We all expect a hospital to be there when we need it -- when a bone is broken, a car is crashed, there is heart trouble or labor begins.
But what about when you are unable to feed your cow?
Mitch Graves, president and CEO of Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare Affiliated Divisions, along with 780 employees -- known as associates -- do what they can to carry out MLH's mission to take care of the entire community they serve ... (read more)
As a small child I received one of those plastic, green inchworm riding toys for Christmas one year. It's the wheeled conveyance with a little yellow hat and saddle on its middle hump for sitting.
The story goes that I was given this gift, played with it for a day, deemed too young for it by my mother, and it was put back in the attic for the next year. So there are faded photos from the early 1970s of me with my inchworm, and then more photos from one year later with the very same toy.
My mom recycled before recycling was fashionable ... (read more)
In the fantasy world of the "The Nutcracker" ballet, a wooden nutcracker comes to life to defend young Clara from the Mouse King and his army.
In the work-a-day world of Billy Ray Morris of Oakland, Tenn., a truck driver for Pepsi America for 23 years, more than 200 nutcrackers bring life to his home this time of year.
The nutcracker collection fills the home he shares with his wife, Judith, 50, and 78-year-old mother, Billie, both of whom help him set up the displays around Thanksgiving each year. The process can take three days ... (read more)
Lynette Herman stares into the middle distance while listening to a conversation, occasionally offering up information, correcting her husband's memory or erupting with a sharp burst of laughter.
There is levity in those steel grey eyes, and something else: a malfunction that reaches to the cells lining the back inside wall of the eyes. The mutation of a gene reaching back to at least the turn of the last century ... (read more)
A banner in the lunchroom of Carnes Elementary School offers simple advice: Be the Best You Can Be.
SMG, the company that manages such local venues as Memphis Cook Convention Center and Cannon Center for the Performing Arts, hopes it's providing students an incentive to do that.
For the second year in a row, SMG sponsored the Bikes for Books program at Carnes. Sixty bikes were provided last year, and this year 75 students in kindergarten through the fifth grade were given new bicycles, helmets and locks for reading the most books and scoring consistently high in the school's Accelerated Reader curriculum ... (read more)
Duane Klink's volunteer work with the American Red Cross Mid-South Chapter dovetails nicely with his job as process project adviser in disaster recovery planning at FedEx.
While his employer is working to deliver the barrage of holiday packages, as a volunteer, Klink may be called on to deliver help to a family that has just faced a tragedy.
Klink is a member of the Red Cross Disaster Action Team. Part of his duty is to go out as part of a two- or three-person team after a house fire to assess damage and needs, to ensure the family has a place to stay for the night and to line up talks for the following day to help the family get back on their feet ... (read more)
Of all the things I didn't do last weekend, at the top of the list was run the St. Jude Marathon. Again.
I had every intention of doing so, just as I intend to every year, though I never have. I've never really trained for a marathon, which is probably mistake No. 1. Every book you read about marathons mentions training within the first few chapters.
I do enjoy running; the accumulation of miles as I push myself to go that extra block this time, the sun on my face, the 30 minutes or so of peace with no kids asking me for anything ... (read more)
Perre Magness has been writing about Memphis history for 25 years. That's more than twice as long as her editors on her latest book, "Memphis: A Children's History," have been alive.
For this project, her first book for children, Magness recruited three 10-year-olds to help fashion the book for her core audience ... (read more)
Corporate Giving story for The Commercial Appeal.
December 5, 2008
At the telecommunications company PAETEC, support and encouragement to give back to the community may come from the top down, but the ideas and choice of recipients grow from the bottom up.
The $1.6 billion enterprise, founded in 1998 and headquartered in Rochester, N.Y., has made it a company maxim to foster a caring culture. This means giving locally, in the communities where PAETEC has offices. It is this commitment that helped the company win the Corporate Neighbor of the Year award from Volunteer Memphis ... (read more)
In the days leading up to Thanksgiving, I've asked my kids what it is they're thankful for. They've offered up thanks for their favorite toys and cartoons, summer vacation, and sprinkled cupcakes, which is just how I'd expect a group of 2- to 10-year-olds to answer the question.
I had a notion that they would tell me they are thankful for the truly important things: For family and friends, for the health and peace that envelops their everyday, closely guarded lives. In so many words, of course ... (read more)
For an avid volunteer, there may be no better work environment than International Paper.
Peter Heist, 49, vice president and general manager in the coated paperboard business, has moved to 10 different locations in his 28 years with the company, including England and Ireland. He was surprised to find that the commitment to giving wasn't at all the same overseas as it is here. "Americans, in general, give of themselves fantastically," he says ... (read more)
Corporate Giving story for The Commercial Appeal.
November 14, 2008.
Jake Lawhead, president and owner of Breakaway Running, likes to keep it local, whether it's his training for the next St. Jude Marathon or his company's charitable contributions.
Since January 2007, the specialty running store has been accepting donated running shoes and distributing them to such charities as Idlewild Presbyterian's "More Than a Meal" program, First Presbyterian Church's Clothes Closet and Memphis Leadership Foundation's "Refugee Empowerment" program ... (read more)
As a student at St. Louis Catholic School in East Memphis, I woke up every day for eight years and dressed in navy blue pants, a white dress shirt and tie.
The uniform made life uncomplicated, with no sartorial decisions to be made each morning.
Three of my kids go to public school and wear khaki or blue pants and a white or red shirt. Simple. No guesswork there, other than clean or not ... (read more)
The office water cooler by all accounts should be boiling over. More than Tigers vs. Rebels, more than young Elvis vs. old Elvis, more, even, than Willie vs. City Council, this year's presidential race has had the potential of pulling people together in conversation and ripping them apart in debate.
It's one thing to be open online, where tempers and tones can remain hidden, couched in parenthetical asides and emoticons. On Web sites and blogs, the talk starts placidly enough, then begins to swell and bubble until the nameless medium of e-mail becomes vitriolic ... (read more)
As the hum of a distant idling train fills the cool night air, a line forms to enter Nightshade Manor in Midtown, a haunted house benefiting The Food Bank this Halloween season.
The house, designed by Kevin Gaiman, is decorated as the creepiest bed and breakfast ever, with each room having its own theme: graveyard, nursery, herpetarium and a kitchen used to make a sloppy batch of sausage ... (read more)
The scary truth is I don't really care much for Halloween.
As a kid, I would get excited in the lead-up to the night, planning the tricks and dreaming of the treats, coming up with costumes, like a skeleton or a ghost or Walter Mondale. But when it came down to the night of the festivities, I could take it or leave it ... (read more)
There is a battle that rages in our house.
It is nearly constant, with only the occasional respite when the peacemakers get involved to call a cease fire or a time out. For the most part, however, we live in a shrapnel-strewn, crater-pocked home theater of war ... (read more)
On the menu Friday morning at Calvary Episcopal Church Downtown: litigation, pancakes, copyright protection, sausage, malpractice suits, eggs, subpoenas, coffee and a side of jurisprudence.
It was the ninth annual Barrister's Pancake Breakfast benefiting the Memphis branch of the Mid-South Affiliate of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation. The breakfast drew about 300 seated guests ... (read more)
My kids get an earful every morning.After viewing breakfast-time family fare such as "Curious George" and "Clifford the Big Red Dog," with their themes of kindness and unconditional love, they pile into the car for 35 minutes in Memphis traffic.
As a parent, it is my job to protect my children. Yet there I am, strapping them onto a chunk of metal and rubber and hurtling them down Poplar at 8 a.m. ... (read more)
In my house, the adults are in charge. I can say this because Kristy and I have put rules in place and those rules are respected.I can say this confidently because, while discipline is meted out quickly and fairly, praise and gratitude are handed down just as swiftly. And I say this without fear of reprise, because The Quartet rarely reads the newspaper. When they do, it's mainly for the Sudoku and Southland Park's daily double numbers ... (read more)
The writer spends his life in a solitary landscape of desk, typewriter and window through which he gazes out at the world to recharge his creative battery.
At least he used to.
Now, it’s probably more Mac, Starbucks and iPod. Nevertheless, writing is a solo and, mostly, lonesome pursuit. Paul Auster pours this feeling of seclusion out onto paper and into novels populated by rich, though solitary, characters ... (read more)
My sister recently gave me the book "Seaworthy" by T.R. Pearson, the story of a man who built a raft and sailed it alone across a couple of oceans. As I sat staring at the photo on the cover of a leathery old man staring out at the horizon, I declared that I, too, would like to build a raft and sail it across the sea ... (read more)
... (read more)Five events my kids would excel in if they were actual Olympic events:
- Sofa jumping
- Spilling things
- Bath procrastination
- Falling down
- Screeching
Even as temperatures hover near triple digits, summer is coming to a close. Not the summer of the Gregorians, mind you, but that of Memphis City Schools.
It's too hot to think of school, textbooks and uniforms, though, isn't it? ... (read more)
I just returned from a week on lower Alabama's Gulf Coast with my own family and three others.
Seven adults and 10 children all together ... (read more)
I had a high school teacher in 1988 who implored me to go into something mysteriously called "mass communications," much as Benjamin Braddock's trusted adviser made the enigmatic suggestion of "plastics" in "The Graduate" back in 1967 ... (read more)
My great-grandmother, Catherine Zanone, taught many of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren to gamble with a card game called Blitz.
I come from a competitive family, and some of that cutthroat spirit has seeped through the generations to my own children ... (read more)
As the modest leader of the Memphis Area Association of Realtors, Jules Wade didn't even tell his wife about his recent induction into the exclusive Dr. Almon R. "Bud" Smith Association Executives Leadership Society.
"I had to tell her," said Wade's longtime friend and president of the MAAR board, John Snyder ... (read more)
I am giddy with anticipation at the arrival of the most wonderful time of the year.
My calendar, my tingling Daddy Sense and my sense of self-importance in my own house all tell me that Father's Day is just around the corner.
This Sunday, in fact ... (read more)
The other day I was cleaning my daughters' room and came across the suit I was married in.
Why was this still-stylish wool suit hanging in my daughters' closet?
Because the six of us live in 1,200 square feet, so I either store it in whatever space is available or I have to wear it whenever I'm in the house ... (read more)
As concierge for the Madison Hotel in Downtown Memphis, Stacey Jackson has the veritable keys to the city that unlock any requests her guests might have.
Those have included a real Southern watermelon, pet boarding arrangements, a doctor willing to make a house call, nanny services and a priest willing to say Mass after hours for an NBA star.
And you can mark each one of those needs as having been satisfied ... (read more)
I arrived home from work the other evening to hear my daughter Somerset say, "I got a tattoo!"
My kids have a penchant for the temporary tattoos -- the type found in vending machines, birthday party goody bags and, oddly enough, boxes of Pop-Tarts.
So this wasn't as frightening as it may one day be ... (read more)
It may be that the cheeseburger you're eating at Elliott's Restaurant in Downtown Memphis had its origins in Athens, Greece.
That's where owner Helario "Harry" Reyna's father, a Taos Pueblo Indian and member of the U.S. Air Force, wandered into a coffee shop owned by the family of Reyna's mother to ask for directions ... (read more)
Is summer vacation here, yet?
As a child, I don't think I looked forward to the end of the school year as much as I do now as the father of four.
Since my wife leaves early, it's my job during the year to get The Quartet up, fed, dressed, lunches made, kids out the door and to school ... (read more)
Dr. Ann Payne-Johnson is, in her words, "the new face of family medicine."With childhood obesity, alcohol consumption and tobacco use common in Memphis, she has dedicated her clinic, myM.D. North Family Medicine, to total wellness for the entire family ... (read more)
My grandparents, Bob and Shirley Fachini, raised seven children, a respectable number by anyone's standards.
It was the 1950s and '60s, a much simpler era, I'm told. Families were larger then because this country needed as many citizens as possible to fight communism, go to Saturday movie matinees for a nickel and colonize the moon ... (read more)
