Features

Homeward Bound
By Brittany Gropp
May 14, 2010

Sophie was paralyzed from the waist down when she was just 4 years old.

Sophie's family dropped her on her back, causing her to lose the ability to walk. Afterward, they took her to get help. The doctor told them Sophie would have a chance to walk again -- if, and only if, she underwent surgery within the next 24 hours.

Rather than pay Sophie's medical costs, her family decided to give her up for adoption.

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An Interview With Fiction Editor Lee Boudreaux
By Jared Rowan
May 12, 2010

Lee Boudreaux is a fiction editor in New York. In 15 years she has climbed the publishing ladder, from being an unpaid intern at Longstreet Press, to being an assistant editor, to being a senior director at Random House, one of the largest publishing houses in the world.

She currently works for the HarperCollins imprint Ecco Publishing as its editorial director. An imprint is a smaller division of a larger publishing firm. It is usually a smaller publishing house that is absorbed by a larger one.

Boudreaux has helped to publish novels by several noted authors such as Adriana Trigiani, Stephen King and David Wroblewski, author of the recent bestseller “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle.”

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Basketball's Best Kept Secret
By Tomas Rios
May 6, 2010

Basketball is a sport dominated by some of the world’s biggest and best athletes. So what would you think if I told you a short white guy from Michigan was being paid to train these great physical specimens?

Micah Lancaster is a rising star in the basketball world. The 26-year-old skill development trainer has gained notoriety across the country for his ability to instruct some of the best basketball players in the world.

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Clark Talks About Roanoke's Rescue Mission
By Audra Morrow
April 27, 2010

As the director of development and administration for The Rescue Mission in Roanoke, Lee Clark gets to see the interworking of non-profit agency each day that he goes into work.

A volunteer turned staffer; Clark says that he believes in the work that is being done at the mission. The Roanoke Rescue Mission is a non-profit organization in Roanoke that consists of many different services to help those in crisis.

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Wrestling Legend Jimmy Valiant Plots A May 1 Comeback From His Shawsville Home
By Stevie Woltz
April 22, 2010

The crowd jumped to their feet as The Manhattan Transfer’s “Boy From New York City” blared over the loud speakers. A curtain was thrown back and a bearded man clad in striped black spandex danced his way down the aisle and around the floor, slapping fans’ hands along the way. He climbed into the ring, flailing his arms and legs about to the music, and hurled his bandana to a group of screaming women in the sea of wrestling fans. Jimmy “The Boogie Woogie Man” Valiant motioned for the crowd to start chanting as the bell rang and he locked up with his opponent for the night, the “Russian Bear” Ivan Koloff.

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Interview: Comedian Shawn Westfall
By Juli Keller
April 13, 2010

Quit with the sex jokes and Dr. Evil impressions, forget what you think is funny, stop thinking about yourself, and act on impulse! The beautiful and truly hilarious moments in comedic improv result when people stop thinking about themselves and start reacting in the moment to contribute to the whole group scene. One must essentially abandon all that they know, strip themselves of their egos and logic, turn off their brains, and allow oneself to act in the “now” in order to create something out of nothing.

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PBTV: Interview with Queen Harrison
By Carrie Boteler
March 20, 2010

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Teach for America Graduate Still Making a Difference

Chanté Chambers remembers learning one fact in particular. Fourteen million students are educationally limited in life because of their
socio-economic status and their ZIP code. This fact horrified her, but it also convinced her to look into Teach for America. She was confident that the organization would enable her to do her part in solving educational inequality. 


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