical Center in Balboa Park. An additional 23 are on a waiting list.

Sandy Lehmkuhler was volunteering at the Navy hospital, one of the militarys national centers for amputee care, when she got the idea.

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Next stop for wounded vets: Freedom Station

Conversation turned to a local couple, who are desperate to leave Spain but who can't because their house is still unsold after four years on the market - despite dropping the asking price from 1 million to 750,000.

In 1992 the BBC spent millions of pounds launching an ill-fated soap opera, Eldorado, following the fortunes of British expats on the Costa del Sol. The project flopped and was cancelled a year later. Now, 20 years later, the real-life diaspora is experiencing an equally disastrous end to its Iberian dream.

Times are desperate in Spain. More than a million people took the streets earlier this month to protest at budget cuts, 24 per cent unemployment and the rising cost of living.

The price of milk and bread has risen by 48 per cent during the last year, according to a recent study, and of potatoes by 116 per cent.

Electricity bills are up 11 per cent while property prices are in free fall; they have declined for 15 consecutive quarters and are 41 per cent lower than in 2006.

Several of its banks are faltering: this weekend Spain's government is preparing to pump a further 19 billion into Bankia, the country's fourth-largest lender, in the biggest single bank bailout in the country's history. Trading in the bank's shares was suspended on Friday until negotiations over the rescue were complete.

Santander, Europe's largest bank, was among 11 Spanish financial institutions to be downgraded by the credit rating agency Standard and Poor earlier this month; and there's no sign of anything like economic recovery on the horizon.

Expats are finding life hard in a country where they once basked in a cheaper way of life. Around one million Britons spend part or all of the year in Spain, but thousands are now returning home and more want to, but say they can't afford to because their property is no longer worth what they paid for it.

For the first time since 1998, Spain recorded a drop in foreign residents last year, according to newly released figures.

With its narrow cobbled streets, whitewashed houses and children riding horses down the main road, Frigiliana lives up to most tourists' idea of an authentic Spanish village.

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Spain financial crisis: Sun setting on expats' Costa dreams

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