PGA tour event to honor Marcus Byrd

Marcus Byrd has been chosen to receive the Charlie Sifford Memorial Exemption for the upcoming PGA Genesis Invitational in Pacific Palisades, Calif. Event host Tiger Woods made the official announcement. The PGA tour event will be contested Feb. 16-19 at the Riviera Country Club. The Golf Channel and CBS will provide TV coverage.

A native of Washington, D.C., Byrd is a former standout at Middle Tennessee State and now a regular on the Advocates PGA tour.

Charlie Sifford was the first Black golfer to compete on the PGA regular tour. The exemption in his honor goes each year to an up-and-coming minority golfer.

That broke the previous Old Dominion Athletic Conference (ODAC) mark of 236 held by Guilford’s Ben Strong. Long ago Mallory broke the R-MC record of 174 set by Pat Holland, 1988-91.

A leading candidate for ODAC Player of Year, Mallory began this week with 1,229 career points and 756 rebounds to go with his return to sender messages.

State schools’ career shot block leaders. Not all schools list this in their records and few tallied blocks prior to the mid-1970s.

Amy Black fell in love with tattoo art after getting her first tattoo as a college student at Columbus College of Art and Design in Columbus, Ohio.

“My love with getting tattoos and tattoo culture grew alongside what I was studying in college,” the former oil painting and anatomy student said. “It’s a fun to put art on your body.”

Turned off by large cities such as New York and Los Angeles, Ms. Black decided to move to Richmond. “I had apprenticed [in tattoo artistry] for a little bit and when I got to Richmond, I was working coffee shop jobs, trying to figure my life out,” she said. “I was 25 and attempting to ‘adult.’”

She was hired for administrative work at Alive Gallery, a local tattoo shop owned by Timothy Hoyer. Soon after, Ms. Black became Mr. Hoyer’s business partner for what became Alive Tattoo, and in 2005, she became the sole owner of the shop and renamed it Amy Black Tattoo.

In her work, she eventually recognized the need for “nipple and areola repigmentation” or “nipple and areola tattooing” as a part of breast reconstruction for patients who’d had mastectomies and were recovering from battling breast cancer.

In 2010, Ms. Black launched Pink Ink Fund, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing grants for people who desire to get a tattoo to make their breasts or chest look more realistic. Although reconstructive surgery may include a rebuild of the areola and nipple on the breast or chest, the natural coloring and pigmentation often is not there. A small number of artists do this type of tattoo work, and Pink Ink Fund provides grants to help people in need get reconstruction tattoos from her or other tattoo artists.

Ms. Black said she does about one reconstructive tattoo per week, and feels fortunate to be able to do what she