CONTENTS

April 2012

32

Featuring

// HOPE FOR A NEW GENERATION

We know how the media often paints today’s youth: lazy, unmotivated, disrespectful and violent. There’s one student at South Sumter High School who shatters those stereotypes and is grabbing life by the horns. Alex Keeler has spent countless hours in the laboratory hoping to find a cure for bacterial infections that affect residents of third-world countries.

WRITER: JAMES COMBS

40

46

// STIRRING IT UP

He looks and sounds like Bob Marley — but make no bones about it, he is actually Dr. John T. Williams, an orthopedic surgeon with TriCounty Orthopaedic Center in Leesburg.

WRITER: MARY ANN DESANTIS

// BLIND FAITH

After being mis-diagnosed with autism, it was discovered 3-yearold Gordon “Creed” Pettit actually had a rare eye disease. The smiling, cheerful boy hopes to be one of 24 kids across the country selected to undergo a Phase 3 clinical trial involving gene therapy.

WRITER: JAMES COMBS

ON

The Cover

DIRECTION: JAMIE EZRA MARK + CIERRA CHAPPELL

PHOTOGRAPHY: FRED LOPEZ

PHOTOSHOP: JOSH CLARK

MODEL: ALEX KEELER