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VOLUME 10 | ISSUE 1 | OCTOBER 2021
HOOVER’S COMMUNITY NEWS SOURCE
Ready to Sing
No-wait appointments. Get in, get out, get smiling.
‘A WALKING MIRACLE’
Hoover Songbirds senior choir kicks off 30th anniversary season after COVID-19 down time.
See page A16
Finishing on Top
Brian and Heather Hinton stand outside the Women and Infants Center at UAB in Birmingham following a biweekly check-up for Heather, who was diagnosed with leukemia in September 2020. Photo by Erin Nelson.
‘Once-in-a-lifetime player’ Audrey Rothman aims to complete her Spain Park career on a high note.
See page B1
INSIDE Sponsors........... A4 News....................A6 Chamber.......... A10 Business.............A11 Schoolhouse.... A18
Events.............. A20 Community..... A23 Sports.................B4 Fall Home & Garden.......... B7
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Hoover’s Heather Hinton leans on family, community support during leukemia journey By JON ANDERSON
I
t was just a little over a year ago on Sept. 21 that Heather Hinton got the news she didn’t want to hear: She had leukemia and would need a stem cell transplant to survive. Two days later, Hinton, a wife and mother of four children from Hoover’s Russet Woods community, was at UAB Hospital for six weeks of chemotherapy.
River Grimes, 13, jumps off a curb at the Hoover RV Park on Sept. 9. The city of Hoover has designated space at the Hoover Met Complex for a potential skate park. Photo by Erin Nelson.
Then the search began for a bone marrow donor match. As is the case for nearly 70% of blood cancer patients, Hinton had no relatives who were a match, so she would have to rely on the possibility of finding a match from a stranger. A friend of Hinton’s, Rachel Petry, worked with DKMS, an international nonprofit dedicated to fighting blood cancers and other blood-related illnesses, to organize a drive to get people to sign up for the blood stem
cell registry. One hundred and thirty-eight people responded and ordered at-home swab kits to be added to the donor pool for Hinton or other patients in need of a stem cell donor. Hinton thought she had a donor in December, but doctors couldn’t agree on some of the details of the stem cells, she said. Her first two potential donors came down with COVID-19.
See HINTON | page A26
Nonprofit raising funds for Hoover skate park By JON ANDERSON Johnny Grimes always loved skateboarding as a teenager and now has a 13-year-old son who is into skateboards, too. They have a skateboard ramp in their backyard in the Blackridge
community, but there’s really no safe, designated skate park they can enjoy anywhere close, Grimes said. He knows his family is not alone in the desire to see a skate park and is working with the city of Hoover to
See PARK | page A24