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Homeward Bound 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. An Interview With Fiction Editor Lee Boudreaux 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.” Basketball's Best Kept Secret
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. Clark Talks About Roanoke's Rescue Mission 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. Wrestling Legend Jimmy Valiant Plots A May 1 Comeback From His Shawsville Home
Interview: Comedian Shawn Westfall 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. PBTV: Interview with Queen Harrison
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. |
A Gift For More Than One Village
Jane Vance - an adjunct professor of the Creative Process through the Department of Religion and Culture at Virginia Tech, an aide for special needs children at Blacksburg Middle School and an established painter of South Asian styles - resides in the unique, aqua-blue house in Blacksburg, Va. As I pulled up the rocky path leading to Vance's home, I left Virginia and crossed into an unimaginable world in a different place in time. Hokie Ambassadors Add a Warm, Soft Touch to the Cold, Hard Facts For many high school students, college visits can be an overwhelming experience, especially universities with campuses as big as Virginia Tech. Couple that with an hour-long tour jam-packed with facts and figures about the school, and any teenager’s (and their parents’) head is sure to spin. Hokie Ambassadors (HA) is a volunteer-based group of student tour guides at Virginia Tech who serve to embody the university for prospective students. Being current students themselves and having gone through the process of choosing schools, the members of HA know firsthand what it’s like to visit a college and have to make a major life choice based on an hour or two of their lives. Ambassadors recognize that since their words are a major contribution to the decision process, it is valuable to the visitors to give each of their tours a personal perspective of what life is like at Virginia Tech beyond the brochures and Web sites. Event Planning Is Her Challenge Planning an event can be stressful enough from worrying about guests, decorations and organization while making everything run as smooth as possible. Whether it’s high class occasions or small business socials, Diamond Events says it seeks to provide clients a wide range of style to fit many occasions. Diamond Events is a full-service company that specializes in event planning for family social gatherings, business functions, and of course, weddings. The Washington, D.C., Maryland and Northern Virginia areas are markets where Stephanie Hughes, founder and president of Diamond Events, showcases most of her work. When There's Trouble, The Task Force Deploys A disaster can occur at any time, without warning or without notice. The members of the Virginia Task Force 1 Urban Search and Rescue Team (VA-TF1) are one of the first to respond to these disasters. VA-TF1 is comprised of 200 trained men and women from the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department. VA-TF1 also includes canine search specialists, physicians, structural specialists and rigging specialists. They are the world’s first “responder community” when an emergency occurs. The team responds to both domestic (Virginia Task Force 1) and international (USAR Team 1) disasters. The Road to the NBA He was faster, stronger and better than anyone else on the court. There are a lot of good players at this gym, but none quite like him. After he finishes breaking down the defense and making a jumper in his opponent’s face, he does it again and again. Tyc Snow is a household name in Northern Virginia. He has been terrorizing local players since his days at Stonewall Jackson High School. Snow is now embarking on a difficult journey from the National Basketball Association Development League or D-league to the NBA. Interview With Recording Artist Kina Grannis It only took 60 seconds for Kina Grannis’ life to change forever. The Doritos “Crash the Super Bowl” contest was over. The votes had been cast. Grannis anxiously sat beside her two competitors, waiting to see whose music video would air to nearly 97 million people during the biggest television event of the year, the Super Bowl. “I heard my little guitar part start at the beginning of the commercial," she recalled, "and I just started crying … I didn’t really know what it meant at that point. I just knew that this was changing everything.” Interview: Lutheran Minister Recalls Campus Experiences "We come to this place to testify that the light of love cannot be defeated. Amid all our pain we confess that the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. We cannot do everything, but we can do something." Reverend William "Bill" King spoke these words at the convocation held at Virginia Tech on April 17, 2007. King has served as a Lutheran campus minister at Virginia Tech for more than 25 years and was selected to be the Christian speaker at the convocation held on the day following the shootings that occurred on April 16. Interview: Working In The Sports Industry Take a moment and imagine your ideal job. Does it involve something you are truly passionate about? How are you going to turn your dream into reality? Jaclyn Benjamin has turned her dream job into a reality. She is currently the senior account executive for Washington Freedom, a charter member of Women’s Professional Soccer (WPS), based in the Washington, D.C., suburb of Boyds, Md. |
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?
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.
Tibetan prayer flags lined the unpaved path to an aqua-blue house hidden among the trees. A statue of Buddha rested upon a towering shrine of glimmering stones and metals. The breeze propelled the Tibetan prayer wheel surrounded by a garden of vibrant flowers. A postcard image of the mountains glowing beneath the sun grew beautifully in the distance. This is not South Asia. I am in the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwest Virginia.