Longboat legend

It looked like a dream. Or the real-life version of a chapter out of good summer, fictional read.

This cute, two-story, small-town weekly newspaper building on a barrier island in the subtropics of Florida.

Inside, it was just as charming.  Wobbly, homemade shelves (by the proprietor) everywhere. First-generation Apple Macintoshes on desks. A darkroom (formerly a tiny kitchen) that reeked of the rotten-egg smell of photo chemicals. And a newsroom with floor-to-ceiling mirrors on one wall and hardwood floors. The building’s original owner, who lived on the second floor, used the room to practice his ballroom dance.

And then came the proprietors to greet us — the cheery couple. He a happy, 75-year-old optimist entrepreneur whose blue eyes literally twinkled and conversation had no filter. She the yang to his ying, not quite as chipper, but happy, and there was no question, she was the cautious one. He, the idea machine; she, the grammarian.

This was Ralph and Claire Hunter in November 1994, on the verge of negotiating to sell their baby, The Longboat Observer.

It seemed like a fairy tale. A wonderful dream.

But Ralph Hunter, founder of The Longboat Observer, was for real. A character, a one of a kind.

Ralph died Friday morning, Feb. 26. He was 95. What makes his age amazing is that when he was a young boy, Ralph wasn’t expected to live. Somehow, he managed to fight through his polio.   

But that was Ralph, always bouncing back from setbacks, scrapping to overcome obstacles, exemplifying the characteristics of the classic entrepreneur. Keep plunging ahead.

He was an unusual mix — free-wheeling, idea-driven entrepreneur, but also a news hound who paid close attention to details and operated according to steadfast rules (read Robin Hartill’s obituary of Ralph Hunter on Page 2A).

Some of Ralph’s Longboat Observer rules:

n “The Longboat Observer observes the news, it doesn’t make it.” During Ralph and Claire’s ownership rarely, if ever, did you see photos of themselves or Observer staffers in the paper. Just as rare: first-person columns. 

n No jerks. Ralph and Claire (they were inseparable, one), said life was too short to work with people who weren’t pleasant or didn’t fit.

n Know everything about Longboat Key. Ralph expected Longboat Observer staffers, especially the receptionist, to be able to answer anyone’s questions about Longboat Key, historical and present day.

n Never refer to the paper — in print or otherwise — as just the Observer. It must always be The Longboat Observer, with a capital “T.” (Sadly, a rule that has fallen from strict adherence.)

And here are three rules — make that qualifications — that Ralph required of the buyers to whom he and Claire would sell the paper. The buyer: 

1) Couldn’t be a newspaper chain — a company with multiple papers.

2) Had to have a politically conservative philosophy.

3) Had to live on Longboat Key.

At the time of the sale, in March 1995, almost 21 years to the day, our family met Ralph’s rules and qualifications. We hadn’t purchased a home on the Key, but we assured Ralph we would. And we did.

When Ralph and Claire sold The Longboat Observer, you could see it was emotional — selling 16 years of a labor of love and their connection to a place they loved, Longboat Key. And when they sold, they all but ended the chapter in this fairy-tale, island novel about one of its legends.

The Ralph Hunter story of starting The Longboat Observer is an American story of entrepreneurism and building a community.

In the classic sense of entrepreneurism, Ralph saw a vacuum and a need and filled it. As Hartill tells in her obituary of Ralph, he recognized in 1978 that the weekly newspaper on Anna Maria Island wasn’t providing Longboaters with the news about the Key that Hunter believed Longboaters deserved.

So he hustled. He sold his idea to advertisers and plunged ahead. He made his four-page, fledgling newspaper relevant to Longboat residents’ lives and built an audience that advertisers wanted to reach.

He was in the right place at the right time — just when Longboat Key was on the verge of a development boom, just when the developers needed to find buyers. The perfect storm of good fortune. 

But at the same time that Ralph was helping sellers and buyers connect through The Longboat Observer, he was providing another important service: He was helping connect Longboaters as neighbors; he was helping build Longboat Key into a community, a sense of place and belonging, a sense of history, a community where its residents developed a special pride in their town.

Ralph Hunter insisted that he and his staff be the observers of the news. But in his 16 years as publisher and proprietor of The Longboat Observer, the happy optimist helped make this town what it has become.