Sun Neighborly news & entertainment for Hoover
Volume 4 | Issue 7 | April 2016
Awaiting a new lease on life Kidney transplant the only thing holding back Stephen Dabney By SYDNEY CROMWELL
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or Stephen Dabney, life has a distinct dividing point — there’s life before dialysis, and there’s life after dialysis. Before dialysis, Stephen was a regular at the Exceptional Foundation in Homewood, and he competed in Special Olympics and traveling teams across the country in basketball, volleyball, golf, power lifting, softball and tennis. He has boxes of medals and trophies from his years of competition, and he was able to travel independently to visit family or friends. “My daddy used to say, ‘Stephen’s life is one big vacation,’ because he was always going or doing,” his mother, Lorraine Dabney, said. Now that Stephen has dialysis three days a week, he can no longer participate in travel teams and is often too tired to play sports or hang out with his friends. “With Stephen, social is everything. Interacting with people is his game, and it’s curtailed that,” said his father, Al Dabney. “It’s limited his life.” “This is just really tying him down,” Lorraine agreed. The Dabneys are from Birmingham originally and returned to Hoover in 1998 after living in Houston,
See DABNEY | page A23
INSIDE
Lorraine, Stephen and Al Dabney sit inside their Hoover home. Stephen, who has dialysis three days a week, has been on the kidney transplant list at three regional hospitals for four years. Photo by Sydney Cromwell.
Sponsors.....................A4 City...............................A6 Chamber......................A9 Business.....................A10
Hoover school officials ask federal judge to approve rezoning plan
School House............A13 Community................. B2 Sports.......................... C2 Calendar.....................C18
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Spring Home Guide
Spring is in bloom, and it’s the perfect time to plant a garden, do some cleaning or start a home renovation. Find tips and tricks from area businesses in our Spring Home Guide to jump-start any project.
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By JON ANDERSON After two years of planning and community debate, the Hoover school board is partnering with the U.S. Department of Justice and NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund to ask a federal judge to approve new school attendance zones. The parties have reached an agreement on the rezoning plan OK’d by the Hoover school board on March 7 and now are asking U.S. District Judge Madeline Haikala to approve it. Haikala has scheduled a hearing on the rezoning plan for April 7-8. Hoover school officials hope she’ll approve the plan quickly so it can go into effect for the 2016-17 school year. Hoover schools Superintendent Kathy
Murphy said she realizes not everyone is happy with the rezoning plan, but school officials negotiated the best deal they could, considering the concerns of parents, the community and parties to the decades-old federal desegregation lawsuit. “The advantage we have in Hoover City Schools is everyone loves their school, and they’re excited about their school and want to stay in their school, but rezoning is rezoning, and it dictates moves, and as a result of that, we’ve left some people very unhappy,” Murphy said. “Nevertheless, we had a charge and a task, and we’ve completed that.” The rezoning plan, if approved by the federal court, could put nearly 2,500 children in a new
See REZONING | page A22