breakout session & performance tea Faculty

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An award-winning artist, writer, and television producer for HGTV, A&E, and The History Channel, Alex Alexander relocated to the Florida Panhandle 21 years ago. She now works locally as a real estate agent, specializing in Chautauqua-era homes in the DeFuniak Springs Historic District. As a regular attendee and occasional Special Studies course instructor at both the New York and Lakeside Ohio Chautauquas for over 11 years, Alex believes strongly that the Chautauqua Institution must be experienced in order to be understood. Alex is currently finishing her novel, titled Woodpecker Snag, featuring a fictitious small town in Northwest Florida and the search for the possibly extinct Ivory Billed Woodpecker. 

Ryan Chilcutt is a longtime resident of Walton County, FL, his family having originally settled in the County in the 1860s. He has been an active community volunteer, assisting United Way, former Florida Chautauquas, and the Walton County Fair. He specializes in Fur Trade Era historical reenactments and has participated in the Florida Frontiersman Settlement Camp for many years. His love of history stretches to many other time periods, particularly wartime eras. 

Tom Cloud, attorney and historian, has practiced law in Florida for four decades, primarily handling utilities, environmental, state and local government, land use and administrative matters. He has been Chairman of the Florida Environmental and Land Use Law Section and President of the Florida Municipal Attorneys Association.  He is Board-certified by the Florida Bar in City, County, & Local Government Law.  He has served as general and special counsel to over 100 cities and counties throughout Florida, the Florida League of Cities, the Space Coast League of Cities, and is City Attorney to the City of Wauchula, Polk City, and the City of Fort Meade, as well as General Counsel to the Utilities Commission of New Smyrna Beach.  He has authored numerous articles and made presentations on Florida legal and historical topics to a variety of audiences around the country and is also an adjunct professor of law at FSU College of Law and teaches Florida Local Government Law. 

 A native of Ohio, Bruce has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Theatre from Wright State University, and a Juris Doctor degree from Tulane Law School in New Orleans, where he worked for four years as a public defender. Bruce has performed professionally in summer stock in Ohio, at Alabama Shakespeare Festival, the Courtyard Playhouse in New York City, New Horizons Theatre in Michigan, The REP at Seaside, Sinfonia Gulf Coast, and Emerald Coast Theatre Company (ECTC). His original Restoration comedy Tarts was staged in New York at the Courtyard. At ECTC, Bruce has appeared in Bakersfield Mist, A Wrinkle in Time, It’s a Wonderful Life, Around the World in 80 Days, The Fantasticks, A Christmas Carol, Treasure Island, and Miracle on 34th Street. Last year, Bruce was Narrator/The Soldier/The Devil in Sinfonia’s The Soldier’s Tale and Narrator of Peter and the Wolf. Since 2018, as part of ECTC’s Storyteller Series, Bruce has written and performed his World War II Trilogy - Three Palaces at Yalta, The Fall of April, and Winston Churchill: Through the Storm, playing Churchill, Josef Stalin and Franklin Roosevelt. In March he performed the fifth anniversary staging of Through the Storm at ECTC. Bruce is currently Editor of the DeFuniak Springs Herald - Beach Breeze. 

Jan Faubel, a native of New York’s Finger Lakes region, has lived in DeFuniak Springs with her husband, Jack, since 2002. A life-long artist and an Art Educator for over 35 years, Jan holds a B.A. in Art Education, plus M.A.’s in both Humanities/Art History and English from UWF. Specializing in 19th century topics, like the Pre-Raphaelites, Sarah Baker Milton, and Willa Cather. Jan has presented at local, regional, and international conferences, plus the AAUW and DKG, as well as numerous Florida Chautauqua Assemblies. Jan taught Art History for UWF, and then Art History, Humanities, and English, at the NWF State College’s Chautauqua Center. Since retiring in 2019, Jan has focused on selling her paintings and baskets, not to mention teaching adult and children’s art classes at the DeFuniak Springs Art Gallery. She also teaches basket-weaving workshops at the Heritage Museum of Northwest Florida and the DFS Gallery. Additionally, she pens “Fresh off the Easel,” a weekly arts column in the DeFuniak Herald & Beach Breeze. 

  Over the course of more than three decades as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer, Greg has served in a variety of roles overseas and in Washington, DC. Currently, he is a Foreign Policy Analyst on the Biological Policy Staff of the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation of the Department of State. Previously, he was the Chargé d’Affaires (Acting Ambassador) and Deputy Chief of Mission in Bamako, Mali, supervising a staff of more than 300 in a high-risk security environment that included 13,000 United Nations multinational peacekeeping troops and 3,000 French soldiers. Other postings include Cabo Verde, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Afghanistan, Mozambique, Guinea, Angola, Mexico, and Poland. His Washington assignments have included the State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs, Office of the Secretary of Defense, National Defense Intelligence College, the former Board for International Broadcasting, and the Jacksonville, Florida, International Relations and Marketing Commission.

Greg has published a number of articles on history and U.S. foreign relations, most recently “Kennedy, Nixon, and the Competition for Mr. Africa, 1952-1960,” in the September 2022 Foreign Service Journal. Originally from Lakeland, Florida, he holds a B.A. from Duke University and an M.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is married, has two daughters and resides in Arlington, Virginia.  

Melinda C. Henderson, PhD, APRN, FAAN, is a graduate of the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Florida State University, and Oxford College of Emory University.  A Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing, she is currently certified as a Family Nurse Practitioner and was previously certified as an Adult and Gerontological Nurse Practitioner and in Nursing Administration, Advanced. In addition to clinical practice, Dr. Henderson has been an educator (graduate, undergraduate, and continuing education) with recent presentations on Alzheimer’s Disease and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder at the national level and a published researcher (24 research and technical articles and a book chapter.). As an administrator, she served VA Central Office as Chief, Nursing Programs, Gerontology (62 nursing home care units), as Chief, Nursing Programs, Region IV (25 VAMCs in the Great Lakes Region) and locally as a Chief Nursing Executive. In semi-retirement, she is active in the community, serving as Parish Nurse for St. Agatha’s Episcopal Church; she does periodic, pre-deployment and post-deployment physical exams for reserve and guard units (all service branches); is a member of the Commission on Affirmative Aging for the Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast; is a governing board member and past president of the West Florida Area Health Education Center and founder/executive director of Forward DeFuniak, Inc. She served on the 2019 and 2021 Chautauqua Assembly planning committees and will speak at one of the breakout sessions this year on Pandemics: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. 

Bishop Miller was elected eleventh Bishop of the Diocese of Milwaukee on May 31, 2003. He was consecrated on October 18, 2003, at the Mater Christi Chapel of the Archbishop Cousins Catholic Center in Milwaukee.  He graduated from Michigan State University in 1979 with a bachelor's degree in history and received his Master's of Divinity degree from the General Theological Seminary in 1984 and was ordained a deacon and a priest that year. After ordination, he served as curate at Christ Church, St. Joseph, Missouri. In 1986 he was called to serve as vicar of Christ Church, Boonville and St. Mary's, Fayette, Missouri. During his tenure there, Bishop Miller also served as chaplain at the residential alcohol and drug treatment center, and experience that helped bring pastoral care to the center of is ministry. In 1990, Bishop Miller was called as rector of Christ Church in Gordonsville, Virginia. Though he has led large parishes, Bishop Miller's early experience kindled a special and ongoing interest in working with congregations in rural areas. He served the Diocese of Virginia as a cluster revitalization officer and chaired the diocesan Commission of Congregational Development and Revitalization from 1995 to 2001. He is a certified trainer for the Church Development Institute, specializing in leading vestry retreats and revitalization consultations for congregations of all sizes. Bishop Miller met his wife Cindy in 1988 while he was serving on the religion faculty at Central Methodist College in Fayette, Missouri and she was Assistant Director of Admissions at the school. They married in 1989 and have two daughters. In 2004 Bishop Miller was awarded the Doctor of Divinity (honoris causa) by the General Theological Seminary. He served as co-chair of the Moravian-Episcopal Dialogue which drafted the full communion proposal "Finding our Delight" adopted by the 76th General Convention of the Episcopal Church in 2009 and by the Northern and Southern Provinces of the Moravian Church in 2010. Bishop Miller was the preacher at the service inaugurating the full communion agreement held at Central Moravian Church, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania on February 10, 2011. In 2012, he was named Episcopal co-chair of the Moravian Episcopal Coordinating Committee which oversees the full communion relationship. Bishop Miller is a founding member of Bishops United Against Gun Violence. Other work for the larger Church has included membership on the Lutheran Episcopal Coordinating Committee, the House of Bishops Theology Committee, the Standing Committee on Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations., and the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music. This past Triennium he as served on The Episcopal Church’s Task Force on Marriage. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of The General Theological Seminary, St. John’s on the Lake, St. John’s Northwestern Military Academy, and President of the Board of the DeKoven Foundation for Church Work.

Dr. Sylvia Rockwell is relatively new to DeFuniak Springs. While her vocational interests are in the areas of emotional and behavioral interventions in school settings for youth at risk, she is committed to her artistic avocations as well. She studied voice under Marilyn Michaels at Saint Petersburg College, participated in 3 summer vocal institutes there, was selected to sing in Rome with 6 other women during the third summer institute, and went on to study under Dr. Ethel Closson Smith who was the head of vocal and opera studies at the University of Indiana before retiring. Sylvia's favorite genres include sacred classical, opera, and Broadway pieces. She currently sings in the choir at the First Presbyterian Church in DeFuniak Springs and in the Pensacola Opera Chorus.

Saturday Swing-Outs was started in 2012, and since then has been consistently hosting a dance almost every weekend in Pensacola. As a group, they have performed and taught for events around Pensacola as well as organizing and hosting their own events, Seaside Stomp and Pensacola Blues Exchange. Since its inception, the group has dedicated itself to spreading the knowledge and joy of swing dancing through lessons in East Coast, Charleston, Balboa and Lindy. 

 Ann Denson Tucker is a Euchee Creek Native American and Walton County resident. She has a B.A. from Florida State University and an M.P.A. from Troy State University in Public Administration.

Current Chairwoman of Muscogee Nation of Florida – the Florida Tribe of Eastern Creek Indians--located in the Bruce Indian Community of Walton County, Florida. Members of her community are directly attached to Creek Towns affected by the Treaty of Ft. Jackson prior to 1814 - as determined by the Department of the Interior Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Department of the Treasury, and the Congress of the United States. The Creek Euchee people are separate and distinct modern-day survivors of the Creek Removal of President Andrew Jackson to Oklahoma and are unbroken carriers of Southeastern traditions in the Florida Panhandle. She has served the Tribal Government for 30 years in roles of Tribal Administration, Tribal Council Representative, Vice- Chairperson, and now, as Chairwoman of the Tribal Council.

She was the first female Tribal Leader in 40 years to provide testimony on Administrative Law Regulatory processes before the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs and the U.S. House Resources Committee on Insular Affairs.

Under her leadership, the Tribe is working on an agri-tourism economic development project for a proactive approach to healthy food production. It is based on sustainable agriculture, aqua-farming of tilapia, hydroponics, and traditional localized medicine plants and the Muscogee Nation Heritage Museum Project to preserve and protect the Euchee Creek culture as an educational tool for residents and visitors to the local area.

Barbara Wingo is an attorney and historian. She is currently a Courtesy Professor of History at the University of Florida, having previously served over 30 years as an adjunct member of the university’s Department of History, teaching United States history. She received her Juris Doctor degree cum laude from Southern Methodist University. She earned her Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in history from Tulane University and her Bachelor of Arts degree with great distinction from Stanford University. 

Dr. Wingo is the vice president and curator of the Norman Studios Silent Film Museum, Inc. and the president of the Friends of the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Farm, Inc. She is a member of several other boards of historical and other not-for-profit organizations. She is a frequent lecturer on silent films, silent films in Jacksonville, Norman Studios and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, among other topics.

In addition, Dr. Wingo is retired from the Office of the Vice President and General Counsel of the University of Florida where she served as Associate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel. During her years in that office, including 20 years as deputy general counsel, she practiced in all areas of education law. She is a fellow of the American Bar Foundation.