We are heartbroken to report that Megan Hussey, our cheerful, talented and enthusiastic community news reporter, passed away over the weekend.
For the nearly five years Megan worked for the Hernando Sun, she enriched our lives immensely through the 700 articles she wrote on our neighbors, friends and family members, as well as the community organizations that care for us, entertain us, educate us and bring joy to our lives.
She diligently chronicled our achievements. If she wrote about an art show or theatrical performance, she would give each artist or actor in the show a chance to share their vision with the community. She wanted everyone to have a chance to share their voice with the community and that is what a community newspaper is all about.
We learned about her life through her stories as well. With words, she painted vivid pictures of the people she knew with humor and sincerity.
She started working for the Hernando Sun in Nov. 2019. She had been working as a reporter for 20 years at that point. She had previously worked as a special correspondent for the Tampa Bay Times (Pasco County Bureau) as well as the Tampa Tribune (Pasco County Bureau), a regular correspondent for the Dade City News, The Laker, and has contributed to The Muncie Star, Muncie Evening-Press, Alexandria Times-Tribune, and Citrus County Chronicle newspapers.
In 1993, she graduated cum laude from Ball State University in Muncie, Ind with a journalism major and English/sociology minor.
She also wrote several books, many she co-authored with her best friend Linda White-Francis.
Megan spent a portion of her childhood in Hernando County. Her father, Herbert Hussey, was a prominent realtor. She wrote about it in a piece she submitted for Father’s Day one year,
“As a child in Spring Hill, I thought I lived an enchanted life. My parents were these wonderful, kind beings who had taken me to a place of mermaids and dinosaurs–and sometimes we would journey to Brooksville, to visit a house simply brimming with Christmas trees. Now Dad did disenchant me just a bit when he came home one day to inform me that he had just rented a condo to a bunch of mermaids. And here I thought they lived in the sea!
“After two years in the area, we went back to our native Indiana because of a family illness–but Dad’s heart always stayed right here in Florida. We came back here after I graduated college–I got a newspaper job in Lutz, while my parents retired to Spring Hill.”
Megan was a cheerful ray of sunshine to work with. She had an enthusiasm for her line of work and she truly cared about the people and organizations she wrote about. She received many letters of gratitude from readers and community members, which she cherished.
Megan introduced us to her “bestie” Linda White Francis, who was also a writer and she too started writing for the Hernando Sun. At our weekly writers’ meeting, the pair would somehow steer the conversation to chickens, dolls, books and poetry. And there were some good ideas that were “hatched,” like Megan’s Show Us Your Sunshine column in March of 2020.
Megan formally described her Sunshine feature with the following,
“As Hernando County joins the world in facing and weathering a global health crisis, feelings of tension and uncertainty often threaten to overwhelm us. In times like these, sometimes it helps to take a look out the window and admire the Sun. In the new Hernando Sun column, Show Us Your ‘Sun’shine, we encourage you to submit and share your good news. So what exactly ‘con’stitutes Sunshine? Well, it’s anything that brings happiness and positive benefits to you and the community.”
Her sunshine column embodies who she was. A woman who, despite hardships, remained cheerful and positive, driven to ensure the happiness and well-being of those in our community.
Megan was an organ donor and has given happiness and hope to others through the gift of life.
Her dear friend Geneniece put it well, “Megan never wrote anything bad in the newspaper. Everything was always great. She always loved to do the donation stories and even in death she’s giving her organs away to make other people happy, to bring joy to other families. That was her job even to the end..”
Together Megan and Linda, who passed away in July this year, are most definitely having a joyous reunion in heaven and they have lots to talk about.
If you’d like to share with us how Megan touched your life, please email [email protected] and we will include it in the paper this week.
We will be organizing a Celebration of Life in her honor and will post details soon.
