Signmaker Lisa Coleman lets little get in her way as the vivacious former Marine pursues her love of poetry, history, guns and lighthouses.
By JANET ZINK
Published May 7, 2004
BRANDON - Don't let Lisa Coleman's looks fool you. Sure, she's a petite blonde with freckles playfully strewn across her nose.
But she's also a tough former Marine with a penchant for poetry, guns and lighthouses who's published two history books, has two more books in the works and just opened a sign creation business in December.
"If I did not have my plate overflowing, I couldn't function," Coleman said.
In determined Marine-like fashion, Coleman opened her business, Mind's Eye Creations, after losing her two previous jobs.
In just four months, her clients include Stepp's Towing, Frito Lay, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Sterling Trucks of Tampa, for whom she generates and applies vehicle lettering and makes signs.
Coleman was born and raised in Texas and lived there until she joined the Marines Corps in 1984. She signed up for the service in high school and then almost backed out. When she told her family she was reconsidering her decision to join, they gave her the ammunition she needed to follow through.
It's just as well. You're too little. You'll never make it, they told her.
Coleman's response? I'll show them.
"That was all it took," she said. "You can say I was dared into the Marine Corps."
At the time, she carried only 92 pounds on her 5-foot, 1-inch frame and had to gain weight to pass the physical. She's now a Marine sergeant.
"I was a tom boy growing up," Coleman said. "I built tree houses. I dug in the dirt."
She moved to Brandon in 1987 with her husband, Jerry, a Brandon High School graduate she met in the Marines. The couple have three children together but recently separated.
Coleman's boundless energy and energetic chatter draw people in.
Morgan Ehsani, a former co-worker and friend who does freelance graphic design for Coleman, describes Coleman as someone who could even make a Tupperware party fun.
"She's easy to be with," Ehsani said.
"She's as good-natured as you could get. She's one of those happy-go-lucky people," said Fred Barton, who hired Coleman to make a banner for his son, who's graduating from Zephyrhills High School in May.
Her son, Freddie, paid his mother the ultimate compliment - she doesn't embarrass him and his friends seem to like her.
"She's very popular," he said.
Still, Coleman describes herself as having an attitude.
"It's not a bad attitude," she said. "It's an attitude of, I don't want to be messed with."
