You've seen this man before, somewhere
_BY EVAN _WILLIAMS ewilliams@florida-weekly.com
There was a man sitting in the lobby outside a business awards function at the Holiday Inn at The Bell Tower last Thursday. He was wearing a suit, and holding a camera. A few reporters there seemed to recognize his face- alert, eagle-eyed- but couldn't say where from.

PHOTO EVAN WILLIAMS Jim McLaughlin

"I've seen you…on TV?" one of them asked.

"Used to," Jim McLaughlin said, shaking hands; he was the evening news anchor at Wink-TV for 28 years before retiring in 2005. "I'm an old has-been now."

McLaughlin said he doesn't watch the news anymore- only to check the weather occasionally. And he practices freelance photography.

"I hire myself out to corporations and companies to do any kind of photography they need," he said.

As the business awards ceremony got underway, he and another photographer slipped into the conference room to get pictures. They hid behind a decorative plant at the stage's corner and leapt out during the right moments, like some breed of rare, funny animals trained to appear during photo ops.

The freelance photography began for him in 1995, 10 years before he left Wink.

"It was 1995, and I'd just signed a new contract at Wink," he said. "And since I assumed it would be the last (but I always thought this was the case), I started the photography business."

McLaughlin said he wanted to make sure he had something to do with his life when his news career ended. So he freelanced during the day and on weekends, and the years anchoring the evening news continued to flash by.

But after Hurricane Charley, which ran directly over where McLaughlin lives with his wife on Pine Island, he was not only tired, but fulfilled. A destination had been reached.

"My co-anchor and I were on the air almost non-stop for 4 days," he explained. "It was the first time that I felt I had honestly helped my community. I felt like I could never top this. So I gave them the one year to finish out my contract and left."

He left on Labor Day weekend of 2005. His long career as a news anchor having finally come to an end, he started the freelance photography full-time, that Monday.

Sometime before all this began (it started for him in 1976 at a radio station in Punta Gorda before quickly advancing to television; he was 31 years old), McLaughlin was a high school Spanish teacher. That was in his hometown of Oneida, in mid-state N.Y., ("where they make silverware," he said). But he found that tending bar was more lucrative and, in his late twenties, began working at a restaurant in Cape Cod, Mass., as bar manager during the busy season, and as a cook during the slow season.

"If I had my druther's I'd probably run a restaurant," he said, noting that his other great passion is cooking, and his favorite thing to cook is Cajun, Creole. "...anything that makes your mouth go 'Wow, that's really cool.'"

In 1975, he quit the seasonal restaurant business in Cape Cod, trading short summers and harsh winters for a softer climate and a new beginning.

"I moved down here just to try to turn my life around," he said. "I was an alcoholic. I was pretty much a failure in most people's eyes, including my own."

For the record, he hasn't had a drink since 1979, and said Fort Myers was a great place to start over; a forgiving, accepting community, he said, "as long as you do you're job...

"I don't know if I could have done that anywhere but here."

After his career took off at Wink, people started recognizing him ("It really went to my head," he admitted) and the rest is history.

And, as he was quick to note, "It's really history now."