PORT ST. LUCIE PEOPLE
MARY DODGE
Age: 77
Lives in: Port St. Lucie
Occupation: Retired newspaper
journalist
Family: Husband Jack, two
grown step-daughters, five
grown grandsons
Education: B.A. in journalism,
University of Iowa
Hobbies: Computer websites, travel, birdwatching, exploring
ancient civilizations, genealogy
Who/what inspires me: “The strengthening wave of strong,
independent women.”
Something most people don’t know about me: “I have mediated
inside Machu Picchu, Peru, at night and twice inside
MARY DODGE
Dodge, seen here in 1973 at a broadcasters conference in Nova Scotia
with her husband, Jack, left, retired from the Stuart/Port St. Lucie News in
1996 and spent the next 20 years traveling the world.
band, Dennis Grabhorn, is chairman. A position he says he
“couldn’t do without Mary.”
Dodge designs and maintains websites for these organizations
FORT
and several others, a skill she gained at the start of the
technology. “I had a personal website in the early 1990s that
I recently took down, which I did mainly to learn how to
do websites.”
Her website provided a platform to chronicle her travels.
Many of those trips were a spiritual quest. She has meditated
at Machu Picchu in the Andes Mountains of Peru, at the
Egyptian pyramids and Stonehenge, where she needed special
permission to meditate on the site of England’s prehistoric
monument.
When asked if mysticism conflicts with her training as a
journalist — she earned a journalism degree from the University
of Iowa — she responds with an unequivocal no.
“Journalists are curious people, and there’s something about
ancient civilizations that interests me,” she said.
Fascination with ancient civilizations may have sparked
an interest in Port St. Lucie history. The historical society is
working to establish a museum of area history and is one of
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Port St. Lucie Magazine 39
the Kings Chamber of the Great Pyramid of Giza.”
PIERCE
/www.thepalmsofstluciewest.com