Voices that Inspire

What inspires you from WFSU Public Media? Here's this week's Voices That Inspire. My name is Jack Rudlow and I am the president of Gulf specimen Marine Laboratory in Aquarium in Pannasia, Florida. I started it right after I got out of high school at Leon High School in 1961 and I started collecting specimens. I didn't actually have an organization or a company there. But when I had come back from the Indian Ocean expedition in 1965, I was able to buy a shack in Pannasia and that started, which is now our office building. My highest and best degree is my diploma from Leon High School. I started three months of FSU and we didn't all work out. But my interest in marine life and interest didn't go out on shrimp boats and everything else like that was very exciting to me and that was what I wanted to do and that's where the pathway followed it. So it's kind of follow your bliss and your dreams and that's what I've done and I would really encourage anybody else who really wants to do something whether it's music or art or whatever else it is just follow what you want to do. I wouldn't be where I am today and with my high school education and so on if I didn't have mentors, if I didn't have people like John Steinbeck and even encouraging letters from Erskine Caldwell and there were all these people that kind of gave me green lights along the way, along the red lights that were there. And so I learned to just go around the red lights and continue on and low and behold things kind of happened. So I'm very grateful to all of those people and I'm most important thing for me is to be able to pass it on. So with the interns we have it from the different universities or TCC or whatever that's my goal is to continue to mentor them as much as people mentored me. And those of you that can mentor other kids and help them, it makes a huge difference in the world. I'm Jack Rudlow, I'm the president of Galsbesum and Marine Laboratory and Aquarium in Panacea, Florida. You're listening to voices that inspire.