New Manager Settles Here At Sun 'n Lake

In about a week, Michael Wright, Highlands County's new administrator, and wife Karen will close the deal to purchase a home in Sun 'n Lake of Sebring.

Neighbors talking with the county's new chief executive will surely hear him use one phrase. No matter what the topic of conservation, chances are Wright will eventually say two words: "Quick story."

That's how he introduces his stories, which invariably end up with a humorous punch line. And he has more baseball stories than any other type.

Like the time Rick Dodge, then the assistant city manager of St. Petersburg, called Wright, who was then the Clearwater city manager, and asked for a favor.

Construction was nearing completion on the St. Petersburg Domed Stadium. This was before the Tampa Bay area had a Major League team, long before the expansion Devil Rays were created and the ballpark got a name, Tropicana Field.

Dodge was worried about the ceiling of the dome. He wondered if it had the right background color so that outfielders and infielders could keep sight of the ball and catch fly balls and pop-ups.

St. Pete/Tampa, though, had no big league ball club yet, and so Dodge asked Wright if he could ask a few of the Philadelphia Phillies, then in spring training in Clearwater, to come down and test out the dome's ceiling.

"I called Bill Giles, the managing general partner of the Phillies, and he said they'd be glad to help out," Wright said.

So, Wright drives to the St. Pete dome with a couple Phillies coaches and Von Hays, then the team's star centerfielder. With only about half the ballpark's seats installed at that time, Hays trots out to center field, a coach grabs a fungo bat and hits a towering fly ball.

Dodge, sitting next to Wright, is on pins and needles as that first fly ball - the first baseball ever hit in the dome -- soars out under the dome. If Hays can't see the ball coming down, it might cost millions of dollars in cost overruns to correct the problem.

Hays easily tracks the high fly ball and settles in under it as it starts to descend. Suddenly, though, the center fielder ducks his head down, covers his head with both arms, crouches down and scampers away sideways in a panic - obviously hoping he won't get beaned by the ball that he can't see against the domed stadium's ceiling.

Dodge's face contorts into a look of horror. Suddenly, he is the most worried man in Florida.

Wright and Hays, though, are laughing uproariously as the balls hits the field.

"Don't worry," Wright says to Dodge. "It's a joke. We set it up. Now, let's see how Von Hays really handles a fly ball under that dome."

Moving Here

Michael and Karen Wright jumped at the chance to move to Highlands County, Wright said, for three reasons.

"First, it's a friendly area," Wright said. "Second, it's not crowded. And third, it's close to everything."

By close to "everything," he means no more than a two-hour drive one way to the things that he and Karen enjoy most, including family, friends, major league and college sports, and music.

"Do you know the first thing I bought when I arrived here?" Wright added. "Tickets to a Tina Turner concert." He and Karen will watch Miss Turner perform in Broward County in November.

Wright said the one thing that he's encouraged by most in his new job here is a county work force filled with hard-working people.

"In general, what I've found is that most county employees really have a desire to do the right thing," he said. Wright has worked in management for a dozen other cities or counties and says that's not always the case.

His second-floor office in the Highlands County Government Center is filled with dozens of personal mementos, including a half dozen signed baseballs, a few of which are under glass, and a couple of yo-yos.

His most precious item in his office, though, is not on display, but inside the top left drawer of his desk. It's a small and very old hammer, with the top end of the handle wrapped with black electrical tape.

"That was my dad's," Wright said. "I use it to put things up on the walls."

Wright's late father, Earl Wright, earned bachelor's and master's degrees in education from, respectively, Auburn University and the University of Alabama. Wright is a Florida State University Seminole through and through, with a bachelor's in criminology and a master's in public administration.

"I've had this hammer for 40-some years," Wright said. His father didn't use it in his work, as he was first a teacher and then the director of transportation for the Tallahassee public school system.

"Dad was a 'shade tree mechanic," Wright said. "This hammer is just something he had for many years, and I've just always kept it."

At 58 years old, Wright said he hopes to work as Highlands County's administrator for about eight to 10 years. He's got his sights set on retiring from full-time work "around 65, maybe up to age 67 or so."

Once he retires from full-time work, Wright said, he plans to again go into teaching part-time.

Wright's $155,000-per-year contract with the county gives him permission to teach part-time now. In the past, at various city and county management jobs, he has taught graduate level courses in public administration. He last taught as an adjunct professor at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton.

Wright said he tries to give students "the practical aspects of a city manager's job." Many of those lessons, he said, he learned not from books but "the hard way."

One topic he always includes in his class is what to do, and what not to do, in interviews with the news media.

"I tell them there are three rules," said Wright, who worked as a full-time reporter for the Tallahassee Democrat daily newspaper for four years while he went to school full-time at Florida State.

"Rule one, never lie," Wright said. "Rule two, answer the question asked, and answer it in short and precise sentences.

"And rule three, never assume that anything said in an interview is going to be, or stay, 'off the record,' no matter what is said.

"It's wise to assume," he added, "that nothing is going to stay 'off the record.'"