Profile 2023: Against All Odds

Profile

THE YEARBOOK OF SHELBY COUNTY

AGAINST ALL ODDS

SHELBY COUNTY’S STORIES OF PERSEVERANCE

Church & Community Ministries

Encourage | Equip | Empower | Engage

Vision of the Shelby Baptist Association:

The Shelby Baptist Association works in partnership with her member churches of Shelby County to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ through missions and ministries both locally and throughout the world.

In 1991, Church and Community Ministries (CCM) was organized and later incorporated as a 501(c)3 nonprofit charitable organization to propel and enhance the vision of the SBA.

We seek to meet physical needs which are temporary to address spiritual needs which are eternal.

“to equip (artizo) the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ”

Ephesians 4:12 (ESV)

Mentoring Ministries

• Budgeting, Counseling, English Classes, Bible Study

Ministries for Children

• School Supply Ministry, Shoe Ministry, Christmas Gift Shop

Hunger Ministries

• Ministry Center Food Pantry, Satellite Food Pantries, Mobile Food Pantry, Artizo Farms

Ministries to Provide Other Physical Needs

• Medical Partnership, Dental Ministry, Motor Ministry, Disaster Relief Ministry, UNITE – Community Missions

• Homeless Ministry

• Clothing, Furniture, Household Items

How You Can Help

We could not do all the ministries God has given us without the help of generous volunteers and donors. Please consider partnering with us when your church group, business, school, or civic organization is looking for service opportunities. See our website for a list of current needs and opportunities. You can also sign up to volunteer or give online. You can also shop or donate to Earthly Treasures.

www.shelbybaptist.org

Make sure to stop by Earthly Treasures Thrift Store

Located: 275 Columbiana Square, Columbiana, AL 35051.

Hours: M, T, Th, F 8:00am to 7:00pm W and S 8:00am to 5:00pm

*All proceeds from sales benefit Church and Community Ministries of the Shelby Baptist Association.

OOften, as a writer, you do interviews that stick with you like a picture glued to the front of your brain. Whether it is the emotion of the story or the true sense of astonishment of the story, they hit you right in the gut like a reality check.

That is this year’s issue of Profile. With the theme ‘Against All Odds’, each of our stories dive into the truly resilient fight shown by members of the Shelby County community who have since used their inspiration to impact others right here in the county and beyond.

As a forewarning, many of the stories will tug at your heartstring, but by the time you finish reading this edition of our annual publication, you will be ready to conquer anything that comes your way.

You will be amazed at the true resilience shown by so many to overcome some of their worst days only to see that their best was still ahead.

From health issues to abuse survival to what should have been a deadly plane crash, each story takes you down the path of just how close each of our individuals featured were to a completely different outcome.

More importantly, each story shows

their fight back, using their past to drive them to beat the odds.

We begin with an in-depth look at how Chris Stricklin, who grew up in Columbiana and now lives in Chelsea, survived what should have been an un-survivable plane crash as a pilot in the U.S. Air Force. Our 2023 Person of the Year, Stricklin not only survived, but he now serves as a motivational speaker all over, is a best-selling author of multiple books and works at Dunn Construction all while juggling the duties of being a dad to four kids, including two who were adopted.

Other stories focus on survival, overcoming the odds to be a grad student and college basketball athlete, helping with homeless survival, escaping a tragic hurricane to plant new roots and much more.

As you sift through this year’s special publication, I urge you to think about the circumstances these individuals faced and how they persevered. Each of us faces challenges on a daily basis, and while some might not be quite as drastic as others, these stories show us what we are capable of if we keep fighting.

THE YEARBOOK OF SHELBY COUNTY

EDITORIAL

Lizzie Bowen

Meg Herndon

Lauren Sexton

Noah Wortham

DESIGN

Jamie Dawkins

Connor Martin-Lively

Briana Sansom

MARKETING

Sydney Allen

Evann Campbell

Octavia Campbell

Kari George

Michaela Hancock

Rachel Henderson

Rhett McCreight

Tori Smith

Viridiana Romero

Anna Willis

ADMINISTRATION

Mary Jo Eskridge

Alec Etheredge

Madison King

This year’s Profile highlights special stories of perseverance. Despite odds stacked against them, these individuals fought through to come out on top. Pictured clockwise from the left are Chris Stricklin, Ashley Wheeler, Hewy Woodman, Dwayne Thompson and Lauren Sisler.

Stacey Meadows

Lauren Morris

Tim Prince

Kayla Reeves

Brittany Schofield

Savana Tarwater

ALEC ETHEREDGE, GENERAL MANAGER alec.etheredge@shelbycountyreporter.com

PHOTOS BY DAWN HARRISON, JEREMY RAINES AND KEITH MCCOY DESIGN BY CONNOR MARTIN-LIVELY

Instinct allowed Chris Stricklin to narrowly survive a terrifying plane crash, which led to a new outlook on life Off

Through surviving abuse as a child, Ashley Wheeler has set her sight on forgiveness and change for others

Wilsonville Elementary student Patton Hunt didn’t know if he’d walk again; now he serves as an inspiration

Facing the death of both parents in a matter of hours, Lauren Sisler’s path to success wasn’t easy

Tyler Churchwell overcomes being paralyzed as an infant to live life to the fullest

In the wake of being uprooted by Hurricane Katrina, Dwayne Thompson has made the most of his new life in Shelby County

After a hard fought health battle, Helena’s Hewy Woodman makes the most of each day

Courtside with TE Smith

Unsure of college, Te Smith is now set to get his masters degree as a collegiate athlete in his hometown

Tonya MacNicol doesn’t let her chronic illness define her, she let’s it drive her

PERSON OF THE YEAR 2023: CHRIS STRICKLIN

FIGHT OR FLIGHT

INSTINCT ALLOWED CHRIS STRICKLIN TO NARROWLY SURVIVE A TERRIFYING PLANE CRASH, WHICH LED TO A NEW OUTLOOK ON LIFE

BY ALEC ETHEREDGE | PHOTOS BY DAWN HARRISON AND CONTRIBUTED

WWaking up on the morning of Sept. 14, 2003 in Mountain Home, Idaho, an uneasy feeling weighed heavily on him as everything that could go wrong was going wrong.

At that point in time, Chris Stricklin didn’t know that a few hours later, he was going to be faced with an “unsurvivable moment” during a Thunderbirds air show.

A traumatic moment that has haunted him since, Chris was forced to eject from his Thunderbird jet less than a second before it hit the ground and became engulfed in flames.

It was 25.25 seconds of terror for Chris, but it was a moment in time that shaped the rest of his life.

Flashing before his eyes

With his plane 40 feet above ground and impact imminent, Chris knew an ejection at that height would likely kill him, leading to the decision not to pull the handle as adrenaline poured through his veins.

“I thought about ejecting three different times, and the last time I thought about it, my right hand, which I considered my fighter pilot hand, said no,” he said. “I knew the aircraft was going to hit the ground, and I knew I had to try to eject. I knew I was outside the envelope, I knew by the books it was unsurvivable, but when I thought about ejecting, my fighter pilot

hand said no, you put the aircraft here. You’re going to take it back or not go back.”

At that moment, a second away from barreling into the ground beneath him, smoke filled the cockpit and the canopy started blowing off.

“I thought, ‘Huh, why would that happen?’ Well, it would only happen if I jettison the canopy, which I looked down at the handle, and I didn’t, or if I ejected, which I just decided not to,” Chris said.

“But when I look down, my left hand has pulled the handle.”

Subconsciously, with the thought of leaving behind his family, his left hand pulled the ejection handle a half second before the plane hit the ground and burst

“I KNEW BY THE BOOKS IT WAS UNSURVIVABLE, BUT WHEN I THOUGHT ABOUT EJECTING, MY FIGHTER PILOT HAND SAID NO, YOU PUT THE AIRCRAFT HERE. YOU’RE GOING TO TAKE IT BACK OR NOT GO BACK.”

-CHRIS STRICKLIN

into flames as pieces of the aircraft flew in multiple directions.

“If you think training doesn’t work, I consciously decided not to eject the aircraft, but my body, the military training it had been through, knew it was the last second I could possibly have the chance of survival and my hand just pulled the handle,” he said. “I left the aircraft 40 feet above the ground, a half second before impact. What was that like? You can imagine how fast that worked.”

Years later, he still recalls all of the signs leading up to the terrifying moment.

Chris said they didn’t have enough gas to practice the show when they got there, points were moved, the helicopter flight didn’t work and satellite imagery wasn’t working properly.

“If it could go wrong, it did,” he said. “The day of the show, I called Terri and asked if everything was OK with the kids, I went to my safety observer and said, ‘something doesn’t feel right, I don’t want to do my take off maneuver.’ Being my boss, he told me to do it, so we went out to fly.”

Chris was the last aircraft to take off that day, and 25.25 seconds later, he was in the air facing survival.

Surviving the unsurvivable

As his seat lifted from the cockpit and threw him from the Thunderbird hurling toward earth, Chris was 40 feet above the ground with little time to prepare for the impact he was about to face.

“You usually get about three swings into the parachute and then it will dampen out and you start parachuting down,” he said.

For Chris, however, the chute opened, halted his forward momentum and when he swung down for the first time, he hit the ground with full force.

“I was so low, that when I swung down, I got no swings in the parachute, I just hit the ground,” he recalled.

Laying in the fireball, Chris was in a state of shock. The smoke and heat billowing from the aircraft was undetectable to him in the moment.

Conscious in the moment, he remarkably stood up and started walking to his safety observer close about a half mile away.

“On the third step, training kicked in and told me I was in shock,” he said. “I backtracked my steps and laid down and waited on the fire chief to come get me. Now, we know, if I would have kept walking, I would have walked through the hottest part of the fire.”

Laying there, the responders got the fire under control enough that they could get to him.

When the fire chief came running up, Chris told him, ‘Man, am I glad to see you,’ to which the chief responded, ‘Not as glad as I am to see you.’

He was then loaded on to a backboard and taken to the hospital.

“Everything was going as smooth as trauma can,” he said. “That’s when they started spinning up the helicopter to take me to a higher level trauma center. They all walk out of the room and told me it would be 30 seconds before everything was ready to take me to the helicopter.”

Then, alarms started going off on the equipment attached to Chris, while the heart monitor was beeping at an intense rate.

“What happened?” the doctors said coming back in.

“I just realized I ejected from an aircraft,” Chris responded.

“My adrenaline had worn off,” he said. “I don’t know how long

it was from the crash to that point, but to that moment, it was the calmest I ever was in my life until the adrenaline wore off.”

This was also around the time officials decided to reach out to let Chris’ wife Terri know about the accident, but miscommunication devastated her at first.

“She didn’t hear what was said,” Chris said. “She heard that I didn’t make it. Just to make it more traumatic for her, she thought I didn’t survive.”

It was a moment of shock for Terri.

“I talked to him at lunch time before he took off,” she said. “The next call was telling me there has been an accident. I thought a car accident at first, they said ‘No, he ejected and we don’t know if he’s OK.”

Normally attending the air shows with him, this time, Terri and the kids decided to stay home because of the show being in two different places in back-to-back days.

Thankful she and the kids weren’t there to witness the incident, she had a friend come to get the kids and take them to McDonalds while she tried to keep her composure.

“I didn’t get many updates after hearing he was taken to the trauma center, but finally, he called and said he was OK,” Terri said. “I flew up the next day and saw him to know he was OK. They put him through every test in the world, but he only had one

scratch on his chin and left side of face was swollen.”

At first, they thought a lot of things were wrong with Chris, but after eight hours strapped to a backboard and hearing negative thoughts, the doctor came in with miraculous news.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m going to unstrap you, be careful, you’re going to walk out of here,” the doctor said.

At approximately 1 a.m., they helped him off of the backboard he had been on all day, and he walked out of the hospital.

The only injuries were minimal. He had a scratch and his face was slightly swollen, while he will have some back problems and he is 2.5 inches shorter than he was before the crash.

“I was amazed,” Terri said. “I went from thinking he was dead one day to being amazed he was in as good of shape as he was the next day. It was a miracle, and I truly 100 percent believe God was watching over him that day. I was so thankful for that.”

Learning to cope

The trauma of the moment was something Chris and Terri brushed aside, moving on with their lives without mentioning it despite the struggles that followed over the next several years.

Directly after, Chris got his dream assignment to go fly F-15s in Japan.

“That day, I got a call from a mentor of mine,” Chris recalled. “He said, ‘I think your family needs a break. I said, ‘No. My wife loves me flying. She loves for me to go to another flying assignment.’ He told me, it was 11 a.m. on a weekday morning, he said, ‘Go take

Terri to lunch and ask her that question. If she says she wants you to go back to flying right now, then your off. You’re on your dream assignment. If not, I will get you in a non-flying assignment so your family can take a breath.”

Chris did exactly as his mentor requested.

“She said, ‘Heck no I don’t want you to go fly, I need a break. I need a break form you putting on the G suit and climbing into a jet,’” Chris said.

Chris said for a long time, that’s all they ever talked about it.

They moved on for a while with him working at the Pentagon and White House before he returned to flying.

“We never talked about the ejection and the impact it had on our family, and you know there was,” he said.

That changed on his last assignment as anxiety weighed him down climbing into an ejection seat.

After 20 years in the Air Force and living all over the world, he decided he didn’t want to do it anymore and retired.

“At that point, how do you deal with something you haven’t talked about in 15 years? Well, apparently the answer is write a book, publish it internationally and go on a speaking tour,” Chris said with a laugh.

That forced the two of them to start talking about it and dealing with it.

“We didn’t talk about it for a while,” Terri said. “We wanted to forget about it and move on. He thought I was fine, I thought he was fine. He met with his doctor and he told his doctor he was struggling. The doctor asked if he talked with me, and he said no.

The doctor suggested he do so. I think it was healing to say, ‘Oh my gosh, that was horrible; you almost died.’ I didn’t realize how much he was struggling, so it has been super great for us to talk about it.”

At that point, the couple, who started dating at 15 years old while at Shelby County High School, decided to make a move they never thought they would—back home.

With the comfort of opening up, Chris turned his near-death experience into an opportunity to inspire others to embrace life and live intentionally. He has now written two inspiring books titled Survivor’s Obligation and Aiming Higher.

Both books revolve around leadership qualities and living your life with purpose and feature co-authors with military backgrounds who joined forces to write the book with a goal of making a difference.

Living life intentionally

Stepping off stage at a recent speaking engagement in Indianapolis, Chris was approached by an older woman who stopped him and said, “My ex-husband has post-traumatic stress.”

“That is why I tell my story, opening a conversation about trauma and the after effects,” Chris said. “The cool story and videos get you to listen, but it’s the message I hope you take away. Every time I come down off stage, there is always someone who will tell me, ‘I’ve never told anybody, but…’. It all has to do with your life and how you can better embrace your life and learn from the things going on your life to live intentionally in every part of your life.”

He has also taken that same approach into the work field as the president of Dunn University, a construction company that maintains the mission of recruiting, training, developing and

retaining a skilled workforce.

Chris takes the leadership tools learned in the Air Force and the lessons learned from his near-death experience and applies them to everything he does both personally and professionally.

Whether that is getting the most out of a trip to Disney World with his family, adopting two of his four kids after the accident, implementing new practices within the work force to make this area the best in the country or joining statewide committees at the request of the governor.

It is a quality Terri has seen in her husband since very shortly after the accident and one the family has adopted with ease.

“We don’t want to put things off. If you want to take trips, take them. If you want to get the new thing, get it. Life’s short, if you get the chance to do it, do it,” she said. “Six months after, we went to China and adopted our daughter, then, a few years back, we went back and adopted our son. Those were the two biggest things for us.”

Adopting their two kids was something the couple had talked about for years but kept putting off. Then, they turned to living intentionally and made it happen.

“He doesn’t stop. I have to convince him to sit down and have a cup of coffee,” Terri said. “I’ve worked it into our routine that we sit on the porch to drink a cup of coffee so he can look around the yard for what he wants to do. He always is multi-tasking and it’s quite amazing honestly. He works his job, is a dad and husband, is on several committees, a speaker, an author; yet somehow, he still makes time for all of us. He is honestly the best person I know. He is a great father. He’s a great husband. He always thinks of us above everything else.”

Chris lives with that extra gear because he doesn’t want to give anything less than his all to everything he is passionate about.

“You never know when it is going to be your last day,” Chris said. “You never know when today is going to be your last and the last interaction with your family, with your co-workers is the last time they’ll talk with you. We have to ask ourselves each and every day when you close your eyes, ‘If today was my last day on earth, would I live it the same way?’ If the answer is no, fix it tomorrow. If the answer is yes, then learn how to do it again because if you ask yourself that each and every day, one of these days, you’ll be right.”

FINDING A

VOICE

LYDIA BRADLEY CARRIES ON HER DAD’S NAME BY ADVOCATING FOR FOCUS ON THE MENTAL HEALTH OF FIRST RESPONDERS

BY MEG HERNDON | PHOTOS BY KEITH MCCOY

TTen days after Lydia Bradley’s 15th birthday she was ushered into a police car.

Sitting alongside her mother and brother, no one said anything. Her mind raced a million miles a minute. When she saw the monitor in the patrol car showed her father’s location as red, the realization hit her. She said she knew, “He finally did it.”

Charles

Lydia always said goodbye to her father with the worry of if he would make it home. Being a daughter of a police officer, this fear was always a constant in the back of her mind.

“Other children, they get frustrated like, ‘My daddy’s out of town, he can’t come to

the field trip,’ and Lydia’s just like ‘I’m just worried if my daddy’s going to come home,” said April Bradley, Lydia’s mom.

Growing up in Calera, Lydia found herself in a close knit community. No matter the time spent apart or the distance that grew, she knew if she needed to, she could reach out to old friends and they would be there for her.

Currently in her senior year at Calera High School, Lydia is preparing for college, a majorette captain for the Calera Eagles and a vocal advocate for first responders’ mental health.

At just 17, she seems wiser than her years, somewhat by necessity.

Lydia’s father, Charles, died by suicide on Feb. 12, 2020, following long and ongo-

ing mental health issues related to a post-traumatic stress injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.

“When he passed, I was 15,” Lydia said. “I was 15, but I had to grow up to be like, 30. Whereas everyone else is still stuck at like being 17 and enjoying their life.”

Charles, also known as Charlie to his loved ones, served in the U.S. Coast Guard from 1994-2000. He then went on to pursue his dream of a career in law enforcement. Years into his time as a night shift officer with the Pelham Police Department, Charles was involved in an accident which totaled his squad car and left him unconscious.

In the ER, Charles was in shock, receiving staples to his head. But as a testament

to his dedication to the job, he showed up to work the next morning to complete the first injury report of the incident.

This wreck, and another one that occurred years later, tremendously impacted Charles. Battling mood swings, hallucinations, nightmares, insomnia, PTSD and other work-related health issues, Charles’ wife and family watched someone that they were used to being a solid foundation in their family struggle internally to express his emotions.

When Lydia came to the realization of what happened, anger and blame bubbled inside her, followed by guilt. Complex feelings for someone who just entered high school.

There were two sides to Charles.

“He was this big guy,” Lydia said, fondly remembering Charles’s larger than life personality. “He always loved to be on TV. He loved to be in pictures. He’s funny. He was laughing all the time.”

“He was just bigger than life,” April said. “He was fun, loving— he was a great guy.”

But, Lydia sensed there was something he never directly expressed with the family.

“One time, I was taking a shower and I came out and there was a note on my bed,” Lydia said.

The note expressed desires to be a better father and guilt surrounding how he had viewed his parenting. Charles said he was sorry for putting the two through “so much trouble.”

“I read that, and I ran to the kitchen,” Lydia said. “He was writing another note, and we both just broke down crying together. This was when I was 10.”

Lydia believes a lot of what her father was going through was a result of the crashes he was involved in, as well as everything he had to see as an officer. With no time to process the disturbing nature of crimes he had to deal with, and a lack of support in the police community for mental health related issues, Lydia could sense the job getting to him.

“They don’t get time to settle. They don’t get time to talk about what they witnessed. They get the next call,” Lydia said. “They were always told, ‘Hey, there’s a therapist here to talk to y’all if y’all want to talk to them.’ But, if they said anything to that therapist to indicate they were messed up in the head, they’d be terminated.

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“They would be put on the street, their family wouldn’t have been taken care of, they wouldn’t have been paid.”

Lydia said often, in order to cope, Charles would joke about what he had to see every day, attempting to soften the blow of the ongoing trauma that was being enacted on him and his family through the tough calls.

“If you know anything about people, their laughters are really their tears, and that’s him. He witnessed a lot,” Lydia said. “He sought help, but he never got it. His therapist told him he had to find another therapist, ‘You’re too much,’ they said. And he was put on medication, (it) didn’t help. He tried. He really did. But when someone is turned away so much, they don’t want to be turned away anymore.”

Grappling with the aftermath

Following her father’s passing, Lydia struggled. As with the nature of young teens, understanding and empathy were not fully given to her by her peers during her freshman year at Calera High School.

“My friends freshman year weren’t really supportive,” she said. “Because it’s a lot harder to explain everything that happened that

year. Once they found out my dad passed by suicide, I was looked at kind of differently. I wasn’t given really any leeway.”

Lydia explained that instead of being allowed to mourn and process her feelings, she was expected to jump straight back into life and be the same person she was before. Lydia said she doesn’t know why exactly this was expected of her, but she feels as if no one knew how to react to suicide.

“I will say, a lot of teachers and faculty at my school showed up when I needed them,” Lydia said.

In addition to Lydia attempting to be a normal teenager, taking classes through her grief, she also had to step up for her family. Lydia became a strong shoulder to lean on for her mother as her older brother had to leave shortly after her father’s passing as he served in the United States Army Special Forces.

Doing yard work and offering to pay for things, Lydia said she had to grow up fast. Her brother also grew closer to her, despite their six year age difference, telling Lydia and her mother not to worry about bills or the house.

As Lydia has been there for April in ways many cannot imagine, April has also been pivotal in Lydia’s journey through grief, especially as she deals with complex emotions and realizations that she sees a resemblance to her father in her own personality.

“I say I wouldn’t be here without my mother,” Lydia said. “I resemble more of him [Charles]. So, I put others first, I encourage them. Whereas, I’ve noticed this year I’ve been the one to be like, ‘Hey guys, let’s have a good practice. Don’t worry if you don’t catch it.’ But, no one’s been there for me.”

It’s that conflict of not knowing whether that is self-induced or reality that Lydia said sometimes makes her feel isolated.

“I have to think, if I look, people are there,” Lydia said about the support around her. “They’re not there patting me on the back, but if I need them, they’re there.”

She said she finds it hard to admit to others when she feel like she’s in a darker place.

“I’d rather keep it to myself,” she said, explaining that it somewhat comes from a feeling of needing to be strong for those around her, especially her mother.

Finding a voice

One way Lydia has found her voice is by advocating for first responders who struggle with PTSD and mental health related issues. Being an advocate for her father and others who have experienced similar struggles.

On Dec. 18, 2020, less than a year after Charles’ passing, Lydia participated in a virtual Wreaths Across America wreath laying ceremony at the Alabama National Cemetery. Lydia laid a Coast Guard service wreath in memory and honor of those who serve and have served in the U.S. Coast Guard.

It was a challenging task emotionally for Lydia, who said she could not have done it without the support of her mother.

“To validate her father, validates who she is,” April said. “And that’s what I try to tell people. To validate—it’s not about Charli, yeah he lived a great life, he was a great servant—but, it’s about her, the daughter that remains that has to pick the pieces up.”

Additionally, through First H.E.L.P. Lydia and her family found a community of support. April found the organization through Facebook, reaching out to Karen Solomon, CFO of First H.E.L.P. shortly after her Charles’ passing.

The nonprofit aims to reduce the stigma surrounding mental health for first responders, bring awareness to suicide and care for first responder families in the aftermath of a suicide loss.

During their first year involved with the nonprofit, the Bradley’s traveled to Texas to attend a First H.E.L.P. retreat for families impacted by a first responder’s suicide.

While there, Lydia supported and attended the renaming of a

bridge in Rowlett, Texas. The State Highway 66 bridge was officially named the “Heroes Memorial Bridge” which came about through many Texas veterans groups, public servants and more with the Walk The Bridge initiative.

Every year at the First H.E.L.P. retreat that Lydia attends in Texas, those present take part in the Walk The Bridge project that has occurred every month since 2018. According to the Walk The Bridge website, the walk is a symbolic commitment to walk 22 miles across the Heroes Memorial Bridge once a month to represent the approximate 22 veterans and first responders that die by suicide every day.

“We’re walking for them because they can’t,” Lydia said. “Really, it’s a walk for mental health and to let people know that we’re here advocating. There’s a bunch of people that don’t know about these groups.”

Additionally, Lydia wrote a letter that was read by the U.S. Senate in Washington D.C. during the passing of S-3635 — 117th Congress (2021-2022), the Public Safety Officer Support Act of 2022. Lydia, along with other families that have lost a loved one to suicide, wrote a letter emphasizing the importance of fighting the

stigma around suicide and the notion that it is not an “honorable death.”

The act was later signed by President Joe Biden and extends death and disability benefits under the Public Safety Officers’ Benefits Program to certain public safety officers (PSO) and survivors of PSO’s who suffer from PTSD or acute stress disorder following stressful situations on duty. Additionally, the act will give benefits to the survivors of Officers who die by suicide and PTSD related mental and physical injuries.

Lydia heard about the initiative after First H.E.L.P. informed the families of the act and the call to write a letter.

“I wanted it to be known that first responder families need help,” she said. “I just really wanted to write that letter and get the word across that this is an everyday thing. We struggled every day. I’d be at church and little kids can write a prayer, and every day I would write my dad. I don’t want him to get killed.

“It’s not just the fact that we have to fear for them being shot. We have to fear for them to be shot by themselves,” Lydia said.

Ultimately, throughout her many campaigns, Lydia hopes by being a voice for Charles, and many others battling mental health

illnesses, many lives can be saved and those who need to hear it can be told that, “It’s OK not to be OK.”

The signing of the act was somewhat like a burden being lifted off of Lydia’s shoulders. To Lydia, it shows that people are listening.

“I guess it’s more important to me just for people to hear and be like, ‘We hear you. We hear your voice,’” Lydia said.

A teenager

Despite taking on large responsibilities, Lydia is still only a teenager, and she does her best to also be involved in things other 17-year-olds are involved in.

As a member of the National Honor Society at her school, the Upward Bound Program at Montevallo, a majorette captain for the Calera Eagles, an assistant at EnMotion Twirl Co. and a part time worker at Warehouse 31, Lydia keeps busy.

Most of all, as her senior year quickly comes to a close, she’s excited for college.

She spoke eagerly, discussing possibly attending Auburn University and a potential psychology or speech pathology degree, both slightly influenced by her desire to continue advocating for first responders’ mental health.

“I didn’t think about going into psychology until noticing that there’s a trend with all these officers and first responders who have taken their lives,” Lydia said, also mentioning how some psychologists still fail to help first responders, saying she’d like to break that mold.

Lydia, although hesitant, is hopeful for not only her future, but also the future of bringing awareness to the mental health of first responders. Like anyone, she has hard days or weeks or months, but seeing some of her goals become reality allows her moments of remembering why she began doing this—for Charles.

“They just don’t want to be turned away anymore,” Lydia said.

A COMMUNITY

FOR ALL

EMPOWERING SURVIVORS OF HOMELESSNESS AND POVERTY IS A DAILY MISSION FOR AVERY RHODES AND HER TEAM AT COMMUNITY ON THE RISE.

BY EMILY SPARACINO | PHOTOS BY JEREMY RAINES AND CONTRIBUTED

CColumbiana resident Avery Rhodes and her Community on the Rise colleague JoAnn Moak were working at the nonprofit in downtown Birmingham when a woman walked in one morning last year with tears streaming down her face. The woman told Avery and JoAnn that she was ready to leave her abuser and needed somewhere to go. “We were both trying to figure out ways to help her and making phone calls,” Avery says. “No safehouse in Jefferson County was available; they were all full.”

JoAnn continued to make calls until she reached a shelter in Shelby County that had space for the woman. Then, her heart—and the memories of the abuse she had gone through, much like this woman, a strang-

er—took over. “I watched her reach out and put her hand on top of this woman’s hand and say, ‘You deserve to feel safe,’” Avery says. “I just thought, my goodness, all of the things that you have gone through have become a means for you, as a survivor, to offer that gift back to other women. It was just so beautiful to see.”

Stories like this one are why Avery, 44, and her Community on the Rise team return to their space inside Birmingham’s Church of the Reconciler day after day, year after year. For Avery, running the nonprofit she helped to create to serve people experiencing homelessness and poverty is a privilege beyond her wildest dreams.

Seeing the need

Avery grew up in Selma and, even as a child, she was aware of the socioeconomic disparities between different groups in the community. “What I did notice growing up was that there was clearly a community of people who were low-income and did not seem to have the same resources, and they were primarily African-American,” she says. “This is where I started learning a little bit about historical racism and things that had kept certain community members without the opportunity or access to the same resources.”

Avery left Selma to attend the University of Alabama, and after graduating in 2001,

she taught public speaking in Alabama’s community college system for several years. In 2006, she and her husband, Chris, moved to Shelby County and opened Alabama Furniture Market in Calera. The couple’s oldest daughter, Willa Rose, was a baby at the time. “She took her first steps in the furniture store,” Avery says.

For the next 14 years, Avery helped Chris build the business while they continued to grow their family, eventually welcoming three more children: Hopper, Walton and Scarlet. “I learned a lot about the business side of things that I didn’t know from my communications background,” Avery says. “I learned more about human resources, about marketing strategies, about managing, and it was really insightful for me, for what ended up being my next step.”

In her mind, Avery kept going back to what she had noticed in her hometown and in her teaching career. “I just had a real desire to learn more about poverty,” she says. “I had taught some students who were low-income when I was working in the community college system. I wanted to go and serve and learn a little bit more about the homeless population in Birmingham.”

She had started volunteering at Church of the Reconciler, a 25-year-old ministry in downtown Birmingham. “I was working with people experiencing homelessness,” she says. “I just started by serving breakfast one morning a week. As I was doing that—lis-

tening and learning from people, hearing their stories, learning their names, talking with them about my kids and talking about their kids—I just realized I knew so little about systemic poverty, how it functions, how people get trapped in it, what the culprits and causes of homelessness really are, and how diverse they can be, but yet, at the same time, how interconnected with poverty they can be, and how much trauma is involved in homelessness. All of these were things I was learning.”

The more relationships she built with people, the deeper Avery’s understanding became of the issues that burden so many. “For several years, I spent time just reading and learning academically about poverty in America, about the affordable housing crisis, about fair wage and minimum wage, lack of resources, how the social safety net does and does not work,” she says. “I just got myself an education.”

In her words, Avery wanted to empower people and help create the kind of infrastructure that could actually move them out of poverty and homelessness. “We would see people who were homeless for years without a lot of resources to move out of it, people with talents and skills but trapped in some of the circumstances of poverty and trauma,” she says. “I really wanted to build something that could help people on a path out to remove some of those barriers.”

HELPING THE COMMUNITY

HOW TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE FOR THOSE WHO NEED IT MOST

Community on the Rise is located inside the Church of the Reconciler, at the corner of First Avenue North and 14th Street North in Birmingham. Those who need resources or are interested in volunteering may visit Community on the Rise or email Avery Rhodes at avery@communityontherise.com or JoAnn Moak at joann@communityontherise.com. For more information about the nonprofit, visit Communityontherise.com.

Building community

Five years ago, the idea of an organization to do just that began to take shape. Avery partnered with Church of the Reconciler Co-Pastor Adam Burns and now-Community on the Rise Board President Mollie Erickson to form a shared vision of what they could do to help. “We started creating the notion of what a nonprofit would look like within the church that I already volunteered in so it would be proximate to the community there,” Avery says. “We talked to community members who were experiencing homelessness, learned a lot, and then decided we really need to have a holistic approach because poverty is so complicated. We need to address the major components that can keep people stuck in it.”

They founded Community on the Rise with a focus on four tenets: connecting people to housing, education, healing and employment. “Why doesn’t everyone have access to these resources? It’s not so simple as to be about people being bad or good,” Avery says. “In fact, our community is so incredibly generous and kind and good and full of talents and skills and things that we want for them to get to build on. It’s just so often that they don’t have that opportunity.”

According to Avery, debilitating stereotypes that exist about the homeless community lead society to believe that those experiencing homelessness must have something wrong with them, they must have made poor choices and it’s in their power to not be homeless.

“I often bring up the stereotype, ‘Why don’t you just go get a job?’ as an example, because that’s one that gets thrown out a lot, right? We’ve all heard it,” she says. “I tell people about one of the women who is a recent graduate of our housing and employment program. When I met her, she had a full-time job. She was working 40 hours a week in a gas station, but she was making minimum wage, and it wasn’t enough to cover the rent and utilities of basically any apartment in Birmingham, much less anywhere else. So, I tell people, ‘Let me break that stereotype

for you right there: Lots of our community members do have jobs.’”

With rent rates increasing and not enough subsidized housing available, those in the low-income category are struggling to find affordable housing and avoid being evicted. “If you look at the primary narrative around eviction, it’s like, ‘Well, you didn’t pay your rent, so you got evicted.’ It’s just rarely that simple,” Avery says. “If people are paying way more than they can actually afford every month, eventually it’s going to catch up with them and they can’t pay it. That’s a primary cause of homelessness right there.”

Another issue for many community members is they do not have access to their identity documents, such as a birth certificate, state ID/license or Social Security card. For those experiencing homelessness, the chances of something happening to the documents are much higher if they have to carry them around all the time. “Then, you have nothing with which to get a job,” Avery says. “It’s actually quite difficult to get all those documents back together if you’ve lost all of them. One of the resources that we offer is helping people to get their identity documents recovered, and we’ve built some really amazing partnerships around that with the Jefferson County Health Department and the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency down in Montgomery. We have recovered 840 documents since 2020.”

JoAnn, who serves as Community on the Rise’s communications and outreach coordinator, is among those who have benefited from the nonprofit’s identity document recovery services. Those services happened to be the bridge that connected JoAnn to Community on the Rise in the summer of 2020. After moving to

Alabama from an abusive living situation in Texas, the only identity documents JoAnn had were an expired ID, her Social Security card and her birth certificate. “Even though I had no home, no job and was living in a completely new city and state, I was still better off than where I had escaped from,” she says. “However, without a valid ID, I couldn’t get work.”

Someone told JoAnn about the services Avery and her Community on the Rise team offer for identity documents, so JoAnn asked Avery for help with getting an Alabama ID. “When I finished talking to her and telling her my situation, I asked if she ever needed volunteers,” JoAnn says. “She jokingly said, ‘Don’t ask that too loud, I might take advantage.’ The next day, I showed up again and started volunteering for her.”

In 2020 and 2021, Community on the Rise helped people with low income and identity document issues get access to their stimulus checks. A week after one man received his stimulus money, Avery found an envelope from him in her mailbox. “Inside, in the best penmanship, was a check made out to Community on the Rise for a donation of $150 from the precious man who had no home, no car, no job at the time (though he does now),” Avery says. “The letter he wrote along with the check insisted that it was the least he could do, and we best not try to give it back.”

Hope and healing

Avery also emphasizes the healing part of Community on the Rise’s mission. “Pretty much anyone that walks over our threshold into our space has experienced trauma of some kind, whether

that is the pain of abuse or neglect, losing a parent to violence or incarceration when they’re very young, or having experienced family violence at home,” she says. “They bring and carry that baggage with them, and it often affects and stifles their ability to move forward.”

When JoAnn started volunteering with Community on the Rise, she was trying to begin a new chapter after many years of physical and emotional abuse spanning from childhood to adulthood. The ways she was mistreated, and the negative things said to and about her, had chipped away at her self-esteem enough to convince her she was not worth much. “I was treated worse than the dirt under the gum on the bottom of someone’s shoe,” she says. After moving to Alabama and meeting Avery, JoAnn slowly began to start over. Volunteering at Community on the Rise became an outlet for her. “Initially, I was just signing people in and helping keep the list organized as to who was next,” she says. “Eventually, I started adding more and more things to what I could do to help. I organized her library, helped make advent boxes, Easter baskets, etc., and little odd things that helped make things a little easier for Avery. I only did things that I felt comfortable doing.”

JoAnn joined a pilot program at the nonprofit called W.H.O.L.E., which gave her and other participants stable housing, working wages and health and dental coverage. She also added more tasks to her plate, including scheduling weekly appointments, communicating with organizations that may need to bring clients, fielding calls from clients in need of services and creating a database for client files. “When I first started working with Avery, you couldn’t pay me to do half of the things I am doing now, especially public speaking,” she says. “I was too scared. Since meeting Avery, I have greatly expanded my comfort zone.”

She credits Avery with encouraging her to move past the fear and anxiety she was hiding behind and reclaim her life. “She helped me to see that I am worth something more than being used as a doormat or worse,” JoAnn says. “She helped me to believe in myself again. I am still working on myself every day, but without Avery’s encouragement, I would still be a scared little girl living in an abandoned building, thinking I was worthless and that nobody really cared.”

And JoAnn says she has started to share her story with more people to let them know they are not alone and there is hope for them, too. “Today, I am taking back my control and kicking down the fear walls,” she says. “Now, I can honestly say, if sharing my story can help even one person, it is worth destroying that fear wall and becoming the person I am today.”

Lately, Avery has done more research on trauma-informed care to more effectively work with people who have gone through extremely difficult circumstances and who perhaps harbor the idea that they are somehow defective. “That is the primary message that they’ve got rather than, ‘Hey, you’ve had so much pain. Let’s talk about that and let’s definitely be accountable for your life now and what you can do next for yourself, but let’s also recognize that you’ve lost so much along the way,’” she says. “That has been really eye-opening for me in learning how to work with folks and create a culture of love and dignity for people who have experienced great pain and trauma.”

Avery says the generosity of people who have been through trauma is stunning. It could be as simple as someone suddenly picking up a broom and sweeping the floor at Community on the Rise because they saw dirt or debris on it. “I am so awestruck by the kindness and resilience of people who have been through so

much,” she says. “It’s not that we don’t have hard days, because we do, and it’s not that there’s not really negative and sometimes harmful effects of trauma that are on display, because there are. But, I think I’m always amazed by how much generosity is still shared in love.”

Community on the Rise holds a weekly group therapy meeting called Community Table, which is open to anyone every Tuesday at 10 a.m. One morning, the group was talking about addiction, and a woman opened up about her struggles with drug addiction since she was a teenager. “She’s crying and she’s telling us about being a mother to a 5-year-old, and how when she gets to be with him, she’s a good mom,” Avery says. “She said, ‘I’ve done all the things, all the programs; I’ve tried. Something is wrong with me, and I can’t let it go.’ A gentleman on either side of her looked at her, took her hand, and one man said, ‘There is nothing wrong with you.’ He just kept repeating it. I don’t think she had ever heard that before.”

Community on the Rise also operates a housing program that hires survivors of homelessness to recycle #5 polypropylene plastic waste into eco-friendly goods, such as jewelry and ornaments, in the nonprofit’s onsite workshop. “They usually get taken out of recycling bins and put in the landfills,” Avery says of the plastic waste items. “We stepped into that gap and we make beautiful things from the recycled plastic.”

Avery says she is excited to possibly grow the social enterprise

and hire even more survivors for work that offers the chance for creativity, expression and growth. “We’re definitely always looking at trauma-informed care with the way that we work with one another and trying to build a culture that truly values each other and each other’s voice,” she says.

Community on the Rise currently has a staff of three, which Avery hopes to expand, plus many volunteers and an always-open door for more. “I love for volunteers to find a space that fits their passion,” she says. “There’s no pressure for volunteering. One of the most beautiful gifts you can offer is just being with us in our space, learning about us.”

And that’s exactly what this journey has been about for Avery: being with people and learning about who they are, not just what circumstances they are facing. For all the hardship and trauma they have experienced, the people who make Community on the Rise what it is—a fresh start, a second chance, a new chapter— show the good in humanity through their kindness and resilience.

“I wonder if I were in the position that some of our community members are in, would I have that to offer?” Avery says. “I don’t know. I hope so. It’s amazing to me because folks are living in crisis mode a good bit of the time, they’re experiencing homelessness and vulnerability, and they are still finding within themselves the ability to build relationships and share kindness. It’s pretty awe-inspiring.”

A VOICE THAT WOULDN’T DIE

ALABAMA ATHLETICS PLAY-BY-PLAY BROADCASTER CHRIS STEWART SURVIVES MULTIPLE HEALTH SCARES

BY ALEC ETHEREDGE | PHOTOS BY DAWN HARRISON AND CONTRIBUTED

LLaying in a hospital bed, inhaling deeply through his oxygen mask, a nurse helps him lift his arm in the air on Sept. 30, 2019, just days after his wife was calling family to let them know he may not survive.

For Chris Stewart, it was the third time in two years battling for his life after suffering a stroke from two blood clots a little more than a year earlier and having major heart bypass surgery a month before.

This time around, however, the Hoover resident and play-by-play broadcaster best known for working with the University of Alabama was waking up from a coma and in for his toughest battle yet.

A voice that wouldn’t die

In his home following Sunday church service in late August, 2019, Chris was saying goodbye to guests just a week after his bypass surgery.

“When the last visitor left the house on Sunday and the door shut, I have no memory of the next month to this day,” he said.

Rushed to the hospital, doctors determined Chris was suffering from pneumonia, sepsis, kidney failure, myalgia, liver failure, lung failure and pancreas failure due to an infection from the surgery.

He was put into a coma and on a ventilator, and it was unclear if he would survive.

“It was touch and go for a few days,” wife Christy Stewart said. “I’m trying not to let the kids see how serious it was. That first weekend, he was. That first weekend, he was having trouble breathing. Doctors said we need to paralyze him, incubate him. He wasn’t making the turn they needed him to make.”

It ended up being determined he had staff in his lungs and his blood. With it being unclear if Chris would survive, Christy started calling family and friends to tell them they needed to prepare to tell him

goodbye.

At 35 years old with an 18-year-old son, a 14-year-old son and an 18-year-old step daughter at the time, she was forced with the possibility of being a widow.

“The first few days, they didn’t know what was going on and they were giving him the wrong medicine,” Christy said. “I was obviously very concerned. It was a lot. But, a few days later, they were able to get him the right antibiotics and he started to make the turn.”

After a critical 3-4 days, Chris’ health improved and he was eventually woken from his coma and his path to recovery began.

Fast forward to Sept. 30 in his hospital bed and he is working with the nurse on therapy.

After lifting his arm once, he couldn’t do it again. Later that day, he did it three times. The mental battle, however, was tough to overcome.

“He didn’t want to eat or do the therapy,” Christy said. “I was like, ‘Look at what all you have to live for, you have to want to get better.’ They looked at a nursing home because he wasn’t working and thought he would be that way forever.”

That all changed one day when Chris’ son Hudson came to the hospital for a visit. That was the motivation he needed.

He slowly started to progress and was able to walk up and down

the hallway with assistance from the nurses.

Eventually, he fought all the way back, and just before Thanksgiving, he returned home with his family on Nov. 27, 2019.

“It was all God and people’s faith in God,” Chris said. “I never should have survived the stroke and then the bypass and infection, let alone to be where I am three years later. The only explanation is God showed me favor for whatever reason.”

Chris’ fight, however, started well before that on April 16, 2018.

April 16, 2018

Two weeks ahead of his 48th birthday, Chris went to bed feeling completely normal only to wake up 12 hours later with his wife standing over him at Brookwood hospital telling him he had a stroke.

“I just looked at her and said, ‘No I didn’t.’” Chris recalled. “She said, ‘Yes, you did.’”

It took a while to determine that Chris had two blood clots on his brain.

“I was well outside of the window for someone surviving a stroke or even having minimal effects,” he said.

He was quickly taken to surgery, where he faced his first of three life-threatening problems in a year-and-a-half span.

“I NEVER SHOULD HAVE SURVIVED THE STROKE AND THEN THE BYPASS AND INFECTION, LET ALONE TO BE WHERE I AM THREE YEARS LATER. THE ONLY EXPLANATION IS GOD SHOWED ME FAVOR FOR WHATEVER REASON.”

-CHRIS STEWART

On the table of Dr. Jitendra Sharma, the surgery was as challenging as expected, but a miraculous turn occurred.

“Dr. Sharma told me he cleared the blood clots on what he says was his last attempt in good conscious,” Chris said. “That’s how close I was to death.”

After, the only side effect he faced was a droop in his left eye. Chris wore an eye patch for the next 11 months and was grateful that was his only problem.

“An eye specialist told me it would be two-and-a-half or three years before the eye muscle would return to full strength, if ever, but I needed to pray for the fact that it may never get better because that was a strong likelihood,” Chris said.

He went through the next basketball season wearing tape over his glasses. Then, 11 months after the stroke, a doctor at Callahan Eye examined him and said, ‘You can peel the tape off of your glasses. You don’t need them anymore. You are healed.’”

Five months later, he ran into Dr. Sharma at a social gathering.

“You look great,” Sharma told Chris upon seeing him.

“I feel great,” Chris responded.

But he also shared with him that he felt a tingling sensation and tightness in his left arm at times.

After scheduling an appointment to be seen by a cardiologist, it was determined he had a widow maker with a 95 percent blockage to his heart.

“If he doesn’t tell me that and tell me to go get it checked out, I probably die of a massive heart attack,” Chris said.

He had surgery and was back home later that same week, before the infection set in that next Sunday.

Yet again, however, he persevered.

After all of that—facing death three separate times—Chris is back to doing what he loves as the voice of Alabama basketball, baseball and now football, while his good friend Eli Gold faces his own health battle.

Taking flight

As a student at the University of Montevallo, Chris was a man of many hats. He worked at WBYE radio station in Calera, wrote for the university’s newspaper and was the sports lead for the school’s TV station.

That’s where his dreams took flight.

“The biggest thing I learned at Montevallo was I knew that everything I was doing there is exactly what I wanted to do for a living,” he said. “I thought when I was at Montevallo, the coolest thing in the world to do would be to have success, then go back to Montevallo, move WBYU radio in Calera, get students interning there, basically doing what I was doing in college as an adult. I think that was a really cool dream and aspiration, but I think it was an example where I don’t know that I dreamed big enough. I didn’t see much going far beyond those borders.”

Of course, he had dreams of ESPN as many young people in

sports journalism do, but he had no real plan on where he was going, just aspirations.

Then, the dominoes seemed to fall into place.

“If I ever write a book, it will have something to do with dominoes,” Chris said. “My grandfather would play dominoes, and I never knew how it worked. When I went, I’d play with the dominoes and stack them up, line them up and see how far they could go before stopping. I think life is a lot like that. One opportunity becomes the next and the next and the next.”

And just like that, they started falling into place for him.

His time at Montevallo gave him the skills and experience necessary to get his start in sports broadcasting because he was able to broadcast more than 100 games between campus TV and WBYE before even graduating.

“I had a better resume than a lot of others because of that on-air work before internet was a thing,” he said. “We were really fortunate to have the outlet we did.”

Chris got his first job working at a local radio station in Warrior after graduating, and while it was short lived, it continued assuring him it was the right path.

He then got a job at a local newspaper answering phones. After a few months, the sports editor became the editor, opening up the possibility for Chris to tackle the sports editor role.

Next thing he new, he was also working with a local radio station and helping broadcast local games on the Alabama Cable Network.

“That brought it full circle from what I said what I wanted to do

“I HAD NEVER BEEN TO NEW YORK IN MY LIFE. NOVEMBER OF 2002, I’M SITTING THREE SEATS DOWN FROM DICK VITALE, CENTER COURT AT WORLD’S MOST FAMOUS ARENA, AND I’M THE PLAYBY-PLAY PERSON FOR ALABAMA BASKETBALL. IT WAS SURREAL THEN, AND IT’S SURREAL NOW GOING INTO MY 21ST SEASON.”

-CHRIS STEWART

at Montevallo where I was sports editor at the paper, sports lead at the TV station and sports lead at the local radio station. I wanted to do all of that and get paid for it. Now, I was.”

Then, the next dominoe fell into place when he ran into then Birmingham-Southern College basketball coach Duane Reboul.

“I went to the Montevallo/Birmingham-Southern game as an alum and fan,” Chris said. “I ran into coach Reboul in the hallway. He told me he saw the work I was doing with CAN and that he was impressed.”

A month later, Reboul called Chris and offered him a chance to cover the team’s NAIA tournament as the radio play-by-play broadcaster.

Chris swiftly jumped on board and did the job for the 1995 tournament in which the team won five games and a national championship.

That started an eight-year run broadcasting their games.

Also working with UAB at times for their broadcasts, becoming the first sideline reporter the university ever had for football, people in Tuscaloosa started to take notice. In 2002, a dream he never saw coming took him on an adventure that has now lasted 20 years.

Riding the wave

Sitting courtside, the lights shone down brightly on him inside one of the most historic arenas in the country. Chris looked out in front of him and couldn’t believe his eyes as he prepared to make is debut to calling Alabama basketball games on Nov. 14, 2002. It was preseason No. 8 Alabama against preseason No. 3 Oklahoma inside Madison Square Garden in New York City.

“I’m from Fairfield,” Chris said with a laugh. “I had never been to New York in my life. November of 2002, I’m sitting three seats down from Dick Vitale, center court at world’s most famous arena, and I’m the play-by-play person for Alabama basketball. It was surreal then, and it’s surreal now going into my 21st season.”

Thus began Chris living out a dream he had since he was a 10-year-old boy listening to John Forney as the voice of the Alabama Crimson Tide.

For the last 20 years, he has been the voice of Alabama basketball and baseball.

But recently, that dream went a step further when his good friend and co-worker Eli Gold was forced to sit out broadcasting during the 2022 football season.

With Gold sidelined to focus on his own health, Chris, after fighting for his life, was now the voice of Alabama football.

“It’s really special,” Chris said. “I hate the circumstances because it means that a friend has had some struggles. I don’t wish that on anybody, especially when you’ve shared similar experiences. At the same time, to be an Alabama fan my entire life and realize since 1953, there have only been five people do this, and albeit on an abbreviated time and in an interim role, I’m one of the five. That’s pretty cool.”

Chris did say just as Gold, Roger Hoover, Jim Dunaway and others were able to fill in while he was battling his health concerns, he is happy to help out his good friend while he is out.

“Having sat shoulder to shoulder with Eli the last three years and drawing on the things you saw him do, you know, I can’t call a game the way he does, and I never will, but there are ways he goes about his job that if I don’t do it the way he does, I want to at

least live up to the standard he has set,” Chris said. “The thing I’ve really tried to do is know I can’t be him, but do my best so that Alabama fans don’t feel like they’re getting anything less than they’ve been accustomed to in the past. I don’t know that I’ve lived up to it, but I know I’ve done my best.”

Chris said as pressure-packed as the situation is to call games for one of the top college football programs of all-time and do so in place of Gold, the fact that he followed Gold 20 years ago in basketball and has been around the football program for many years has made it easier.

“When I first started, I had very little identity and background with the fan base,” Chris said. “That has changed. There is a lot more grace with me coming in than someone from the outside because there seems to be a comfort level with me, at least that’s what fans have expressed to me.”

He said that is on display everywhere he goes for speaking engagements, as fans come up to him and tell them they prayed continuously for him during his health battle—a reason he thinks he is still alive.

Now, he just enjoys the aspect of calling some of the best games in the country on a weekly basis and doesn’t sweat the nerves as much.

“It doesn’t matter where you are or where your broadcasting from, you want to call meaningful games,” Chris said. “Everybody’s mean something, but when you’re doing an Alabama game, you’re almost always doing a game that has national relevance. There is an intensity when you’re doing a game like that, and while we, as broadcasters, don’t have a role in the outcome, you want to capture it. There are no redoes. You get one shot at it. You better hope you get it right.”

Chris said the dream for him started at 10 years old in the back of the car listening to Forney call the 1980 Alabama-Mississippi State game.

“I was balling my eyes out because, holy cow, Alabama lost and to Mississippi State. That doesn’t happen,” he said. “I remember listening to John call that game and the descriptions he gave of what was unfolding.”

It wasn’t a fond memory from a win-loss perspective, but one

that stuck with Chris several years later when getting to know Forney, who eventually listened to his demo tapes as a young professional hoping to get his start.

Then, one year at SEC Media Days in 1997, Chris saw Forney walking off and decided to run up to him and share some news.

“I told him I was going to be doing some work with UAB football during the fall by filling in for Gary Sanders during a couple of broadcasts,” Chris said. “John said, ‘Chris, I am so happy for you. I just hope I’m where I can hear you.’”

Less than five hours later, Forney died.

Chris, however, wanted to make sure to do his career and life justice, so he decided to write a column.

“I talked about him saying that he hoped he was where he could hear me,” Chris said. “I finished the column saying, ‘John, I hope you can hear me and I hope you liked what you hear.’ To go from that to being the guy who sits in his chair is really special.”

Now, Chris sits in that chair, having knocked on deaths door three separate times and been turned away, and his voice is louder and more proud than ever as the voice of the Alabama Crimson Tide.

A SUNFLOWER OF

SOLIDARITY

THROUGH SURVIVING ABUSE AS A CHILD, ASHLEY WHEELER HAS SET HER SIGHT ON FORGIVENESS AND CHANGE FOR OTHERS

BY LIZZIE BOWEN | PHOTOS BY DAWN HARRISON

SStanding triumphantly in a sea of sunflowers, Ashley Wheeler smiles as she grazes the field in thought of their strength and power.

“I love sunflowers,” Ashley said. “I like the story of how they grow.”

Ashley identified with how sunflowers grow out of stress and turmoil and when they finally do sprout and grow, they are strong. Their roots are solid and can withstand anything the world might make them weather. Above all else, they are beautiful.

Changing lives

The farm is quiet as she tells of her passion for helping others and working toward a world in which women and children who have fallen victim to a household full of domestic violence are able to find solace in her story.

Ashley first started her nonprofit A2Z Hope Inc. in 2017 to help women and children who have suffered from domestic violence.

Ashley said it was difficult to get the nonprofit started because she feared what others might think when she came forward with her story. She worried about the reactions of family, friends and others.

“I finally said I was going to do it in 2017,” Ashley said. “That is when I got it established, but I sat on it for about three or four years because I was afraid, kind of embarrassed and dealing with all kind of emotional rollercoasters.”

Ashley said that the childhood neglect she experienced in her youth also worked as a roadblock to getting her nonprofit started. The same neglect she experienced in childhood was exactly what she felt like might occur in her adult life. She feared that nobody would care about her nonprofit or offer any kind of support.

Furthermore, throughout the process of getting A2Z started, Ashley was riddled with recollections of the past.

“At some point, you just think, ‘Is anybody going to even care about the situation?’ I noticed growing up, when we heard my dad abusing my mom, I remember feeling some feelings of embarrassment,” she said. “I remember feelings of embarrassment to go to school.”

Growing through the pain

Ashley said that when she was growing up, she felt isolated by her peers in school due to the fact that they all had the knowledge that her mother was being abused and even had heard it occurring

at times.

“I have three brothers and we would be outside playing,” she said. “The situation would happen between my mom and dad, and all my friends would hear the commotion and our play time was cut short. We would have to go in the house.”

Ashley tearfully recalls how peers reacted throughout her childhood in regards to the abuse of her mother.

“We got made fun of a lot,” she said.

Ashley said that the pain of conquering the embarrassment and trauma isn’t a linear experience and the healing process seems to be forever ongoing.

“Honestly, I wouldn’t say it is 100 percent healed,” she said. “I just always dealt with things my whole life.”

Just like the sunflowers that withstand the heat and wind, Ashley self-identified as a very tough person.

“I am a pretty strong person,” she said. “I just ignore things and

move on with my life, do things that make me happy and not worry about what people say. At a certain point, it does start to weigh on you, but I find things I enjoy to do and that helps.”

A voice for others

Who Ashley is today is exactly the kind of person she wished would come and save her as a child.

“I wanted to start this because I wanted to be a voice and bring awareness to domestic violence,” Ashley said. “Being a child growing up and having to go through an abusive home situation, one day I decided I wanted to be a voice for other kids who could be going through the same thing growing up.”

Ashley said that the kind of trauma that can come from growing up in a household of abuse is one that doesn’t fade throughout time and often stays with you far beyond childhood.

“I just decided that dealing with the emotional rollercoaster that comes with it, even with me being an adult now,” Wheeler said. “The past trauma, it still carries on with your through your entire life.”

Ashley said that doing this type of work helps in her own personal journey of self-healing and recovery.

“It also helps me,” she said. “It helps me cope, helping others, helping women and children, it continually helps me.”

Ashley implored anyone who is going through a similar situation to what she experienced to try and hold out hope as there is hope all around us.

“There is help,” Ashley said. “There is hope. You can deal with it.”

She said she now feels like a voice to the voiceless, which is something she wish she had growing up.

“I feel like back then I could have used a person like me,” she said. “Someone that I could go to and talk to when I was down and out or depressed.”

Ashley is now a house mom and wife of a professional athlete and has a whole new outlook on her childhood experience now that she is a mother herself. She has a son who is seven years old whom she wholeheartedly adores.

“He is pretty much the only thing that keeps me going and one of the reasons I continue to push,” she said. “I would also like to have him involved as well (in A2Z) to help me cope which he has been doing since I became a mother. He has been my pride and joy throughout the whole situation.”

Ashley has been surprised by the support system she has received throughout the process of started her nonprofit and was especially surprised to receive the support of her father specifically.

“I have a pretty good support system, everybody supports me,” she said. “My

mom, she absolutely loves that I’m doing this. Pretty much everybody is supportive, even my dad.”

The main source of trauma in Ashley’s life was her father, so watching him become a beacon of support throughout the process of starting A2Z was a shocking, but beautiful twist.

“When I first mentioned to him that I was starting this, he was happy for me,” she said. “He apologized for things that he had done and told me that this is something good for me to be doing. That helped me.”

Ashley originally said she feared the reaction or her father in starting A2Z as she assumed there would be some kind of backlash.

“I was afraid that he might be upset,” she said. “But he was quite supportive.”

The strength of a mother

Renee Taylor, Ashley’s mother, said she hopes that she, along with her daughter, can bring other victims of domestic violence to

a safe haven.

“My advice is to seek help,” Renee said. “Just try to get out and get out of that situation. Because things are not going to get better. I stayed, thinking that things would get better and knowing that they wouldn’t. But you don’t see that at the moment. It’s time to go, and you need to get out. It just gets worse and worse. My advice is: it’s time to get out.”

Renee had certain coping mechanisms that she leaned into when she was undergoing her abuse and says she equates a lot of her resilience and survival to God and to her children.

“It is rough, and I thank God each and every day that I made it out alive,” she said. “There’s a lot of people that did not.”

As with many victims, it took Renee time to realize the gravity of her situation and the necessity to seek safety elsewhere.

“It took a while,” she said. “Family will try to tell you, but you’re not listening or hearing that, you’re just staying in it. I had finally just come to my senses, and I thank the Lord for that because some didn’t even make it to see that. I got out of that situation.”

Renee said she believes that these struggles have made her

“THERE IS HELP. THERE IS HOPE. YOU CAN DEAL WITH IT.”

-ASHLEY WHEELER

stronger and that the healing process for something as brutalizing as domestic violence is not one that is linear.

“It is an ongoing thing,” Renee said. “It is always going to be there. It’s hard. You go through depression and anxiety. It makes you strong because you can speak on it and try to help somebody else that is going through it.”

Renee believes God has held her through these events and that it is never worth it to stay with an abuser, but she understands being stagnant and not being able to remove yourself from a situation that is actively hurting someone. Renee has a special sort of empathy that comes from a place of no judgement as she knows what it’s like to feel stuck with an abuser.

Prayers for tomorrow

“Ask the Lord to give you strength, and look to God,” Renee said. “It is tough, and I know I didn’t come right up out of it. It took time before I came to my sense, I can relate to someone else, but it is not worth it. It is not worth your life.”

Renee believes she can now work as an advocate for people who

have fallen victim to abuse and fight for them to find their sense of strength and power.

“I’m one of the strong survivors,” she said. “It was a tough situation because I am the type that would leave and go through it, and you would talk to them on the phone and they would say they aren’t going to do it anymore. There’s a lot that they try to manipulate and try to tell you. I was weak. But now, I am strong.”

The phrase “I am weak, but now am strong” is a powerful one and a direct reference to the song “Jesus Loves Me” about feeling weak, but finding a sense of strength through time and she gives advice to others who might be struggling.

“Look up to God,” she said. “That is the main one to look up to and bring you out of the situation. That is the main person you need to look for strength.”

Finding peace

Renee has four children, three sons and one daughter, Ashley Wheeler being the only daughter in the family. She said she knows that all the things her children witness in their younger years still

affect them today. They go through the trauma together as a unit and as a family and work as an outlet for each other.

“They all come up in it and are damaged today with it,” she said. “They go through depression and anxiety.”

The most beautiful thing about this journey is finding peace which Renee says she has. She has found her inner peace despite day-to-day triggers occurring.

“I have overcome it,” she said. “I have found my peace. I do know things are not going to go away, but the main thing is I thank God that I came up out of that environment and we’re not having to go through that again. I would pray, ‘If I ever get up out of this, God. I will never try to get back in this again,’ my main focus was just my kids and if we can be strong enough to make it through this.”

Renee says she is inspired by Ashley and realizes how important it is to stand by Ashley as Ashley works to bring a haven to victims of domestic violence through A2Z nonprofit.

“I feel like it was a really good idea for (all of) what she has started up,” Renee said. “Now it is time for me to open up and be by her side and to try help support her.”

“It was obvious,” he said. “I would advise to tell someone, I understand that you love your parents and love your family, but try to get your parents to understand how serious it is and how much it affects you as a child and as an adult as well.”

Despite it all, Darrius says he has sought reconciliation throughout everything that has happened and is not bitter about his past or angry anymore about anything that he has been put through. The high road is one he seems to relish in taking, and his strength and endurance is evident as he speaks.

“I know how I feel, obviously,” he said. “And I feel like I forgave him. I do think about it, and yes, it hurts me. But at the end of the day, me as a 34-year old I understand that it is the past, and it is still my father. There is no reason to hate him forever. I won’t get my blessing like that. I found my peace.”

Peace is the message that the Ashley, Darrius and Renee give to those reading. The message of hope and healing is one that rings throughout the air with every word they speak. Hope is in the sunflowers Ashley stands before and in the triumphant voice of her mother. It is in the voice of her brother who has forgiven and stood strong in his peace and prominence. Healing is the note that we end on.

In the words of Ashley Wheeler herself, “there is help. There is hope.” Ashley’s nonprofit A2Z continues to advocate for victims and to give a voice to those who are voiceless. Ashley has found that voice. And just like a sunflower, she rises again.

“LOOK UP TO GOD. THAT IS THE MAIN ONE TO LOOK UP TO AND BRING YOU OUT OF THE SITUATION. THAT IS THE MAIN PERSON YOU NEED TO LOOK FOR STRENGTH.”

-RENEE TALYOR

MIND OVER

MATTER

WILSONVILLE ELEMENTARY STUDENT PATTON HUNT DIDN’T KNOW IF HE’D WALK AGAIN; NOW, HE SERVES AS AN INSPIRATION

BY NOAH WORTHAM | PHOTOS BY DAWN HARRISON AND CONTRIBUTED

OOne day, after an intensive surgery on the back of his legs that was supposed to put him in a wheelchair and prevent him from being able to put weight on his legs, he stood and took steps.

A 9-year-old Wilsonville Elementary School student, Patton Hunt fought through the pain and became an immediate inspiration to his family and the community. Still battling health concerns on a daily basis and recently out of surgery, Patton’s fight is ongoing, but one he will continue to stand for.

Tough challenges

Leigh Hunt is seven months pregnant and out driving when a woman runs a stop sign and crashes into her, causing Leigh’s stomach to hit the steering wheel.

“He was born that day,” Leigh said of Patton’s birth. “He was in the NICU for a little over six weeks. It was kind of chaotic. We were not expecting him to be there that soon. We had some scary moments while he was in there with him being so little and having some of the issues of being born early and the injuries.”

Although he was still in the NICU, they proceeded to begin therapy with Patton until he was able to go home.

“When we came home from the hospital, ARC of Shelby County would come to our house and they would do therapy with him,” Leigh said. “At the beginning, it was just stuff like him being able to hold his head up. Then, we started going to Life Without Limits Clinic, and he learned to walk there.”

Patton was almost 2 years old when he started walking on his own.

As a result of the car accident, Patton continues to suffer from both hydrocephalus and cerebral palsy.

“Patton has hydrocephalus, which means that his fluid in his brain doesn’t drain like everybody else,” Leigh said. “He has a shunt that is basically a little drain and a valve that allows fluid to drain off of him and off his brain so that his body can reabsorb it. Without that, he literally wouldn’t be alive, it would cause too much brain pressure.”

Patton has undergone more than 20 surgeries despite being only 9 years old.

“We were told when he was a baby that he wouldn’t walk. Then we were told, ‘Well, he may walk with crutches.’ But he does gymnastics, he swims, he’s an awesome kid,” Leigh said while laughing.

Alongside the shunt, Patton also has to

wear braces to assist him in walking.

Eventually he had to have a gastrocnemius recession performed to loosen up the leg muscles on the back of his legs.

“It’s a pretty intense surgery, and he came home in casts and leg immobilizers,” Leigh said. “He wasn’t supposed to be able to stand, to bear weight on either leg. He was supposed to be in a wheelchair for a while.

As soon as he got home that day, after surgery, he was just bound and determined he was going to walk. And so, he did, it hurt, but he was already walking that first day

which was pretty incredible. That’s the determined spirit that he has.”

Despite these issues, Patton has strived to do the things he enjoys with the full support of his parents.

“We’ve always tried to push Patton to do more than he thinks that he can do, and then he always kind of surprises us with all that he is able to do,” Leigh said.

Striving to be a normal kid

Despite his struggles, Patton continues to

be an active child on the family farm.

“My favorite hobbies and things to do are like dig holes, ride horses, help on the farm and feed animals,” Patton said. “I like to work out, and I can run a mile and stuff.”

He enjoys learning about how things work and what things are called. His favorite classes at school are science and PE.

“He’s a very unique kid,” Leigh said. “He’s very inquisitive, which I guess a lot of kids are, but I think he’s a deep thinker. He’s all the time asking me questions about stuff. He likes to figure things out. He loves

to work and to earn money and save money for things.”

Patton stands out in the crowd, not just for what he’s overcome, but for who he is.

Patton’s talents are also observed by his teachers and peers at Wilsonville Elementary School, earning recognition, while others in the community also took note of his inspiration.

An organization in Chelsea ran by Charlie Bradford called Bikes 4 Kids creates custom bikes tailored to their wishes, and Patton received his own personalized bicycle because of the impression he had on Bradford.

“The goal was to build something that looked more custom and normal to other bikes, so when he rode with his cousin he would have a bike,” Bradford said. “But with his disability it was hard to balance a bike. We had to build something with custom training wheels.”

When Bradford met with him to get an idea of the type of bike he wanted, Patton introduced himself.

“‘My name is Patton,’ and he shook my hand like a grown man with a cowboy hat on and he knew exactly what he wanted,” Bradford said. “He said, ‘Before we get

started,

Patton then told Bradford that he only wanted two colors on his bike—tan and army green—and after the bike was put together, they presented it to him.

“It looked really good,” Bradford said. “He loves it, was crazy about it. And after that, he got the bike and he rides the wheels off of it.”

After making a custom bike for Patton, Bradford chose Patton to be the Grand Marshall for Chelsea’s first Bikes 4 Kids rodeo.

“Me, Patton and his family had become pretty close after that,” Bradford said. “I decided Patton would be a great Grand Marshall. Because he loves rodeos. He’s a cowboy, a farm boy. And when I told him, that boy was as excited as he can be, he just could not wait. The days were too long.”

Patton attended the rodeo as the Grand Marshall and did his job in riling up the crowds.

“Patton’s a really good kid,” Bradford said. “He’s very smart for his age and he knows how to talk to people respectfully. He’s very talented in that area, to be honest, he’s above his level.”

I want to make sure you know what I want.’”

An ongoing battle

On Monday, Nov. 7, Patton came home from school due to a headache and lethargy. He then began to throw up. His parents took him to the hospital, and he had to get the shunt in his brain replaced.

“We went to the hospital and they operated and put in a new shunt, but he had some bleeding in his brain when they did that,” Leigh said. “Normally, when he has the shunt surgery, he just gets better afterward, it’s immediate relief. But he didn’t have that. He was still hurting really bad after the first surgery. They went in to do another revision to check what was going on, and what happened is there was some bleeding with the first surgery that had blocked the catheter that allows fluid to drain off his brain. So, they put in another new

shunt.”

Patton has had 17 brain surgeries in the last nine years, and yet, he keeps going and continues to do the things that he loves.

“If I could give advice to a parent whose child was faced with some challenges, especially early on, because Patton’s conditions were from birth, is that God can do amazing things,” Leigh said. “He can do more than we think sometimes, and I always say that if I would have been able to see the whole picture, all the 20 plus surgeries that Patton would have to have, the thousands of hours of therapy, all those sorts of things.

“If I could have seen it all at once I would have said I wasn’t equipped to do that, but God only shows you one moment at a time. So, we can’t live in the future. We can’t live in the past. We can only live in the present moment. And so,

“IF I COULD GIVE ADVICE TO A PARENT WHOSE CHILD WAS FACED WITH SOME CHALLENGES, ESPECIALLY EARLY ON, BECAUSE PATTON’S CONDITIONS WERE FROM BIRTH, IS THAT GOD CAN DO AMAZING THINGS.”

-LEIGH HUNT

we take each moment that we’re given and we do the very best that we can with that moment.”

Despite his struggles, Patton has large ambitions.

“I’m going to Troy to study nursing, and then I’m going to UAB to become a pediatric neurosurgeon,” Patton said. “I want to work at Children’s. The reason is because I’ll know the feelings of the kids that have

the same problems.”

His parents are there to help him every step along the way and encourage him to keep going.

“We’ve never set any sort of limitations with him, we’ve always, I feel like, tried to give him every opportunity that there was and to encourage him to always do his best with everything,” Leigh said.

Patton doesn’t just have high ambitions,

he also carries with him an optimistic worldview.

“There’s some tough times, but God really has blessed us with the good times,” Patton said. “We have a hospital to go to when there is bad stuff. The hospital’s not fun but it is a place to go to, and just when there’s a million things to be sad about, there’s always one thing to be happy about.”

WITH SISLER

FACING THE DEATH OF BOTH PARENTS IN A MATTER OF HOURS, LAUREN SISLER’S PATH TO SUCCESS WASN’T EASY

BY LAUREN SEXTON | PHOTOS BY CONTRIBUTED

OFF THE SIDELINE I

In the worldwide arena of sports, Lauren Sisler is a major contributor. The two-time Emmy award-winning broadcaster is an ESPN and SEC sideline reporter that graces television sets across the country. Each week, millions of Americans welcome Sisler and her ESPN and SEC Network colleagues into their homes. Football season dominates her fall schedule, and the Birmingham-based reporter is busy traveling to campuses and stadiums, but telling the stories of these college athletes makes Sisler’s job worthwhile. It was being able to tell the stories of so many student-athletes that helped Sisler be able to tell her own.

“I’m an open book,” Sisler said. “It’s certainly becoming more and more apparent as life has gone on. With the circumstances with our parents, the more that I’ve come out and shared, the more that I’m just like a free spirit here.”

The former Rutgers gymnast grew up in the small town of Roanoke, Virginia, when she developed her love of sports from her close-knit family. She spent a lot of time with her family. Weekends were spent traveling to her games and her brother Allen’s games. Sisler was raised not only watching sports, but playing sports, and it was only a matter of time before she found herself on the path to becoming a sports reporter. These memories that Sisler looks upon fondly and cherishes are special to her even as she faced the dark time in her life and the loss of her beloved parents.

“They didn’t know they were in the throes of it, and then, eventually, it became a problem,” Sisler said about her parents’ battle. “[Concealing] it was something they did so well, because they did not want to burden other people or let other people into their world of addiction. Addiction carries such a

stigma, and there’s a label attached to it. And I believe that people feel that shame because they look at addiction as if it is a choice. And it’s something that can be so shameful, because of its nature of it. I think that’s what they felt, and I felt it too like I inherited that shame.”

It was 2003 when Sisler was in her first year at Rutgers as a student and member of the gymnastics team when she received a phone call from her father that she never thought she would get—her mother had passed. She immediately rushed home.

Shortly after Sisler’s flight arrived, she was informed of the death of her father. Just hours after receiving the call that her mother had passed, she had to face the death of her father as well. This was a lot for a teenager to face in a matter of 24 hours. It was the help of her family and her team that helped her through this time of

horrible grief.

DEALING WITH THE GRIEF

“I ran from reality because I did not want to acknowledge how my parents died,” Sisler said. “I could not use the words addiction or overdose in the same sentence, because I felt like my parents were the strongest people.”

A drug epidemic faced Virginia during the early 2000s and claimed countless victims. People like Sisler’s parents sought help from physicians for the pain they were experiencing. They were prescribed pills that were not intended to be addictive, however, they were. These pills were easily addictive and many people across the country have suffered from the same addiction or have died from it. Discussing the nature of

her parents’ death was a struggle for Sisler, it was an obstacle she was not ready to overcome at a young age.

With the guidance of her aunt, her family, and her team, Sisler returned to Rutgers and continued her life as a student-athlete. However, she returned to school with a different career path in mind, sports journalism.

“We wanted her to become the person going forward that she would embrace and love,” Sisler’s Aunt Linda Rorrer said. “So, she ultimately decided to change her interests at school. She went on to switch to journalism with a focus on sports. She asked herself how she could achieve her dream to go to ESPN, and she set her sights on achieving it.

It was no surprise that Sisler turned her love of sports into a career path. Known by

her family as being unapologetically herself her entire life, Sisler found herself working for different news organizations across the country until she found her home locally.

It is easy to consider Birmingham or even the state of Alabama as one of the sports capitals of the country with nationally-ranked high school teams and nationally-ranked college teams, and Sisler loved to tell stories of the student-athletes in the Birmingham area. However, she wasn’t able to tell her own story, the story about her parents’ death.

After telling countless stories about overcoming obstacles, the now ESPN sideline reporter began to open up about her emotional scars stemming from the loss of her loved ones. It was the encouraging stories the student-athletes told her that finally gave her the ability to discuss her own trag-

edy.

“I came to the local CBS affiliate here in Birmingham…and was really excited about the opportunity,” Sisler said. “Truth be told, it was kind of this thought of ‘Wow I get to be a sports reporter.’ To me, it was an exciting job. I didn’t realize that when I transitioned into this career the impact it would have on my life, because it is my job as a sports reporter to find the truth and how athletes are shaped by their stories and by their circumstances. Yet I couldn’t own my own truth, because I was ashamed. I’m telling these stories, and the response that comes from the stories is that people are truly inspired and encouraged by these amazing stories. And that’s when the light kind of flipped on for me.”

A CLEAR PATH FORWARD

Since opening up about an extremely difficult time in her life, Sisler was able to grow from her experience and began helping people struggling with prescription drug addictions and their loved ones who suffer alongside them.

“I’m proud of the circumstances that have shaped me into who I am today,” she said. “And I attribute a lot of that to my parents, and to the people that were there for the first 18 years of my life. I also attribute it to my family and my friends that were there on the back end, and the people that have come into my life..in the absence of my parents…I’m just so grateful for that.”

Sisler has since gone on to partner with different kinds of coalitions and organizations that create awareness for addiction to prescription drugs. She has worked with national organizations like the American Addiction Center as well as local organizations within Shelby County and Birmingham.

“From an early age, a lot of those things were instilled in me and helped me to build some of the resilience that was needed for me to walk through those tragic circumstances,” she said. “Now, it’s so rewarding to get to be on this side of it, [to help others] walk through difficult circumstances and come out on the other side. It’s amazing to see things come full circle and to have perspective. It’s such a gift.”

Not too long after telling her own story,

Sisler went from being a cable sports reporter to one of the sideline reporters for both ESPN and the SEC Network. She continues to work on and off the screen, covering college football in the fall and college gymnastics in the winter. Her career has allowed her to work and interview legends like Charles Barkley and Nick Saban. More specifically she was one of the producers for the episode “One-on-One” with the two legends in 2016 at the Coleman Coliseum in Tuscaloosa.

This year will mark Lauren Sisler’s seventh year with ESPN and the SEC. She continues to dance on the sideline and interview legendary coaches as well as future NFL stars. She continues to discuss the harsh truths about prescription addictions that affect so many Americans. Tragedy is not something that Sisler has let define her.

“Life is a process,” Sisler said. “Healing takes time, and it’s always part of the journey. It’s been 19 years since my parents

passed, and I’m always finding myself healing from the tragedy and loss. But using that to help other people and find positive ways to influence other people, that’s important for me. I think that as athletes we are essentially not trained, we’re kind of molded into who we are. The work ethic, that determination, and grit, comes from being an athlete. I just hope that I can use that gift to share with others so that they can have that same perspective and use their experiences to help other people.”

“HEALING TAKES TIME, AND IT’S ALWAYS PART OF THE JOURNEY.”

-LAUREN SISLER

A MODERN

MACGYVER

TYLER CHURCHWELL OVERCOMES BEING PARALYZED AS AN INFANT TO LIVE LIFE TO THE FULLEST

BY MEG HERNDON | PHOTOS BY JEREMY RAINES

JJust shortly after turning 1, Rhonda Moore rushed a crying baby into an emergency room. A 13-month-old Tyler Churchwell went from crying with a high fever to barely moving, and by the time the two reached the hospital, his breathing stopped.

Hooked up to a ventilator, doctors at the hospital fought against the clock to find an answer as to why Tyler was sick. Without success, he was quickly rushed to Children’s of Alabama in an ambulance.

“Children’s Hospital had no idea what was going on, so they had to call in a specialist—by that time, I was paralyzed,” Tyler said.

Tyler has transverse myelitis, a rare neurological condition caused by inflammation of the spinal cord, which is what led to his arms being paralyzed. According to Mayo Clinic, there are multiple causes of transverse myelitis, which include infections and

immune system disorders that attack the body’s tissues or other myelin disorders such as multiple sclerosis.

Tyler explained that his white blood cells attacked his spinal cord cells, which caused it to swell. Now, doctors know steroids can make the swelling go down. However, in 1989, they did not.

“It lasted about 24 hours, but that’s long enough to paralyze you,” Tyler said. “It cuts the blood supply off, and that’s the cerebral spinal fluid flow. That was C5 and C6 of my neck, which is why I’m paralyzed in the arms, but not really legs and feet.”

Tyler spent his second birthday in Children’s of Alabama after having been admitted at just over a year old.

Since he was so young when he experienced this life-changing event, Tyler can’t remember a time when transverse myelitis wasn’t a part of his life. Now, at 32, even

without the use of his arms, he doesn’t let anything get in his way from doing what he sets his mind to. From flying tactical drones to creating complex code and software with his feet, Tyler believes all one needs to accomplish their goals is a positive mindset.

A home at the hospital

Once Tyler got a little older, he began to spend his winters at Shriners Hospitals for Children in Philadelphia, which explains his love for cooler weather, although he loves his home on Lay Lake.

“I probably started going around 8 or 9 and then stopped around 17 or 18,” Tyler said. “I had a bunch of surgeries and stuff. Like that commercial with the kid that says, ‘I can write my name with my feet,’ that was my research up there. They researched me as much as they helped me.”

Half of his time was dedicated to research with the hospital and the other half was dedicated to research surgeries.

“They would try things no one had ever done before,” Tyler said. “The craziest one they did was they took my left pec muscle out of my chest because my pecs work, and they put it as a bicep replacement in my left arm, which is called a pictorial transfer. And it worked for a while, but the muscle atrophied. It’s just, your pecs are not meant

to be a bicep, so it didn’t really work. For a while though, I had an arm.”

Despite his many surgeries, Tyler enjoyed his time at Shriners, saying they were very good about keeping the childrens’ spirits up. With therapist visits, recreational rooms, clown and guest visits and video game rooms, Tyler likened the atmosphere to a camp. Additionally, Tyler emphasized that the food was not like normal hospital food. Shriners would bring in chefs to cook

dishes that he remembers fondly. He also attended class at the hospital with the teachers coming to rooms in Shriners.

A modern MacGyver

Tyler said growing up wasn’t as hard as many might think, saying it was harder on his family.

“They see all these kids that would get bullied, and they would see kids that

couldn’t do this or that, but I would always find a way to do something,” he said. “Almost like a MacGyver even, since I was a little bitty kid. If I couldn’t do something, just give me time and I’ll find a way to do it.” His family was worried for nothing, however, as Tyler thrived throughout his childhood. Tyler said he was never bullied, and in fact, he had tons of friends.

“I just had a really good childhood. I think that’s the reason why I did so well with disabilities,” he said. “That’s the biggest thing, is people who have a hard time, they need to understand that they’re no different from anyone else. It’s all about confidence. It’s all about loving yourself as you are. And a lot of people have a hard time doing that.”

With an easygoing nature and finding confidence and peace within himself, Tyler said what would get on his nerves when he was younger, was when people would try to tell him how to feel.

“People try to portray how they feel, and some of them even get mad when you don’t feel the same way,” Tyler said. “Most people will see me and get inspired, but there’s a lot of people that get mad at it like, ‘You

should be sad, you should be mad, your body is blah blah blah,’ and it’s the complete opposite. And then, when you try to educate them, that makes them more mad because they see you as inferior. Ignorance basically.”

Although he faced occasional pressure from others, he never really let that get to him, saying that bad days are normal but it’s all about getting up again and not letting them hold you back.

While growing up, Tyler’s grandfather got him a computer. Since he couldn’t get out all that often, he spent his time glued to the machine playing games. However, when he got bored with that, he started to tinker with it and explore what the computer system itself could do.

“It got me in trouble a bit in high school, so I had to back off on the security side of it,” he laughed. “I bypassed all the firewalls and censorship and stole access for friends. The principal was like, ‘We could suspend you, or you can show us how you did that so we can fix it.’”

That, however, was just the start of a future in coding for Tyler.

Making a situation work for you

Tyler’s childhood MacGyver mentality stuck with him into adulthood.

One day, while checking out at a store, Zack McDanal, who became his future best friend, asked him how he managed to drive since he can’t fully use his arms. When he told Zack he drives his car with his feet, Zack laughed.

“I was like, ‘No, for real, I do,’” he said. “So, I went out there and showed him my car. And then we’ve just been besties ever since. I mean like brothers.”

The car was built by the state as a package deal. When he graduated high school, the state sent him to Auburn for more training, however, he needed a car. Vocational rehabilitation—a state-funded program that helps provide school tuition, house care and car care for people with mental and physical disabilities—modified a car for Tyler to get to school.

In addition to his modified car, he can do just about anything anyone else can do.

Using a phone, playing video games, flying drones or creating computer code, give him a mission and he’ll find a way to com-

plete it.

Zack said that meeting Tyler solidified his belief that if you really want to do something, you can, no matter how hard it is. Normally, people who don’t know Tyler might expect him to sit on the sidelines and watch while others do what he loves. However, Zack said he’s doing exactly what he wants because he’s put his mind to it.

“It stems from simple things, like changing the thermostat,” Zack said. “He might not be able to reach it, but he’ll put something in his mouth and go over there and change the thermostat. He doesn’t let things get in his way. He uses critical thinking to figure it out.”

Tyler found an interest in flying drones thanks to his grandfather, who seemed to pass on his tinkering gene to Tyler himself.

“My grandfather was Air Force, so he’s a big-time advocate for those things,” Tyler said. “We went to competitions. I flew as a demo RC pilot for the RC Top Gun down in Lakeland, Florida in 2004.”

Top Gun is a world championship event featuring radio control model pilots from around the globe. At the event, hundreds of pilots compete for a cash prize.

“In between all these competitions, they have a halftime show where people can go get concessions and watch performers do things with planes that shouldn’t be possible,” Tyler said. “And because I was flying with my feet, I was the first one that stood out to them.”

This was before drones had become something the everyday person could purchase, therefore Tyler and his grandfather would build their own prototypes.

On top of drone flying, Tyler still loves gaming, Xbox, PlayStation anything he can play with his feet. He said that while he likes competitive games such as Call of Duty and Apex, he prefers story-driven games such as The Last of Us and Requiem.

Zack can attest to Tyler’s gaming skills, say-

ing he can easily keep up with the rest of their group in Modern Warfare.

“I would say a majority of people tend to give up when they can’t do something,” Zack said. They don’t give it a second glance if they think they can’t do it. But when he looks at something, it’s more of like, you can see his brain tick. He’s thinking, ‘How can I do this? What can I do to make this possible for me to do.’ And I think that’s a quality everyone should try to adopt.”

Beating the odds

In 2022, Tyler graduated from Full Sail University with a bachelor’s degree in computer coding.

Despite having developed computer programs before and having an established background in coding already, Tyler said he gained important and useful knowledge in school. He learned about developing software for phones, which is what he devotes a lot of his time to now.

“I specialize in accessibility,” Tyler said. “So, I am developing an app that will allow you to completely control an android phone with your voice. You can tap, you can scroll anywhere on the screen, any app that has an overlay runs system level. All you do is say, ‘Tap on,’ and it’ll pop up a tic-tac-toe grid over the screen.”

Tyler went on to explain that the grids have numbers in them which allows the user to say what number to click.

For example, if the messenger app is in the fifth grid, users can say, ‘Five,’ and it will alert the system to open the messenger app within that grid. Users can also tell the software to scroll up, scroll down and dictate.

Additionally, this means that other apps, even if they don’t have an accessibility feature, can still be used with this software.

The cool thing about this software, Tyler

“I’M LIVING THE LIFE REALLY, OTHER PEOPLE WANT MORE, OTHER PEOPLE WANT LESS. I’M HAPPY.”

-TYLER CHURCHWELL

said, is that it can be used by people who aren’t disabled also.

“The app I’m building now can help people drive and not wreck themselves and others,” Tyler said. “That’s the thing that bugs me, people texting and driving.”

Tyler noted that while he is working on the Android beta of this software, he will also create an Apple version as well.

Although he specializes in accessibility, much like the other parts of his life, Tyler wants to do it all.

“Developing, breaking, penetration testing, security, auditing, it’s the blue hat stuff,” Tyler said.

Currently, Tyler freelances his services, saying he is open to anyone who wants to develop accessibility features for their websites, programs or other features.

Overall, Tyler is just as happy as he was when he was little.

“I just try to stay happy,” Tyler said. “I try to laugh and try to smile and make money while enjoying life. Really just en -

joy life. I mean, you’re only given one. As long as the bills are paid and you’re fed and friends are friends, you know? I’m living the life really, other people want more, other people want less. I’m happy. I guess, just to stay like it is to stay unhappy. Help others while you’re doing it. Spread the happiness.”

Those interested in working with Tyler on developing accessibility features can reach him via email at Tyler.churchwell88@ gmail.com.

Learn a little about us

Alphagraphics is owned by Shelby county residents, Rod and Cassie Burchell. The Burchells purchased this business in September of 2016, and many of the staff members have been here since the beginning. “They are hardworkers and everyone gets along so well. It truly is a joy to have each one of them on our team,” said Cassie. Cassie mentions, “We have big goals for our business and we definitely could not reach them without the help of our staff and local businesses who trust us with their projects.” Alphagraphics is always striving for perfection and searching for new and creative ways to offer unique solutions for print, signage, and creative marketing.

At Alphagraphics they offer anything from marketing and print to signage and so many things in between. Need printing? They can do it. Need a creative new brand and signage? They can do that too. The team at Alphagraphics is always ready to make your ideas come to life. With on staff designers, this company’s creativity is always available. They are constantly improving their equipment and technology so that the client’s projects are produced as efficiently and flawlessly as possible. If you have not checked out Alphagraphics yet you are truly missing out on a great company and team.

If you would like any more information contact one of their account managers. They are always eager to help.

Caroline Baker Will Smythe Brittney Lang

Cassie Burchell

SURVIVING THE

STORM

IN THE WAKE OF BEING UPROOTED BY HURRICANE KATRINA, DWAYNE THOMPSON HAS MADE THE MOST OF HIS NEW LIFE IN SHELBY COUNTY

BY LIZZIE BOWEN | PHOTOS BY DAWN HARRISON AND CONTRIBUTED

SSitting at his watch party, Dwayne Thompson’s smiling face illuminates the television screen for all who watched him on the Hulu original series ‘Best in Dough,’ where he showed off his cooking skills to the world. Behind that smile, however, is a long and trying journey to success.

Dwayne’s personality is vivacious and exciting as he bustles around the kitchen on screen, entertaining all the audiences across the nation who watch him, but this type of ease is not one that Thompson has always known.

It was 18 years ago that Dwayne left his house in Louisiana for the very last time. His house was pillaged by Hurricane Ka-

trina, the remains of it completely unlivable.

Surviving the storm

Determined to ride out the storm after hurricane earlier in the summer had missed the area, Dwayne was watching as Katrina began to form and realized this time was going to be much different.

“Most people ask why people didn’t leave,” he said. “Prior to Katrina, there was a storm and everybody left. Katrina comes along, it is the end of the month and people had just left so many were like, ‘We’re going to ride this out, we’re just to storms,’ and Katrina begins to form. The night of the storm, I watch the

storm and the storm passes through bending palm trees, high water rising and flood waters rising.”

The night of the storm, Dwayne was watching as palm trees were bent sideways around him and water began to fill the streets

Dwayne’s mother worked for the Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, and Dwayne said she urged him to bring her grandchildren to the convention center to get everyone to safety. What he thought was going to be a quick stay turned into spending several days at the convention center before he and his family could even make their way out to assess the devastating damage done.

After day one in the convention center, Dwayne said he walked out of the center to look at the destruction the first surge had caused, still unaware of what was to come.

“The next morning, I get up and get out to go assess the damage nearby,” he said. “There’s a few hotels with some windows blown out, but as I travel down Convention Center Boulevard, the closer I get, I feel water on my feet. I’m like, ‘Okay, the water is kind of deep here,’ then I walk a few more blocks, the water was up my ankles and almost to my calves.”

For Dwayne and many others in the city, the devastation of the storm came by complete surprise.

“If anybody had the idea what was going to

happen, the city would have been a ghost town,” Dwayne said. “Nobody had an idea, storms turn, touchdown and die down all the time.”

The Convention Center had a backup generator and Dwayne was able to watch the hurricane progress through the television.

“We still had TV, but a lot of people didn’t know where the water was coming from because their TVs were out,” he said. “We got to see it in real time. The announcements start that the levees had broken and that the water was coming into the city.”

In that chilling moment, Dwayne and others realized the gravity and history of what they were witnessing.

“All the stuff that unfolded on TV, you’re

seeing it in real time,” Dwayne said. “Now, this is when the panic starts.”

Dwayne then decided it was time to leave the Convention Center and try to get groceries and survival items for himself and his family.

“Your worst fear is the thought of natural disaster and end of life as you know it,” he said. “So, I’m there, we’re not assessing what’s going on and how long we’re going to be there. Two of the three days we were there, there was lunch and breakfast, but then everyone was going into survival mode. So, I went to the store, and that’s when I saw the police and military there.”

Dwayne’s focus through the dramatic situation, however, remained on getting in and

out so he could get food to his family.

“I’m in survival mode for my family,” he said. “We try to get to the TV and see what’s going on, the pictures start coming in of New Orleans East and the water that has come through Midtown and is heading toward the Superdome. You see these pictures of all these people wading in waist high water. The visuals were crazy.”

Dwayne said that people began to flee from the Superdome as the space became more and more crowded. From the Superdome, many New Orleans residents began to try and seek shelter in the Convention Center to escape the crowds.

“Day one, you’re hearing stories of people getting hurt,” he said. “As the Dome fills up with people, that’s when the migration of people start moving from the dome to the Convention Center.”

Escaping the Storm

Dwayne said most of his extended family had already fled New Orleans and the state of Louisiana, but he was one of the last of his family to leave.

“It took us 13 hours to get to Houston,” he said. “You had people running out of gas on the interstate.”

Dwayne recalls how people who were driving to flee the storm were being “snatched out of cars.”

“I am looking for gas,” he said. “I run out of gas at a gas station that finally had gas. I’m running out of gas right there at the gas pump.”

The first major city that Dwayne came up on was Baton Rouge and he reiterates the importance of striving to keep his daughters safe throughout the process of their survival.

Dwayne said he truly believes Divine Intervention occurred on his escape from New Orleans.

“I am a man of faith,” he said. “My prayer

was for my daughters. I don’t want my girls to have it experience it this way.”

Dwayne experienced a heartbreaking moment of having to separate from his mother and hoping that she is safe. He also talks about how it was the “cell phone age, but not the cell phone age” as it was an era of flip phones and very limited social media. “It was Myspace age,” he said in regards to early and mid 2000’s.

“I don’t really know how my mom is doing at this point,” he said. “I just have to trust that she’s okay because she told me she would be okay.”

Dwayne said he was hearing reports during this time that there were looters trying to break into the convention center.

Making his way to Alabama

During evacuation, Dwayne stopped at a friend’s house in Houston where people were being paid to take in Hurricane Katrina victims.

“We wake up, and there’s two other families there,” he said. “So, you wake up with like seven or eight other people in the house that you didn’t go to bed with.”

“We go to breakfast before we leave Houston,” he said. “We are at breakfast, and these people raise money (unknown to us) and hand us an envelope before we leave the restaurant. So now, here’s another close to $1,000 for us to get on the road. I believe

God provided for us. He provides for everyone, but this was my prayer.”

This set Dwayne and his family on the path forward, eventually leading them to Alabama.

“This isn’t months,” he said. “This is days.”

Dwayne makes the decision to move to Alabama and make his departure from Louisiana, despite his mother choosing to return once the chaos was all over. Dwayne, however, moved into the Residence Inn off 280.

“My kids are in kindergarten,” he said. “Everybody wants to go back home. I am not going to say I didn’t want to. New Orleans was all we knew.”

Dwayne said he was impressed with the children he met in the area and their passion

for learning.

“What truly got me to stay (in Alabama) is that I’m outside the hotel one day and I hear some kids arguing downstairs,” he said. “They were arguing not about if they’re going to go to college, but what college they were going to go to. I had never heard an argument like that from school children. At that moment is when I knew I was going to take residence up in Birmingham. Despite what I wanted, I knew it was going to be a better place for my children to be educated. That is when it became transitional to permanent.”

Dwayne begins work in Pelham during this time and ends up with a house in Al-

abaster.

Finding passion in the kitchen

As a child, Dwayne toddles around the kitchen with his mother, trying to be as helpful as he can and aid her in cooking.

“I have always been cooking,” he said. “My actual cooking and getting back into cooking started about seven years ago. I had already been in Birmingham seven years when I started getting back into it.”

Dwayne has started his own line of barbeque sauces and seasonings and was featured in the Hulu original series ‘Best in Dough’ where he showed his cooking skills to the world.

“The casting director said ‘I think they’re going to love you,’ and in about two weeks, they called and gave me the good news that I would be on the show,” he said. “I knew they liked what they heard.”

Blues, Bourbon and Brews in Pelham uses his Big Daddy Bomb Sauce on the bourbon chicken pizza and the sauce has also been used on pizzas at Pelham’s Buck Creek Pizza.

“This is the first step,” Dwayne said. “The final step would be my own show. That would be the full circle dream. But you can

see the end of the street from here, this has been a seven-year journey. I started the sauce seven years ago.”

Dwayne said the cooking and catering business that he began started mostly due to needing extra income during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Once the pandemic hit, I had to find a way to create income,” he said. “So, the plan was to start catering. People started loving my food again, and everything I cook with has my sauce and my seasoning in it.”

Dwayne said that his larger-than-life personality that clearly shines through when he is on camera, can be equated to the fact that he is from New Orleans.

“The personality part is coming from New Orleans. There are a lot of chefs that are on TV,” he said. “There are these big lifelike over the top personalities that really carry them. I have also dabbled into radio and TV and that is what I want to do.”

Dwayne also said that living in Shelby County for the past 17 years has allowed him

to feel as though he can represent the county.

“Although I am from New Orleans, to represent Alabama on a national stage on a streaming platform is an honor and privilege,” he said. “We are trying to make it the most viewed episode of the show, for recognition, not only for Alabama, but also for myself-for people to see that this is something I take seriously and something I really like to do.”

Dwayne said he has always loved cooking and tells the story of piddling in the kitchen

with his mother who raised him as a single mom.

“When I was growing up, my mom worked two jobs,” he said. “I started dabbling in the kitchen as a youngster making her breakfast. It grew from there to something you can kind of make money doing on the side of the road. It kind of faded away, Katrina happened. I was cooking outside of night clubs, and that’s when the whole sauce and seasoning started.”

“He was always a good child,” she said. “I

was ecstatic (when I saw him on the show) I just kept saying, ‘you’re just so good,’ and I think he did real good.”

Elaine said she is proud of her son and the progress that he has made throughout the years and that he was always been a “trier.”

Through it all, Dwayne has found his passion and prevailed. Surviving Hurricane Katrina and coming to Alabama was just the tip of the iceberg on what he knows he is capable of.

NOT WAITING

ANYMORE

AFTER A HARD FOUGHT HEALTH BATTLE, HELENA’S HEWY WOODMAN MAKES THE MOST OF EACH DAY

BY EMILY SPARACINO | PHOTOS BY JEREMY RAINES

WWhen Harold “Hewy” Woodman walks around the city of Helena, many things come into focus for him. He sees the outward signs of the stability and progress his town has achieved since he moved there with his family in 1999—the long-standing businesses and the new storefronts, the schools, the neighborhoods, the parks and Helena City Hall, a place he has frequented over the last decade as a member of the City Council. He thinks about the trail system the city is in the process of completing, reminding himself of his goal to walk every mile of it when it is finished. He takes another step, and then another. A simple walk is a privilege he doesn’t take for granted these days.

Beyond the physical scenery of the city, Hewy, 52, also sees his own progress from where he was health-wise seven years ago. He never could have anticipated the trials he would face, the questions he would have or the complications he would overcome, one after another. But he can pinpoint the moment his life changed—the moment that set a whirlwind of troublesome events in motion.

It all started with a spider bite.

A tough spot

Life was moving along smoothly for Hewy, his wife, Kyra, and their three children in

early 2015. Between his service on the City Council and the kids’ activities, the Woodmans stayed busy, but happily so. “Things were great,” Kyra says. “We were very involved in the community as a family. There was always something going on.”

In April, Hewy had helped to organize the inaugural Founders Day celebration in Helena to commemorate the 150-year anniversary of the city being named after Helen Lee. He and several others were working in the historical museum to prepare for the event when he suddenly felt what he described as a bug bite in his left boot. “I didn’t think much of it, but my skin felt like it had a sunburn, like there was a lot of heat burning,” he says.

“Later on, I saw red dots on my lower leg.”

Thinking the bite would eventually heal, Hewy carried on with his usual activities. But instead of shrinking and becoming less tender, the dots got worse. “For the rest of 2015, I was struggling with the spider bite growing bigger and not healing shut,” he says. “You don’t want to go to the doctor constantly. They said keep it wrapped up, and that it will heal. I basically had this really weird spider bite that wouldn’t heal.”

Kyra says they were puzzled as they watched the wound worsen and the skin start to turn black. “I knew that it just couldn’t be good, and something bad was about to happen,” she recalls. “The smallest brush against his leg would be incredibly painful. I remember in April or May of 2015, I asked for prayers at my school because we knew something was wrong with his leg, but

we didn’t know what.”

To make matters worse, each time Hewy’s doctors biopsied tissue from his leg, another area of unhealed skin would develop. “Every time they took a sample of the tissue, where they took the sample, that started growing bigger,” he says. “It kind of started taking over my entire shin on my left leg.”

Eventually, Hewy was diagnosed with a rare condition called pyoderma gangrenosum. “It’s where your immune system attacks the edges of a wound,” he explains. “Instead of the wound getting smaller, the edges would get larger.”

Because the condition is so uncommon, his doctors were not sure what medications or treatments might work best for him.

“They tried different treatments as it continued to grow,” he says. “Prednisone was the only thing that seemed to slow it down.”

Hewy didn’t realize that, while the Prednisone was helping his leg to heal, it was simultaneously setting him up for other complications. “I did not know that you should not be on Prednisone for long periods of time,” he says. “I think I was just trying to fight to keep my leg.”

In 2017, nearly two years after the spider bite occurred, Hewy’s health had deteriorated considerably. “I gained almost 200 pounds,” he says. “At one point, I was just bedridden. I couldn’t put any weight on (my leg) because it hurt so bad from the edema and swelling.”

His face swelled so much that he could not see, causing him to miss countless days of work since he could not read a computer screen. And lying in bed for so long had caused his abdominal and leg muscles to atrophy, making mobility a big issue. The pre-

viously healthy man in his mid-40s did not resemble the person struggling to survive the fallout from a spider bite. “I was in and out of the hospital, I was gaining weight, and the Prednisone also reduces the blood flow to bones, so I was starting to have bone issues,” he says. “I had to use a wheelchair to move around.”

While on medication to stop his swelling, Hewy’s sodium levels dropped to a critical level, prompting a visit to the emergency room. “They said I had the lowest potassium level that they had ever seen in a living human being,” he says. It was not a record he had wanted to set.

The next setbacks soon arrived. As his left leg tried to heal from the spider bite, his right leg became paralyzed due to a herniated disk in his back. In 2018, Hewy underwent emergency surgery to repair his spine. Two months later, blood clots formed in his lungs, threatening his life. “I went in because I had shortness of breath, but it was because I had a giant blood clot in my lungs. I had to go into emergency surgery.”

The effects of the Prednisone on blood flow to his hips led to Hewy needing two hip surgeries in 2020, during the onset of the

COVID-19 pandemic. It was another hurdle in the five-year period after his spider bite. And despite the temporary respite some of his medications delivered, Hewy wrestled with their side effects, too. “If you take painkillers long enough, even in small doses, it changes your personality,” he says. “I’m a pretty optimistic person, but I became really depressed. People would come and visit me in the hospital, which was really nice of them, but I didn’t want to see another human being. I just wanted to lay in my bed the whole time and take my painkillers.”

Hewy hit rock bottom one day as he was trying to recover from being bedridden and fell on the floor. His wife couldn’t pick him up, and he couldn’t use his arms to push himself up. “I just broke down and spent an hour crying in the floor,” he says. “I eventually crawled over to a stair and was able to kind of crawl up the stair and turn around, and I was able to sit down.” He knew he never wanted to feel that way again.

Reclaiming his life

In the years before his health struggles began, Hewy had cemented himself as an ac-

tive member of the Helena community. After running for a seat on the City Council in 2008 and losing, he ran again in 2012 and won, marking the first of three consecutive terms. He volunteered with various committees, helped with city events and kept fellow Helena citizens up-to-date on community happenings via his “No Sleep in Helena” blog, an online resource that was a novelty before the advent of Facebook in 2004.

When he started his blog in 2001, Hewy was working as the manager of a night shift in Blue Cross Blue Shield’s mailroom. Writing late-night blog posts about numerous city events was his way of staying involved in the community. “I started going to every single event that I could find and writing about it just to give people an urge to get involved in the community,” he says. “Helena was kind of growing at the time, so there were a lot of people like me who were brand-new. I got involved as a volunteer because of my admiration of other volunteers in Helena.”

His health problems made keeping up with the blog nearly impossible, so in 2017, Hewy made the bittersweet decision to retire it. What had started with about 20 followers ended with several thousand. Hewy’s online

presence did not disappear, though. Social media has allowed him–and thousands of Helena’s other residents–to share and receive news about the happenings in their neighborhoods and around the city.

Ensuring that all citizens have access to the information they need was, not surprisingly, one of Hewy’s top priorities when he was elected to the council. During his first term, he scanned all of the city’s laws and uploaded them to the city’s website.

His main goal during the current term has been to secure grants for work to complete Helena’s trail system, a major project aimed at connecting the city’s neighborhoods, schools and parks. “We’re finishing the big greenway project, and I plan on walking every

square inch of it when it’s finished,” Hewy says. “I plan on being in shape enough to do the entire trail.”

Being able to walk and exercise again has been a huge milestone in his recovery. He has lost 150 pounds this year and is working on shedding 50 more. His empathy for others trudging through illness is higher than ever.

“I am 100 percent more sympathetic to people suffering when it comes to disease,” he says. “I realize that someone needs someone to check on them at all times. Even if they don’t want you to check on them, check on them.”

He says the many handwritten cards, emails and messages people sent to him kept him going at some of his lowest points. Ac-

cording to longtime friend Ron Holly, Hewy’s toughness through it all is something to be admired. “He went through hell on earth,” Ron says. “I’ve never seen anybody go through the trials and tribulations he did. Most people, I don’t think, would have the fortitude to do that.”

Seeing Hewy get back to a more normal life, Ron says, has been great. “He’s an amazing person,” Ron adds. “I don’t know that I could have done what he did. He still tried to do his job, still tried to work. He puts back into the community, and that never stopped.”

Hewy calls his wife a hero for serving as his caregiver throughout his battle. Kyra says she never viewed it as a burden. “I feel like I was the right person at the right time in the right

place,” she says. “I absolutely was totally committed to doing what I needed to get him better. It never weighed on me.”

Kyra teaches at Evangel Classical Christian School and says her coworkers were extremely supportive, especially when she had to miss work to care for Hewy or take him to appointments. “We had a lot of people praying for us,” she says. “Everybody was willing to help us out. God put the right people in the right place at the right time, and gave us a miracle.”

Stepping forward

Hewy sees a bright future for Helena with continued buy-in from its residents in the form of volunteering, inclusion and a com-

mitment to preserving the small-town charm that gives Helena its character. “Even though it’s almost doubled in size, it still has a smalltown feel,” he says. “I would hope that when I’m gone, people will still work to let us keep our green space and not cover the entire city in residential housing. Grow smart and keep the small-town feel.”

Kyra marvels at Hewy’s commitment to his community, even during what were some of the worst months of his life. “Even with all of the pain he was in and the difficulties he was having, he hardly missed a beat,” she says. “Even when he was in misery, he did not want to let anybody down. He was just determined.”

These days, Hewy is determined to make the most of the time he has left. He still

works at Blue Cross Blue Shield, now as a daytime tech support manager, and in addition to serving as a City Council member, he will continue to work with Helena Market Days–which he helped to create–and the city’s Historical Preservation Committee. “I think there’s a sense of urgency in my life now,” he says. “Things that I kept on saying that I will do later, I’m not waiting anymore. I’m just here to get things done.”

Most importantly, Hewy is spending as much time as he can with Kyra and traveling to visit their grown children, who live in different cities. And whenever he gets the chance, he walks. “Almost dying a couple times really makes you appreciate things,” he says. “I really do like walking now.”

COURTSIDE WITH

TE SMITH

UNSURE OF COLLEGE, TE SMITH IS NOW SET TO GET HIS MASTERS DEGREE AS A COLLEGIATE ATHLETE IN HIS HOMETOWN

BY LAUREN SEXTON | PHOTOS BY KEITH MCCOY AND THE UNIVERSITY OF MONTEVALLO

OOvercoming obstacles is nothing new to a student-athlete. Finding the balance between school and sports takes a lot of work. However, for Te Smith, the hurdles he faced in life helped shape him into the student-athlete he is today.

“I had a dad who passed away when I was 7 years old,” Smith said about growing up. “ My mom raised three kids, it was rough on her. Moving from house to house, sometimes not even having that. It’s been rough.”

Being a kid is tough as is, but having to overcome a lot of adversity at such a young age, Smith was fortunate enough to have people in his life to help guide him to achieve his ambitions. Despite Smith’s circumstanc-

es, he endured as a child and teenager, he persevered.

CHASING HIS DREAM

Having a coach like Greg Dickison during his years at Montevallo High School helped encourage Smith to pursue his dream of playing college-level basketball. Working with Smith on and off the court, Dickison helped cultivate the path for Smith’s future

“He was like a father figure to me,” Smith said about his relationship with his former high school coach. “My dad died when I was young. It’s been hard on my mom raising three kids, and he came my freshman year of

high school. He’s been there for me, has done everything for me, and got me where I am today. If it wasn’t for him, I don’t know where I’d be.”

Dickison worked with Smith throughout high school to help change Smith’s perspective on his future, helping him gain insight into overcoming the obstacles Smith had faced. By Smith’s junior year, Dickison had seen a change in Smith’s mindset and saw that a bright future was in Smith’s grasp.

“I spent a lot of time with him and worked hard constantly showing up on a regular basis just to make sure he’s doing his work,” Dickison said about working with Smith.

“Just spending a lot of time with him to build

that relationship.”

Not too long after the start of his junior year, Smith officially accepted a college offer to pursue collegiate-level basketball at the University of West Alabama. A dream came true for Smith who had always hoped he would continue his basketball career beyond his high school gymnasium, but didn’t know if he wanted to go to college.

“When I went to West Alabama,” Smith said, “Me and my girlfriend got a scholarship to West Alabama to play basketball. To us, that was an amazing opportunity.”

After playing several seasons at West Alabama, Smith made the decision to return to his hometown of Montevallo and continue playing basketball at the University of Montevallo.

“I wanted to come to Montevallo,” Smith said about his choice to return home to play college ball. “It’s where I was brought up and where I am from. All my friends and my fam-

ily [are here]. I want to bring a championship back home.

BIGGER THAN HIMSELF

There is no doubt that Smith has accomplished so much in a short time, being credited as a great athlete and great student by his coaches. However, it is the kind of compassion he has gained through all of his obstacles that makes him a great teammate.

“Te has an amazing relationship with all his teammates,” Dickison said about Smith’s bond with his high school teammates. “He loved them. He loved to see them succeed when they did something on the court. You would think he did it because he celebrated just as hard as they did. He always supported him. He was an amazing teammate. He saw everybody on his team as his brother. He loved to spend time with them and make sure they stayed in practice and [did] the ac-

tual work.”

For Smith’s new coach at the University of Montevallo, Anthony Komara, Smith has made Komara’s first year of being a head coach and his.transition to the University of Montevallo seamless.

“He’s made this transition for me a lot easier,” Komara said. “He always does what you ask him to do. He’s always a positive influence on the younger guys. He’s just the guy that you want to be around. He’s got an unbelievable heart, and he has all the qualities that you want in a leader and in an older guy in your program. We’re very blessed to have him here, and we’re really lucky that it worked out for him to have one year left, and for him to come home. It’s been a lot of fun, and we’re embarking on a journey.”

Smith achieved his goal of playing basketball in college, graduated with one bachelor’s from West Alabama, and now is pursuing a graduate degree at the University of Mon-

tevallo. But the silver lining of Smith’s story is not that he achieved his goals and overcame so much adversity at such a young age, it is his ability to encourage others with his story.

You just keep pushing,” Smith said about how he encourages others with his own journey. “That’s what I tell them, to keep pushing. I know it’s hard and there’s going to be adversity, that’s life on the court and everywhere. Do you want to give up, want to do bad things, do horrible things, or look for the future? What are you going to do later on? Do you want to be behind bars or dead? Or [do you want to] put your family in a better situation? Take care of your family.”

Smith’s coaches believe it is Smith’s insight and the lessons he’s learned from his life experiences that give him the gift of becoming an incredible coach one day. They can see him guiding kids who have

dealt with similar situations Smith has faced down the right path.

“I used to ask them all the time what he wants to do when he grows up,” Dickison said. “About his sophomore or junior year, he started telling me he wants to be like me. He wants to coach basketball and wants to mentor kids. My goal once he finishes playing his last year of basketball is to have him find a coaching job somewhere as an assistant. That’d be amazing as well. His goal is to be a coach and mentor and help kids grow just the same way he did.”

“I don’t know if Te even realizes this about himself, but he is going to be an unbelievable coach and teacher one day,” Komora said. “ If you could see him interact with kids, see him interact with his younger cousins. He has this quality about him that draws those guys to him. They act however he acts. If he’s acting

all upbeat and fun, they’re going to do what he does, like he’s just that guy that they want to be around, and they want to follow. He’s an unbelievable role model for this community. For all the kids at Montevallo High School, and all the young kids around here, he sets the tone for them. Just showing them there is a way to improve your life, there is a way to make something of your life, even if you didn’t start at the best point, you can always change it. His story is unbelievable, and it should be motivation for everybody that he did this and now he’s paving the way for his family for the rest of his life. I just think it’s really special and it’s an awesome story. We’re really lucky to have him here.”

For Smith, he sees the possibility of being a coach.

“I want to start out at a high school, and then work my way up,” Smith said about the possibility of coaching in the future. “A lot of people say I want to start out in college and that’s hard. I feel like my chances are higher [getting a coaching position] in a high school to start off.”

For people like Dickison who have seen Smith’s journey, it tends to pull on their heart strings.

“It has brought tears to my eyes just to see where he’s at,” Dickison said about Smith’s growth from high school student to college graduate currently pursuing another degree. “He’s working on his second degree in college. For me, it’s been all the time I spent with him and knowing how hard it was to get him to change some of his ways and to see where he’s at now. He’s like a son of mine.”

Adversity is something that everyone faces in life. Some choose to let it define them, however, Smith overcame the narrative and rewrote his own story. While he has the dreams of becoming an LA Laker, telling his own story of overcoming the odds is something Smith is truly passionate about.

“My hope is to play professional ball and hopefully have my degree,” Smith said about his future ambition, but coaching and teaching kids and helping them better their futures is still something he wants to do.

“HIS STORY IS UNBELIEVABLE, AND IT SHOULD BE MOTIVATION FOR EVERYBODY THAT HE DID THIS AND NOW HE’S PAVING THE WAY FOR HIS FAMILY FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE.”

-ANTHONY KOMARA

A MOTHER’S

STRUGGLE

TONYA MACNICOL DOESN’T LET HER CHRONIC ILLNESS DEFINE HER, SHE LET’S IT DRIVE HER

BY NOAH WORTHAM | PHOTOS BY NOAH WORTHAM AND CONTRIBUTED

IIt was June of 2020 and the doorbell rang when Tonya MacNicol was greeted by her husband, a box of cakes and a lawn full of friends and family there to pray for her.

“It was a really powerful thing for people to show up when they don’t have to,” a teary-eyed Tonya said.

Tonya is a wife and loving mother of three who loves to spend time outdoors, and for the last 16 years she has been dealing with a chronic illness.

“Right now, if you look at me, I look normal,” Tonya said. “I don’t look like I have a chronic illness, but if you had seen me about four weeks ago, I was in an asthma flare. Particularly, I couldn’t breathe, I

couldn’t talk, I didn’t have a voice. All those things.”

A surprising diagnosis

Tonya was the mother a 3-year-old and a 1-year old when she was diagnosed with Lupus at age 32.

“I had struggled for about 11 years before finding out what it is, and learning about it,” she said. “I realized that I had my first flare when I was in college at the age of 21. There was about a two-to three-week period of time I couldn’t get out of bed and I couldn’t figure out why.”

Her best friend Kelly Knudsen recalls To-

nya’s symptoms before the diagnosis.

“At the time of her diagnosis there we things about her that she did that we just kind of played off,” Kelly said. “When she would work and travel, she would pull over on the side of the road and take an hourlong nap in a parking lot. She’s like “’I’m just so tired’ and I’m like, “Okay, maybe you should get more sleep?’ But things like that just kind of started happening more and more regularly.”

The situation got to a debilitating level.

“It really did get to a point where she was pretty much bedridden for weeks at a time where she just would have no energy,” Kelly said. “She would sleep for hours upon hours

and if she could get up and go to the kitchen, she would be winded, and it would just physically drain her.”

It was disheartening for Kelly to see such a horrible situation happen to her close friend.

“It was extremely debilitating to see your best friend struggle. I mean we were cheerleaders together all through high school, she cheered in college,” Kelly said. “She’s always been very active and healthy and athletic. To see your friend, go from, this really healthy, vibrant, active personality to somebody that literally can’t even go to the kitchen and get water without being winded and in pain was really hard to watch.”

Finally, after a visit to the emergency room, Tonya was told to see a rheumatologist. The first thing the rheumatologist told her was, “You have Lupus.”

“I remember going home that day and just crying,” Tonya said. “I got in the bed with my boys and just sobbed thinking, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to see them grow

up.’ There is a grief cycle you go through when you get a diagnosis like that.”

She shared that even when she gets a flare now, she almost goes through that same grief cycle again.

“Like I get mad about it, I’m frustrated again, I get in denial, and then I’m like, ‘Okay, well what can I do to fix it?’ Kind of take control back,” Tonya said. “That journey has been an up and down roller coaster ride. Gosh. I’m usually either really, really sick or pretty healthy.”

Lupus is an autoimmune disease that Tanya describes as the body attacking itself.

“When you have Lupus your autoimmune is all over the place,” Tonya said with a chuckle. “The best way I can describe it to a layperson is the flu times 10.”

A supporting role

As she learned of her diagnosis and how to rationalize her situation, her husband Chris was with her every step of the way.

“We were young, we were married, (its) supposed to be the fun time of your years (together),” Chris said. “The first couple of months were very, very difficult. We still had questions and we were still in the shock of ‘What’s our life going to be like in the future?’”

He explained the first approach he took toward the disease.

“For me personally, as a guy, we want to fix things,” Chris said. “Initially, I was like ‘How can I fix this?’ (and) ‘What can I do to make you better?’”

He eventually learned that this was the wrong approach to take.

“As time went on, we learned more about diagnosis, we learned more about the flares and more about the triggers and just what she needs to come out of a flare,” Chris said.

“I learned that it’s not so much of me trying to fix things as it is for me to just be there for her and help her. I needed to make sure that I took care of everything that was on her to-do list. Make sure the kids are fed

and bathed, make sure that the kids get to school, make sure that the laundry is timed.”

He recognized that he needed to support her emotionally.

“When she’s in bed or sitting on a couch, make sure that I spend time next to her, not just around,” Chris said. “I know that there were times where she felt so alone when she couldn’t get up off the couch or she couldn’t get out of bed. And so, it was definitely a transition that I had to make from being a fixer to a support person.”

An answer

The disease affects people in different ways, which makes it hard to find a cure. Fortunately for Tonya, she was eventually able to go to the number one Lupus doctor in America at Johns Hopkins to try and get some help.

“I had gone through every single thing,

(they) asked me every single thing and ended up taking me off a lot of the meds that I was on,” Tonya said. “I just learned a lot.”

Tonya has had 13 surgeries in the past 20 years. She has a puffer that she takes twice a day and a shot that she takes every two weeks, while she does nebulizer treatments four times a day.

“The Lord has carried me through more dark days than I’ve cared to count, but I’m so thankful for it,” she said. “I would say for someone newly diagnosed to find your faith and have hope and know that it’s not a death sentence and know that it doesn’t mean that your life has to end, it means you mind has to change.”

A village of people

Fortunately, during her darkest hours, her family and friends were there to support her.

“I have had to rely on a village of people,”

Tonya said. “My parents have been (a) huge support system, my sister has been a huge support system, and I have a number of friends through the years that have really gone above and beyond friendship roles.”

People were there for her and her family. They brought meals and picked up the kids and brought them places so that she did not have to worry about them.

“There were times, I have laid on the couch when they were little playing, and I remember I would lay on the couch and I physically could not just even open my eyes thinking, ‘Lord please just let them be safe until somebody can get here to help me take care of them,’ and as a mom that’s like the most devastating thing in the world,” Tonya said.

Kelly recalls the experience of having to help Tonya.

“The height of it was really right around her diagnosis, and I lived across the street from her and there would be days that she

“THE LORD HAS CARRIED ME THROUGH MORE DARK DAYS THAN I’VE CARED TO COUNT, BUT I’M SO THANKFUL FOR IT.”

-TONYA MACNICOL

would call me and need me to come over and help take care of her kids because she couldn’t even get up the stairs,” Kelly said.

She shared that she agreed with the sentiment that people were there for Tonya during her struggles.

“She has a very large support system,” Kelly said. “Her family’s really great. Her mom and dad are wonderful. So, they definitely help a lot. There’ll be times that we’ll, if she’s really not feeling well, we’ll put together meal chains and things like that where people bring them meals or offer to go to the grocery store or things like that.”

Tonya believes the tough situation has made her sons better people.

“They’re the first ones to clean up after dinner,” Tonya said. “They’re the first ones that will do the dishes and vacuum the floors, and most teenage boys aren’t just going to do that.

A mission

Despite the dark days, Tonya has not let her chronic illness deter her from doing good for others.

Tonya started up a network market company selling Plexus products with her husband Chris.

“Plexus has allowed me to have that purpose again,” Tonya said. “To be able to work and help other people.” They have their own website and everything ordered from the website can be shipped right to the customer’s house.

She started attending a support group for Lupus but eventually found herself getting involved further with the organization.

“Once I got involved with Lupus Foundation and was able to actually be part of the support group, we made it more of like an educational thing,” Tonya said. “It was cool because people would show up to learn more and to learn how they could take care of themselves better

and do that and we built a great little community. We have a great little Facebook group.”

Chris recalls Tonya joining first joining the lupus support group.

“We were searching for other people who had lupus,” Chris said. “Our rheumatologist directed us to a support group that we could go and learned from other people and also share our experiences, and we started out as members and then quickly Tonya became a leader in the support group. And as that relationship built with that support group, then it started taking on other roles of ‘How do we get the community to know more about Lu-

pus?’”

Tonya also helps with organizing the Lupus Walk, which helps fund lupus research, support and education services.

“We have T-shirts made up and we fundraise for it,” Tonya said. “I think there was one year I raised like $13,000.”

Chris explained more of Tonya’s role in the Lupus Walk.

“The Lupus Walk, which is held. Every year, she ended up becoming the chairperson that pretty much put the entire thing together,” Chris said. “There was a group of people that also assisted in that but it was just something to gain awareness, and it

was important to be able to get the word out and not only get the word out about lupus but also bring people together.”

Tonya recently became a Lupus Foundation of America Ambassador.

“I feel like I have a purpose to help people,” Tonya said. “I have a purpose to share with my people my experiences so that maybe they can have hope and have a purpose to kind of teach them a little bit of what I’ve learned.”

Despite her continued struggles with a chronic illness, Tonya continues to be active and be a light to her family and community.