TOUR A FRENCH STYLE HOME • ART BY ALLISON CHAPMAN • VHHS STUDENTS’ MOTH MEMOIRS
MISSION IN HIGH GEAR
THE RUCKER COLLIER FOUNDATION STORY
BROADWAY IN THE DARK CHATTING WITH ACTOR TOMMY MCDOWELL
COOKIES APRIL/MAY 2021 VestaviaHillsMagazine.com Volume Five | Issue Two $4.95
please
MEET COOKIE FIX FOUNDER AMY JASON
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[Newbor n + Child + Family Por traiture] info@apeppermintphoto.com + 205.807.6431 w w w . a p e p p e r m i n t p h o t o . c o m VestaviaHillsMagazine.com 1
FEATURES
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A MISSION IN HIGH GEAR How a brave boy is still inspiring his parents and researchers to continue the fight against the rare cancer he battled.
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BROADWAY IN THE DARK Actor Tommy McDowell talks about what life looks like a year into pandemic times—and how his career has strengthened his resilience time and time again.
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BUILDERS & BUYERS With spring comes the time for cleaning and home projects. Here’s your guide to renovations, landscaping and other resources.
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PHOTO BY MARY FEHR
SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION
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35
PHOTO BY SARAH SHEPHERD
arts & culture
11 A Bit of Chaos: Allison Chapman’s Spirited Canvases 18 Read This Book: Stories of Hope & Resilience
schools & sports
19 Moth Memoirs: VHHS Students’ Stories of Authenticity 26 Five Questions For: New Football Coach Sean Calhoun
food
& drink
in every issue 4 Contributors 5 From the Editor 6 The Question 7 The Guide 66 Out & About 70 Marketplace 72 My Vestavia Hills
27 Cookie Cheer: The Story Behind Cookie Fix 34 Five Questions For: The Backyard Market’s Jeff Gentry
home
& style
35 Classic Style: French Elegance in the Lollar Home 44 In Style: The Colors of Spring
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contributors EDITORIAL
Alec Etheredge Nathan Howell Madoline Markham Keith McCoy Scott Mims Emily Sparacino
CONTRIBUTORS Abby Adams Karen Askins James Culver Mary Fehr Sara Guven Morgan Hunt Michelle Love Lauren Ustad Holland Williams
DESIGN
Jamie Dawkins Connor Martin-Lively Kimberly Myers Briana Sansom
MARKETING
Darniqua Bowen Kristy Brown Evann Campbell Jessica Caudill Kari George Caroline Hairston Rachel Henderson Kinley Johnson Rhett McCreight Viridiana Romero Brittany Schofield Lisa Shapiro Raven Simmons Savana Tarwater Kerrie Thompson
Karen Askins, Photographer
Karen received her first 35mm camera at 21. Once a hobby, photography has grown into a second career. She and her husband, David, have called Vestavia home for 33 years. They have two daughters and sons-in-law: Jordan and Christopher Lawrence and baby Mary Elle, and Devon and Tristan Hughes, students at University of South Alabama Medical School and Harrison School of Pharmacy.
James Culver, Photographer
James lives in the Birmingham area with his wife, Rachel, and their three children, Callie, James III and John Michael. He is a graduate of Auburn University and spent 17 years in Atlanta working as a graphic designer, creative director and photographer. He specializes in event, real estate and portrait photography, and he can be found on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook at @jculvercreative, and via his website, jculver.com.
Sara Güven, Writer
Sara graduated with honors from Vestavia Hills High School and attends Samford University. She is an avid reader and writer, and loves to listen to podcasts, cook and watch movies in her free time. Sara loves to picnic in Byrd Park and visit local coffee shops throughout the Vestavia Hills community.
Sarah Shepherd, Photographer
Sarah is a natural light photographer, specializing in families, children and newborns through The Birmingham Photography Company. She and her husband, Hunter, live in Inverness and have been blessed with two children, ages 9 and 7. When she’s not behind the camera, you can find Sarah and her family enjoying the outdoors or cheering on the Tide.
ADMINISTRATION Hailey Dolbare Mary Jo Eskridge Daniel Holmes Stacey Meadows Tim Prince
Vestavia Hills Magazine is published bimonthly by Shelby County Newspapers Inc., P.O. Box 947, Columbiana, AL 35051. Vestavia Hills Magazine is a registered trademark. All contents herein are the sole property of Shelby County Newspapers Inc. [the Publisher]. No part of this periodical may be reproduced without written permission from the Publisher. Please address all correspondence (including but not limited to letters, story ideas and requests to reprint materials) to: Editor, Vestavia Hills Magazine, P.O. Box 947, Columbiana, AL 35051. Vestavia Hills Magazine is mailed to select households throughout Vestavia Hills, and a limited number of free copies are available at local businesses. Please visit VestaviaHillsMagazine.com for a list of those locations. Subscriptions are available at a rate of $16.30 for one year by visiting VestaviaHillsMagazine.com or calling (205) 669-3131, ext. 532. Advertising inquiries may be made by emailing advertise@vestaviahillsmagazine.com, or by calling (205) 669-3131, ext. 536.
4 April/May 2021
from the editor
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ON THE COVER
Cookies Please
Amy Jason’s passion for baking cookies has led her to share baked goods in Cookie Fix locations in Homewood and, most recently, Cahaba Heights. Photo by Karen Askins Design by Kimberly Myers
As I type this letter, we have hit the one-year mark since our world was forever changed by a virus. None of us had any clue then just how long this strange season would last, and even as more and more of us get vaccinated today, we now know there won’t be one magical day where suddenly everything snaps back to a pre-pandemic normal. What we do know is decades from now we’ll be telling stories from the pandemic of 2020 and beyond to kids and grandkids, so I am starting to think of just what time capsule our photos and magazines from this time will be. At first glance, this issue might not scream “pandemic magazine,” so I thought I’d share how it is, in many ways, very much one. Our Out & About event photos take up very few pages, and any events we preview in The Guide come with fine print to check for updates online before attending. Most of the writing in the pages that follow started not with our usual in-person interviews but with emails, old-school phone calls and Zoom calls. Our photography all took place with social distance, masked photographers and often outdoor settings. Our food feature not only tells the story of how Cookie Fix came to be but also of how supportive the community has been of its rich, chewy, usually chocolate-y cookies even as they were staying at home far more than usual. Later in this issue Broadway actor Tommy McDowell shares about what this past year has been like with his tour of Jesus Christ Superstar on hold and most of the theatre community isolated from one another. Elsewhere in the pages that lie ahead, we share the story of a brave boy who fought a rare form of cancer and how his parents are continuing that fight today through the Rucker Collier Foundation, and three Vestavia Hills High School students share their MOTHstyle essays that will take you to Syria, Sweden, India and Hawaii and all the more notably convey how their experiences tied to these places deeply shaped their journeys. In some ways this all feels like the pandemic era that never ends, but today I write from on a glorious Alabama early spring day where the temperature is hanging out around a dreamy 70 degrees. I moved my “office” to my front porch, feel like I could run 10 miles if I put on running shoes and have plans to dine outdoors with friends tonight. There’s a lot we still don’t know about the future, but today leaves me confident in saying this: Spring has arrived. More vaccines are coming. And good things are in store. Wishing you well as days grow longer and trees grow brighter,
madoline.markham@vestaviahillsmagazine.com VestaviaHillsMagazine.com 5
“ ” THE QUESTION
What’s your favorite “hidden gem” in Vestavia Hills? McCallum Park, and it’s the creeking that’s the best part! Kids and dogs love playing in that water on a hot day and looking for arrowheads. It’s always an adventure.
The waterfall at the end of Comer Drive, and the trail behind the library.
The whole smoked chicken to go from Miss Myra’s— great option for a quick and easy family dinner. Comes with white and red sauce, and is delicious!
The rock messages down the hill on Smyers Circle.
-Karen Cram Hoar
-Alison Dempsey Owen
Troup’s The Hills pizza is ridiculously good. Bendy’s ice cream. The new baseball fields behind Cahaba Heights Elementary. -Mary Wood-Leonard
The burger and fries at Bistro V are cheaper than going to Five Guys, and they are SO GOOD! -Grant Beckett Dalton
6 April/May 2021
-J Mark Ware
-Daisy Slay James
We love going down to the creek off Morgan Road. The kids love to play on the rocks and in the water. Lots of “nature” down there according to my littles.
-Amy Marquis Brunson
Watching the owners of Pappas’ Grill fight while they make your delicious Greek food. -Brooks Howle
THE GUIDE
RISE KIDS DAY APRIL 3 9-11 A.M. Vestavia Hills High School Come out for a morning of fun with a character party and touch-a-truck event benefitting the Rucker Collier Foundation. The event is part of VHHS student organization RISE’s work to raise money to support research to fight cancer. Tickets, $15 each, can be purchased at gofan.co/app/events/229881. VestaviaHillsMagazine.com 7
APRIL 25
Heights Hangout 2-7 P.M. Heights Village This annual event will return with pop-up shops, food, live music and a kids’ zone. Admission, $10, proceeds benefit the ongoing beautification of Cahaba Heights through the Cahaba Heights Merchants Association.
Check for event updates closer to dates based on COVID-19. THROUGH MAY 2021 An Epic of Earth and Water: Clare Leighton and the New England Industries Series Birmingham Museum of Art, Arrington Gallery APRIL 10 Gumbo Gala Presented by Episcopal Place Sloss Furnaces APRIL 10-11 BirmingFAM Festival Trim Tab Brewing Co. APRIL 16-18 Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama Barber Motorsports APRIL 17 11th Annual Mutt Strut: Dog-Friendly 5k and 1 Mile Fun Run Benefitting Hand in Paw Virtual
APRIL 24
Wing Ding 4-7 P.M. Vestavia Hills City Hall Get ready to eat wings and more wings at this annual Leadership Vestavia Hills event, and there will be live music and a kids zone too. All proceeds benefit the Cystic Fibrosis Association, and the event is currently looking for sponsors. Watch for updates on the event on leadershipvestaviahills.com and Facebook.
RETAIL
NOW OPEN Have you checked out the newest eating and retail spots on Highway 31? Hilltop Liquor in the Publix shopping center even carries locally distilled Redmont vodka, and Taco Mama in the Vestavia City Center has all your taco and burrito favorites plus margaritas and lots of outdoor seating. 8 April/May 2021
AROUND TOWN
APRIL 17 Diabetes Walk for Camp Seale Harris Veterans Park APRIL 17 Grand Riverfest The Outlet Shops of Grand River APRIL 23-25 Magic City Art Connection Linn Park APRIL 23-25 Alabama Ballet Presents: Romeo & Juliet BJCC Concert Hall APRIL 24 Ronald McDonald House Charities of Alabama Red Shoe Run: Rockin’ 5K 2021 Downtown Homewood
APRIL 29- MAY 1 Spring Plant Sale Aldridge Gardens MAY 4-9 Birmingham Barons vs. Biloxi Shuckers Regions Field MAY 5-9 Regions Tradition Greystone Golf and Country Club MAY 15 Do Dah Day Highland Avenue MAY 18-23 Birmingham Barons vs. Montgomery Biscuits Regions Field MAY 23 Zach Williams The Rescue Story Tour The Alabama Theatre
RESTAURANTS
MEET THE CHEF Satterfield’s Restaurant in Cahaba Heights reopened in January with a new chef team, a new menu and new interior decor! Here chef Chris Harrigan is pictured with owner Becky Satterfield and general manager Leah Harrigan. They’re now open for lunch Tuesday-Saturday too.
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&CULTURE
ARTS
A BIT OF CHAOS Allison Chapman splays her adventurous spirit out on the canvas. BY MICHELLE LOVE PHOTOS BY MARY FEHR VestaviaHillsMagazine.com 11
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Allison Chapman has always loved the controlled chaos. She has never been afraid of trying something new to see where it takes her, in her life and with her paint. She might pick out the colors, but she allows her paints to do their own work to come into being on a canvas. Today the end results of all sizes and mediums adorn the walls of her Vestavia Hills home that she shares with her husband and two young girls. While she loves working with various types of paint, acrylics are where she feels most at home. “With acrylic it’s an easier experience because you can blend colors so elegantly and you don’t have to
be as patient to wait for all of the paint to dry to start your next layer,” she says. “But it really is a layered process. Each new layer brings something different and can change the entire way you view the painting.” Most of her paintings are created with a combination of pouring, palette knives (she has a vast collection), and sometimes random tools that she thinks will move the paint in an interesting or unique way. She rarely uses a brush because it does not reflect the unbridled energy she looks for in her work. “I don’t know why, but every time I use a brush it looks too controlled,” she says. “I want the VestaviaHillsMagazine.com 13
Allison Chapman paints with watercolors in her Vestavia Hills home.
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paint to do its own thing and become its own unique pattern. I feel like brushes too often make the painting look like I was trying too hard.” Allison is originally from Nashville but came to the University of Alabama for college to study advertising with a minor in art and English. Although creativity was a huge part of her education, she says she did not fully focus on painting or more physical forms of art because she felt graphic design lay more in her prospective field of advertising. It wasn’t until 2016 when she was pregnant with her second child that she decided she was going to make some artwork for the baby’s room. “I’ve always had a mind for art,” she says. “Whenever I travel, I go to museums, I look at other artists’ work and I always have had this sense of, ‘Oh, I want to try that!’ I went out and bought a bunch of supplies, and I just went to town on canvases. I just found it to be so much fun…It was a great way for me to get outside of my head.” Allison started with abstract work with acrylic paints on canvas and kept building her style by trying new techniques. From there she experimented with watercolor paints and seeing how the different textures danced together on the
canvas. “Acrylic on its own has its own texture and its own way of laying itself out on the canvas, but if you add water, it can get really wild,” she says. After exploring watercolor, Allison got the urge to try acrylic pouring, a technique involving thinning acrylic paint using a medium like floetrol and pouring it out onto the canvas. “Those are really exciting because you have no idea what you’re going to get once you pour it onto the canvas.” “I think for me it’s like every canvas is sort of a new adventure. It’s like, ‘Well, what do I want to try different this time?’…It always takes shape, and it’s always exciting to see what it looks like.” Allison’s inspiration comes from a wide variety of muses. When she travels for work, she makes it a priority to visit museums and take in local art exhibits. At home, sunsets and sunrises in her backyard create a spark whether it be from color or emotion. She’s also inspired by her two daughters who she says are “obsessed” with painting. “They come in every night when I’m painting, and they’re like, ‘Mommy, use this pink!’ or ‘Mommy, use this green!’ So I often let them inspire me to be a little bold and courageous with the color choices. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it does not, VestaviaHillsMagazine.com 15
but that’s okay.” Her children are also fascinated with counting the many layers of her paintings. Working with acrylics, Allison says, can often lead to multiple layers of paint on the surface. Allison’s paintings have up to 20 layers on average. “I have some 16-by-20s in my studio right now that I’ve been working on for about a week and they’re on like layer 15,” she says. The layering and mistakes are all part of the messy but rewarding painting process. To her, it’s a metaphor for life. “That’s the beauty of painting,” she says. “I’m sure there are other art forms where you don’t get to just paint over your mistakes. And sometimes what you hated about the last layer can peek through the new layer, and I like seeing remnants of the past layers. Maybe I didn’t like that dark color originally, but maybe if I cover it with a 16 April/May 2021
light color and it pokes through a little bit, that adds dimension and character.” Allowing that bit of chaos to peek through is pivotal to her creation. Allison says her art is in many ways a reflection of herself: “Trying to be bold and be less controlled and not take things as seriously. I think that’s so important when you’re painting.” That’s something she is trying to teach to her daughter, Maggie, too when she messes up on a painting or a drawing and is upset. In those moments, Allison tells Maggie it’s okay, that they can calm down and move past it. “When things happen in life sometimes you just have to build a bridge and get over it…You just have to let it go,” she says. “And I think that’s what painting is for me is losing a little bit of that control and letting things happen the way they need to happen.”
Ask a child what he dreams of doing in the future. His answer brings everything into focus for us. WE DO WHAT WE DO BECAUSE CHILDREN HAVE DREAMS.
THE HAPPY PLACE In the past pandemic year when there has been so much sadness, Allison has found her relationship with painting has been her constant. She also encourages other local artists to continue to create to find their happy place. “Really, it’s just for fun,” she says. “Try to find something in your life to enjoy, and if that makes other people happy then all the better. I see all these other artists out there doing their thing. It’s really great to see people enjoying themselves in a creative way.”
1 6 0 0 7 T H AV E N U E S O U T H BIRMINGHAM, AL 35233 (205) 638-9100 | ChildrensAL.org
VestaviaHillsMagazine.com 17
ARTS & CULTURE
READ THIS BOOK
Stories of Hope & Resilience Recommendations from
Lisa Hicks
Vestavia Library Paralibrarian & Storyteller
I love helping people in the Children’s Department at the Vestavia Hills Library in the Forest and telling them stories. Over the past year, I have missed our in-person programs and keep thinking about how difficult things are right now for everyone. In our virtual storytelling program Storytime Stars (because all of our storytime friends are stars to us!) with Ms. Anjie and me, I’ve focused on stories and books that offer both resilience and hope for these difficult times. Here are a few of them.
While We Can’t Hug
by Eoin McLaughlin What would you do if you couldn’t hug your best friend? What if your best friend were a hedgehog or a tortoise? Thank goodness Owl is wise and tells them. “Don’t worry,” said Owl. “There are lots of ways to show someone you love them.” This picture book helps us realize that even when we can’t hug, which many of us miss so much, we can still be together. There are tons of other ways to show how much we care about each other and to be together while being safe.
The World Needs More Purple People
by Benjamin Hart and Kristen Bell This funny picture book suggests that instead of having extreme views and not talking with each other, we might all be better off being more moderate and accepting. In this book, Purple Penny takes you through the steps to be a Purple Person to help bridge the gap that is dividing us in ways both silly and inspiring. Purple people bring together Red and Blue people. Purple people are everyday superheroes who can help heal our world.
The Great Realization Book
by Tomos Roberts Based on a wonderful poem, written for the narrator’s brother and sister to give them hope, this beautifully illustrated picture book is very wise. The book suggests that while we all want to get back to “normal,” there are things about life now that are good and teach us lessons from which we might create a better world. These things are important to celebrate and remember even when we are sad or frustrated by what we are all going through.
The Magical Yet
by Angela DiTerlizzi Often, if we are not good at things the first time we try them, we give up and don’t try again. When we learn about The Magical Yet, though, we start to think about how even if we may not be good at something if we keep trying, we will get better and may someday be good at it too. This rhyming book is magical, so are you and the word “yet!”
Heroes Wear Masks: Elmo’s Super Adventure
by Sesame Workshop It can be difficult for young kids to understand that they need to wear masks in public or why others are wearing a mask. Who better than Elmo to help them understand? Elmo wants to be a hero at school by wearing his mask and helping to keep everyone safe. There is so much fun in this book, plus tips for kids, and later, for parents too.
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SCHOOL
&SPORTS
MOTH MEMOIRS
Vestavia Hills High School students share their stories of struggle and triumph, rife with vulnerability. ESSAYS CONTRIBUTED PHOTOS BY MORGAN HUNT VestaviaHillsMagazine.com 19
Each school year Michael Sinnott’s AP English Language & Composition students learn to vulnerably speak from scars one step out of their comfort zone. As they write their own memoir stories in the style of The Moth Radio Hour, they share their most authentic selves through stories of tragedy, of struggles, of the mundane seen through a literary lens. And through these stories they come to see one another in new light, especially in a pandemic season of extra isolation. Here are three of them.
THE RESCUE BY RANEE BRADY
20 April/May 2021
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The sun beat down on the tropical Island of Kauai, the third largest island in the Hawaiian archipelago. A fresh breeze whipped through the north side of the Island, swathing the beaches in the scent of salt and coconuts. On the land, this breeze was a welcome relief from the blistering afternoon sun. However, just across the shoreline, over the crystal blue water, the gentle breeze turned into howling gusts and gales, its fiendish hands stirring vengeful currents that pummeled the stoic coral reef. Kauai’s coral reef was Mother Nature’s Great Wall, the protector of three football field’s length of calm blues and greens. Between the tide pools and seagrass, however, deceptive channels in the reef snake slyly through the calm water, disguised as any other meandering wave. The disguise is almost impeccable, and the only distinctions are the riptide current and vicious undertow, nearly unnoticeable until you are in the channel itself. A quick Google search could tell you that 11 people have drowned at this particular beach, Anini Beach, since 1970. On July 6, 2018, I kept that number from reaching 12. Peering through my cloudy snorkel mask, I watched the spectacle that ensued in the coral reef right below me. Sardines darted in schools across the sand, their reflective scales greeting me. Crabs and other burying critters dug for refuge as my ominous shadow shrouded their homes. I gave a quick kick of my leg and push of my arm to avoid being swept down shore by the soft current. Later, my dad and I re-entered the water one more time before we left. The right of the beach was different than the vibrant scenes I had spectated earlier. Instead of coral, dark seagrass covered the bottom, reaching up to us with its sinister tendrils. I could tell my dad was unimpressed with the scenery as well, and we decided to swim farther out. The seagrasses gave way to the fringe of the coral reef that protected the cove, the tumultuous waves still very many yards away. My dad, already hesitant about how far we were from the beach, signaled for me not to go any further, and after minutes of silently observing the teeming life, we began to head back. The current seemed to have picked up with the afternoon wind. Just as we came back over the seagrass, I heard a woman’s voice calling for help and swam over to her flailing figure. She grasped for my arm, and I managed to keep her afloat.
Frantic, I asked if she was okay, even though in her obvious state, she was not. She only sputtered water and laid her head back, now floating on the surface with the help of my arm. The water around me was moving significantly faster than the water I had snorkeled in and was swiftly vacuuming us out to sea. I strapped my snorkel mask back on, fastened my grip on the woman, and swam as fast as I could for shore. I managed to break through the faster current, a channel, though I did not know it at the time, and pushed onward. Although I was facing the shore, the current managed to push us west, so I was swimming diagonally and not making much headway. There were many moments on my trek that I thought I was going to drown with her, and I considered giving up and hoping someone would find us downstream. Saltwater had now filled my goggles, and I closed my eyes, swimming blindly in the same direction. My snorkel tube fell out of my mouth countless times, resulting in mouthfuls of saltwater. After what seemed like forever, I had to stop. Planning on having to tread water, I dropped my lead-filled legs vertically and was surprised when they hit the sanded bottom. I lifted my head above the water for the first time since I first began swimming with the woman and ripped off my mask. When the paramedic boat reached us, a first responder jumped in to take the woman’s subconscious form from my hands. I watched in a haze as she was strapped on an inflatable stretcher and hoisted on the boat. Back on the beach the reality of what I had just done set it with fatigue. After lots of water and rest, I got to my feet as a middle-aged man approached us. He introduced himself as Jack, the woman’s son, and thanked me repeatedly. After a long conversation regarding each of our stays on the island, a figure cocooned in a towel approached our huddle. She was helped along by first responders but shook them off, pushed through her family members, and enveloped me in a hug. She thanked me through the warm embrace, and I heard the woman’s voice of whom I saved for the first time. Whatever gratefulness that was not conveyed in her touch was expressed by her eyes, which were brimming with tears. I will remember the gratifying gaze of her wise, watery eyes for the rest of my life.
VestaviaHillsMagazine.com 21
A CAR THAT CAN GO
M
BY SAVAN PATEL
Many kids my age ask for and receive brand new 4Runners, Silverados or F-150s. In my case, neither thing happened. I simply said that I wanted something “that was able to go.” And go my used, bright red 1999 Nissan Frontier pickup could. It had poor AC and heating, dim headlights
22 April/May 2021
and hand-crank windows. It needed some repairs, had no aux cord and needed Bluetooth cassette to play music. But it wasn’t just used, it was used by my grandfather. After my grandfather passed away in the spring
of 2019, the end of my freshman year, my family was visiting his house and my grandmother in Nashville. While there, my aunt said, “Savan, pick heads or tails.” “What? Ah, tails,” I replied. After all, tails never fails. My aunt flipped a quarter and then opened her palm slowly, revealing the gleaming silver feathers of a bald eagle. It was tails. “Congratulations,” my aunt said. “You just won a car.” A coin flip had decided the new owner of my grandfather’s truck. I was neither excited nor disappointed, but I was pleased. After all, I said I just wanted something “that could go.” However, over time, to me it became more than just that. My grandfather was born in India, and he moved to Kenya in his early childhood. In Kenya, finding stable food every day was a struggle. He had no bed to call his own. Against the odds, he managed to make it to England as a young adult. There, he became a double-decker bus driver. He drove red double-decker buses, I should add. He started a family, and then finally risked everything to move to America, where he again took a large risk and opened a motel in Cave City, Kentucky. He never stopped working. Even on the day before he passed, he drove the little red truck to
For all your backyard playground needs!!
Walmart, where he worked after selling his motels. He did not need the money. His children had grown up to be successful, and they could have provided. But, despite that, he continued to work. And now, this second red vehicle of his was mine. To me, this truck is the physical embodiment of my grandfather’s work. His hard work allows me to go to restaurants while he had to search for food on his own in Kenya. His hard work allows me to get an education while he received little. I realized last year that I cannot waste his efforts. He truly wanted his children and grandchildren to succeed and be happy. I had to recognize that goal. It now rests in my mind whenever I drive anywhere. When I drive to school, it is to work hard to receive an education and be successful. When I pick up my sister from soccer practice, it is to do a favor for my parents and help them be happier and less stressed. When I go to the gym, it is to stay healthy so I can continue to do the aforementioned things. His hard work both physically enables and emotionally inspires me to work hard, and the truck is what brings me to have that view. Something that can do that, I believe, is not just some vehicle “that can go.”
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www.backyardalabama.com VestaviaHillsMagazine.com 23
THICKER THAN WATER
W
BY SERENE ALMEHMI
When I was 7 years old, I was impressively bilingual. I flipped from English to Arabic without stumbling, without stuttering, without pausing for long minutes to remember a word. I went to Syria for the entirety of every summer since I was born. I attended school with my cousins, played soccer in the streets of Aleppo and rode Sea-Doos in the Dead Sea. My aunts, uncles and cousins were not extended family; they were just family. Arabic was not a second language, just another one. I did not struggle—it was second nature.
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But then the Syrian Civil War began in 2011, and I didn’t visit that year. Then the next. Then all the years to follow. My Arabic dwindled away. I did not call my aunts, uncles or cousins. By 2018, I even forgot most of their names. My father showed me pictures often: dozens of children that looked much like me, newly scattered across Europe, displaced by the war. That year, we planned a fiveweek trip to visit my 30 or so cousins and all my aunts and uncles in a complex of lake houses
outside of Stockholm, Sweden. When we arrived at the lake, my brother and I smiled, muttered our best conversational Arabic, then stared blankly at our cousins. In the seven years we had not seen each other, the seven years they fled war, the seven years my brother and I spent forgetting the war in Tennessee, we had become complete strangers. We did not have something essential in common: language. We tried playing soccer in the field nearby and then card games, but explaining the rules proved too challenging. We swapped broken English and Arabic, relearning each others’ ages and grades and interests. But, still, a day later, we could barely speak to each other. On the second day, after dinner, my cousins Taha and Bushra asked my brother and me to take a rowboat out on the lake. It was a massive lake. Sweden, even in the summer, is incredibly cold. We started to shiver, the sun started to set, and we decided to turn back. We grew too tired to paddle. My brother suggested that he try swimming back to get help, and he, always overly-confident, dove into the cold water. He got about 20 feet ahead of us before he started gasping for air. My brother has pretty bad asthma. He used to
get pneumonia so bad he’d go to the hospital for a day or two at least once a year. I did not know how to say “asthma” or “pneumonia” or even “he can’t breathe” in Arabic. But Bushra and Taha understood enough to panic. We rowed as fast as we could. I jumped in the lake and yanked him out of the water. My brother sat in the rowboat, shaking. Bushra and Taha wrapped him in their dry clothes. We tried our best to paddle back. Taha and I even made haphazard attempts to swim and drag the rowboat. After almost an hour and a half of this, we made it to the shore. No one was waiting for us. Before we could even call my dad to get my brother an inhaler or a nebulizer, the four of us laid down in the grass and laughed. We looked at our bruised feet and pruned fingers and red faces and laughed as hard as we could, until our stomachs hurt. In that moment, we didn’t have words in common, not even full sentences. But we were family, I realized, and family surmounts language, overcomes boundaries. Family is bigger than language, than conversation. Blood is thicker than water, thicker than cold water in Sweden.
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SCHOOL & SPORTS
5
FIVE QUESTIONS FOR
Sean Calhoun
New Vestavia Hills High School Football Coach PHOTO CONTRIBUTED
For the first time in more than four decades, Vestavia Hills High School has a new head football coach: Sean Calhoun. Calhoun, 39, most recently served as the head football coach at Carrollton (Georgia) High School, where he compiled a 51-12 record over five seasons including three region championships and five quarterfinal playoff appearances. Here he shares some of his thoughts on stepping into the Vestavia program as longtime coach Buddy Anderson retires after becoming the winningest football coach in Alabama history in his 43 years coaching the Rebels. You are taking over for Buddy Anderson. How does that impact your approach as you get started in this new role? It’s exciting and a little nerve-wracking taking over a program that has been in such great hands for 43 years. I may have some different tactics, but when you get down to the basics of our program, the foundation coach Anderson has already laid is absolutely fantastic. That’s one of the biggest things that drew me to the Vestavia Hills football program. Fundamentally my ideals and values are the exact same.
him as long as he is comfortable with it I definitely need to use him as a resource. He has built this place, and people still need to see his face. He is a phenomenal human being, and a phenomenal coach. If you are at a place this long, you are doing a lot of things the right way. When my career is done, if I can even be in the What was it like for you to meet the same sentence or book as Coach Anderson, I have done a couple of things VHHS team for the first time? There was a really good excitement in right. the air. This team has a great nucleus and a great senior class. I told them to Can you talk some about the write down how they want to be as an importance of character in how you individual, as a football player and as a coach? The first thing I told this team is that I team. I told them I can’t be the guy who am a Christian. I wanted my players and wants to win more than they do. We have What do you think of the competition this community to know that that is big the pieces of the puzzle here, and it’s my here in Alabama? Competition is not something I shy job to move them around to make that for me and my family. I want leaders to have character, not be a character. If you away from and that this team won’t shy product. It comes down to hard work. can’t do the right thing in the classroom, away from. Every team has two things: there’s no way in the world I can count You met Buddy Anderson not long good coaches and good players. That excites me because now we get to see after you were hired for this position. on you on the field. I told the team if our how good our preparation is. What I What was that interaction like for best players are our best people in general we have a great chance of being expect from this team is to give 100 you? It was an honor meeting him. I told successful. 26 April/May 2021
percent. I don’t think Alabama football gets talked about. You hear about Texas and Florida and Georgia and California talked about, but Alabama will go toe-totoe with every team in every one of those states. I am excited to be a part of this rich football state.
&DRINK
FOOD
COOKIE CHEER
Here’s the story behind how Amy Jason brought a niche for sweets to her neighbors and beyond. BY SARA GUVEN PHOTOS BY KAREN ASKINS VestaviaHillsMagazine.com 27
Cookie Fix founder Amy Jason holds a tray of her sweet creations at their new location in Cahaba Heights.
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Amy Jason never set out to be a cookie connoisseur. But you wouldn’t be able to tell now that she’s been selling cookies with their signature “height,” crispy exterior and gooey inside for 10 years, with a Cookie Fix storefront in Homewood for four years and a new one in Cahaba Heights that opened in November. Amy’s passion for baking originally came from growing up in a family centered around homecooked meals. Her mother loved to prepare food as an act of love, but she didn’t prepare sweets very often. So Amy took it upon herself to fill the gap. “I guess I saw a niche early on—there’s something missing here! We need more sweets!” she recollects. Amy still remembers the moment when she realized how much she enjoyed baking. “I think I was about 10 or 11. It was a boring Friday night, and I had nothing else to do but be at home with my parents,” she says. She prepared an apple turnover recipe out of a Pillsbury Bake Off cookbook bought
in the grocery store checkout line, and her parents’ reaction had her hooked. “Oh yeah, this is fun. I’m getting attention from my mom and dad and making them happy,” she remembers thinking. “That was some immediate gratification.” After graduating from the University of Alabama, Amy and her husband, David, lived in Edgewood before settling in Vestavia in 1990. Baking remained a passion of hers, but finding time to bake while raising their three children was quite difficult. In that time she did find that cookies were the best choice for kids who had no care for elaborate desserts, and that baking them was fulfilling for her too. “I was happy and blessed to be at home, but at the end of the day, I had very little to show for my efforts. At the end of the day, whether it was a clean kitchen or cookies, I just wanted something to know, ‘I did something creative and fun today,’” she explains. Her children were definitely grateful for their VestaviaHillsMagazine.com 29
mom’s talent, as were neighbors and friends. “If a friend’s dog died or a child broke their arm, I showed up with cookies in the mailbox,” Amy says. “It was how I loved on people.” Amy soon was baking multiple batches a day and facing so many requests that she couldn’t keep track. Inspired by a magazine article, she decided to start an email list. “It was ten years ago this fall, and I started doing that with a list of 50,” she says. “By the time I finished doing that at home, my email list had grown to about 750 families.” With clear demand, friends and acquaintances started encouraging her to open a business. But Amy wasn’t sure. It took a chance encounter with a friend to push her over the edge. “I ran into David Maluff, who owns Full Moon, at the Vestavia High School gym for a wrestling tournament. We just brushed past each other, very quickly, and he looked at me 30 April/May 2021
and said, ‘I’m disappointed with you.’” Confused, she asked him what he meant. David told her that she had everything she needed for a successful business, and that he would even help her if she wanted. “He said, ‘What are you waiting on?’ And that was truly a pivotal moment,” Amy recalls. And so after some searching, Amy found the perfect spot for the original Cookie Fix location in downtown Homewood four years ago, and the rest is history. But even before Amy sent her first email, her family could tell what she needed to do too. One day when she was taking her youngest child, John, to Vestavia East, she saw a little house nearby with “For Lease- Commercial” sign and told him it would be a cute place for Lil’ Sack of Sugar, her original name for her cookie concept. “I think he was 7 at the time, and he said, ‘Mom, it’s time for you to stop talking
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about it and time to do it,’” Amy recalls with a laugh. Family has stayed at the heart of Cookie Fix too. Six months in, her husband, David, left his career to work full time with the business. Her daughter, who shares her mother’s passion for baking, loves to help her develop new recipes, and both of her sons have worked in the business as well. Most importantly, her children are her number one taste testers. “They’re very honest. They’ve had more cookies than anybody in Birmingham,” she says with a laugh. For Amy Cookie Fix is much more than just a business too. It’s brought her closer to the Birmingham community and taught her a lot about human nature. Even amidst all the baking, Amy strives to connect with those who come into the store and take the time to ask about their day and what they’re up to. Relating to her customers and learning their stories is her favorite part of the business, and she has collected plenty of stories along the way. “We see people parked right outside, they’ve got on their bracelets from the hospital, and the husband rushes in, and they’re like. ‘We just had our baby! We just left St. Vincent’s and y’all are the first stop!’ We hear it all the time,” Amy recounts. She goes on to describe the story of another customer’s journey. “We have been one young man’s last stop, he knew it. He had pediatric cancer, and he made it to his 20s. Cookie Fix was his favorite spot. It’s what cheered him up and made him feel good,” an honor not at all lost on her. Reflecting on the difficulties that the COVID-19 pandemic brought, Amy tears up thinking about how much support the community provided. “It was such a hard time for everyone, such fear and anxiety in the unknown for everybody,” she says. “But when (customers) came to get their cookies and we could greet them and love on them, that stayed constant. We did not close one day. Our customers were amazing. They were generous, they were appreciative, they were patient. I don’t think it could have been any better.” Cookies can provide community, communicate love and bring joy to any situation, a fact Amy can testify to firsthand. “We just hear amazing stories of how people are sharing themselves, loving on others, spreading the Cookie Fix word,” she says. “When I marvel at the line out the door and down the sidewalk, I simply say, ‘It’s all God because it’s just cookies!’” Cookie Fix’s Cahaba Heights location is located at 3152 Heights Village and is open Monday-Friday 10 a.m.-5 p.m. and Saturday 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Learn more at cookiefix.com. 32 April/May 2021
ROLL CALL Cookie Fix’s flavors vary by day and are posted online. Here’s a list of flavors they offer in addition to cookie cakes and cookie dough you can bake at home. Brookie Bar Brown Sugar Blondie Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake Slices Cookies & Cream First Date Healthy Peanut Butter Heartbreaker M&M Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Chocolate Chunk Oatmeal Toffee Opposites Attract Peanut Butter Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Peanut Butter Cup Peanut Butter Smores Please Plain Jane Presidential Red Velvet Salted Caramel Toffee Salted Dark Chocolate Caramel Sammies Triple Chocolate Chunk White Trash
VestaviaHillsMagazine.com 33
FOOD & DRINK
5
FIVE QUESTIONS FOR
Jeff Gentry
The Backyard Market Owner PHOTO CONTRIBUTED
A little snow wasn’t going to stop Jeff Gentry from opening his new market and restaurant on Highway 31 in February. And so as the flakes landed on their storefront on the morning of Feb. 16, they went on serving meals as planned, right in what is many people’s backyard on Highway 31 next to Donato’s Pizza. To learn more about the market concept and what it offers, we chatted with Jeff a few days after they opened up shop. Where did the idea for this concept come from? I was born and raised in Vestavia and have lived here my whole life. I have always wanted to do something on 31 in Vestavia. I was driving by one day and saw the for-lease sign, and the landlords have been helping us to open as quickly as possible. I felt like we needed a local neighborhood market where people could grab a sandwich, a bottle of craft beer and a bottle a wine and have a cool place to hang out for kids and families. What we will we find in the market? We carry locally sourced products like seasonal produce when it’s available. We’ve got specialty cheeses, steak, elk tenderloins and other meats. If you need eggs and milk, you can come to us and grab some wine and dinner too. Coming soon you can get hand-cut steaks to take home, or we will cook them for you. We 34 April/May 2021
will have a lot more grab-n-go meals. Whatever the community needs is what we will carry. We can bring in any type of wine or craft beer anybody wants. What’s on the menu? We have a really good southern style breakfast, and lunch with sandwiches and burgers and such. In the evenings we have the lunch menu and will also have three or four entrees each night for dinner, like a shrimp and grits or fish or steak. The dinner menu will change every day.
distributor. We are not trying to carry Hidden Valley and Kraft products. We want to carry as many local products from the area as we can whether it’s salad dressings and meats. Especially now people really want to know where their food comes through.
Your chefs have worked at Satterfield’s, Hot and Hot, Ovenbird and Big Bad Breakfast. What do you think appealed to them about this concept? I have two excellent chefs, Leo Oliver and John Williams, and I couldn’t have done this without them. I think it’s something different nobody Can you tell us about your professional background and how it ties in with the has done before around here. It really challenges them as chefs. Not only are market concept? My background is in grocery they preparing food for people, but we distribution and working with sourcing are also preparing product lines. It gives with local products and selling them to them the opportunity to be creative. The retailers, and I still do that on a smaller kitchen staff is incredible, so we will scale with Bamawise, a local grocery create whatever the neighborhood needs.
&STYLE
HOME
CLASSIC STYLE
Ironwork, antiques and courtyards add an inviting French elegance to the Lollars’ home off Altadena Road. BY MADOLINE MARKHAM PHOTOS BY SARAH SHEPHERD VestaviaHillsMagazine.com 35
T
To get the most thorough tour of Holly Lollar’s home, she’ll invite her mom Debby Shepherd to come along with you. When Holly and her husband, Chris, were building their house off Altadena Road just over five years ago, Debby stepped in to offer her expertise as an interior decorator, starting with designing the most central element of the home: the living room. “Holly really wanted a formal living room that would be used and enjoyed. By designing the living room to be the center of the home, family and guests enjoy it more,” Debby notes. Holly also requested that the windows be placed where you could see from the entrance all the way through to the back courtyard. “I have always liked home designs where you can see straight through the house, enjoy greenery and see your kids playing outside,” Holly adds. For it and most other rooms in the house’s walls were planned to accommodate French antique artwork and furnishings Holly had already purchased—a step Holly says she wouldn’t have thought to taken on her own. They also decided to paint all of the interior rooms Benjamin Moore Elmira White, creating a neutral blank canvas that has allowed Holly to go back and add bits of color and wallpaper in later years. When it came to the entrance of the home, Holly envisioned black iron accents both on the exterior and to make a statement with the foyer stairway. Working with Allen Iron Works in Tarrant, they created a custom railing for the staircase and put finishing touches on another piece Holly found at an estate sale for the exterior. This home was designed with entertaining in mind too. French doors in the living room and family room allow guests to spill out into the elegant courtyard designed by Faulkner Gardens. Holly also enjoys the small French walled garden outside her kitchen window to welcome guests to the less formal side entrance of the house. The Lollars decided to save the exterior projects for later, taking the time to create them after getting a better feel for living in the home. All in all, it’s no doubt a home and yard where family memories will be made for years to come.
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VestaviaHillsMagazine.com 37
Kitchen Because the kitchen flows into the den, Holly wanted architectural elements with an old-world feel used in place of upper cabinets. This also created a consistent flow with her neutral-colored cabinets and Alabama limestone countertops. Across from the European style stove she found on eBay hang relics from a European church that she discovered while on a shopping trip to High Point, North Carolina. Holly also used antique doors from Scott Antique Market in Atlanta to close off her pantry spaces.
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Dining Room For this elegant space, Holly had antique dining room chairs rebuilt after she chose them for their design and painted finish. She later added a pair of complementary chairs at each end of the table in a different fabric to bring more peach into the color scheme. For the walls she first found three antiques frames and then commissioned Barbara Harbin to create portraits of children to complement the frames.
Den The statement maker of this space off the kitchen is its high vaulted ceiling with distressed light washed beams. Above the limestone fireplace mantle from Architectural Accents in Atlanta hang framed antique pressed flowers and herbs, and glass doors on either side of the room overlook the backyard pool.
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Master Bedroom When Holly was in her 20s, Debby provided advice to focus on decorating one room at a time. To begin, Holly saved to buy special pieces for her bedroom during the first few years she was married. She says she still loves the antique French bed and other pieces from Maison de France in Leeds as much now as when she first purchased them almost 20 years ago.
Girl’s Room I An antique corona from Maison de France Antiques adds height to this antique French bed. It coordinates with the bed’s painted finish, complete with ballet pink silk drapery fabric and linen bedspread. Like all the bedrooms in the home, this bed is a French antique from the 1800s, so the Lollars had a custom-size mattress made for it by Ensley Fairfield Mattress Co. in Homewood.
Girl’s Room II Holly’s oldest daughter is a ballerina, so Holly commissioned artwork featuring ballerinas in creams and golds from Mobile artist Danielle Faircloth. She had the monogrammed bedding custom made for the antique twin beds and added fortuny pillows from Splendor Collections. 40 April/May 2021
Living Room Holly and Debby designed this open living space in the center of the house around this colorful six-panel screen that came from wall panels of a home in France.
DYK? did you know? We maintain more than 4,800 manholes in Shelby County. If stacked on top of each other, they would reach the height of Mt. Everest, plus 31 football fields.
VestaviaHillsMagazine.com 41
Boy’s Room This classic red, white and blue room features a durable blue Turkish Kilim rug from Birmingham-based LillieKat Rugs and Holly’s grandfather’s American flag folded on an antique bamboo bed.
Boy’s Bathroom Gold star wallpaper by Schumacher adds a pop of fun to this children’s bathroom. 42 April/May 2021
The Lollar Family
Guest Bedroom Holly found out she was pregnant with their third child while they were building this house, so they reworked the main floorplan to add an additional bedroom on the main floor they originally used as a nursey. Now that their son has moved upstairs, an antique daybed with teal bedding makes it an elegant guest room, complete with a rug from Nashville Rug Company, and Holly hung her grandmother’s antique plates above the three-drawer chest across from it.
BEHIND THE SCENES Builder: Alan Simpson, Highland Construction & Preservation Kitchen & Laundry Room Countertops: Tracery Stone Landscaping: John Mardick, Alabama Lawn Sprinklers Courtyard & Garden: Peter Faulkner, Faulkner Gardens Interior Design: Debby Shepherd, Debby Shepherd Interiors VestaviaHillsMagazine.com 43
IN STYLE
THE COLORS OF SPRING 5
BY ABBY ADAMS PHOTOS BY LAUREN USTAD
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LOOK 1 1. ELTON JOHN BOYFRIEND TEE You can tell everybody that is your tee. Mia Moda | $79
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2. LAVENDER PLUMERIA MAXI SKIRT Lavender is the it color this spring. Mia Moda | $69
3. CROCHET TOTE BAG
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The perfect spring bag for any outfit. Mia Moda | $79
4. COFI HOLLY FASHION SNEAKERS Sneakers are all the rage for spring. Mia Moda| | $169
5. CHARM NECKLACE Layering pieces pair well with any outfit. Mia Moda | $29
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Dress this colorful piece up or down. Ryan Reeve | $64
2. SPRING RING NECKLACE This gold chain necklace is sassy but so classy. Ryan Reeve | $36
3. OCEAN AVE BEACH MATISSE WEDGES The shoe that will take you through spring and into summer. Ryan Reeve | $48
4. CLEAR GOLD CLUTCH Take this grab-and-go clutch on your next beach vacation. Ryan Reeve | $75
5. SHEILA FAJL EARRINGS This spring statement earring goes with everything. Ryan Reeve | $55
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3. BRONZE DOUBLE INFINITY RING LOCK & KEY Mia Moda | $217
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A MISSION IN HIGH GEAR How a brave boy is still inspiring his parents and researchers to continue the fight against the rare cancer he battled. BY MADOLINE MARKHAM PHOTOS BY HOLLAND WILLIAMS & CONTRIBUTED 46 April/May 2021
VestaviaHillsMagazine.com 47
John and Katie Collier, pictured on the right page with their sons Rucker and Charlie, are continuing to fund research to fight the cancer Rucker battled and to support families who are on a similar journey through their foundation.
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Rucker Collier was a vibrant, brave boy no matter what came his way. Even as he endured chemo treatments, surgeries, pricks, pokes and tears from age 4 to age 6, he’d smile and hold two thumbs up. “That was easy peasy,” he’d say as a moment he hadn’t been looking forward to passed. For more than two years Rucker battled Stage IV Sclerosing Epithelioid Fibrosarcoma (“SEF”), a rare soft tissue sarcoma, but he was far from alone in his battle. His second home, Vestavia Day School, and a community of friends walked through each step of his journey with him, but perhaps his biggest team members were his parents, John and Katie. Although Rucker passed away on October 29, 2020, the fight they began for their son is far from over today. Rucker had been a happy and active child until he began limping in March of 2018. An X-ray led to an MRI that showed a small spot on his left fibula that an orthopedic surgeon suggested be removed. In June of that year, just after he turned 4, Rucker tripped and broke his other femur, which led to the discovery of another lesion on his other leg. From there full body X-rays revealed a mass in his belly, and a CT scan found a large tumor on his left kidney, nodules in his lungs and several lesions in his bones—which meant he had Stage IV cancer. From there Rucker was immediately admitted to the oncology wing of Children’s of Alabama, and eventually genomic testing confirmed the diagnosis of SEF. From the start, Rucker’s oncologist at Children’s, Dr. Aman Wadhwa, was realistic about Rucker’s diagnosis, telling John and Katie that the disease was incredibly rare—
especially in children—and there was no known cure. But Dr. Wadhwa remained steadfast and promised to provide Rucker the best treatment possible. John and Katie proceeded with an attitude that since there was little research or data on pediatric patient outcomes for SEF, then no odds were better than bad odds. Over the next year, Rucker received the frontline treatment for soft tissue sarcomas, which included heavy doses of chemotherapy, radiation and multiple surgeries. In it all Rucker, ever the tenderhearted rule follower, was cooperative and rarely complained. After a second and third round of traditional sarcoma treatments, though, Rucker’s doctor had to break even tougher news to John and Katie: Rucker had a recurrence of disease in his lungs and there were little, if any, other recommended therapies to treat it. He encouraged the family to seek alternative opinions for Rucker. “Before that we were doing what the doctors told us, and we had faith in them,” John recalls. “When your oncologist looks you in the eyes and says, ‘I don’t know what do to next,’ it creates a panic in the father and mother. That was when my mission kicked into high gear.” So with Dr. Wadhwa’s support and encouragement, John, who works in the investment management industry, did what he knew how to do. He’d spent years networking to find clients, and he put that skillset to work to find the best doctors and scientists he could to help his son. If you Google SEF, not much comes up. At the time of Rucker’s diagnosis, only around 100 documented cases were reported, ever. As Katie VestaviaHillsMagazine.com 49
began to get to know other families facing SEF through a Facebook group, John set to work reading the few papers that did exist on the disease, followed their footnotes and read those papers. From there he made note of papers’ authors, put together a PDF with pictures of Rucker and a list of fields they were seeking expertise in, and emailed those authors. “One thing I found is when there’s a parent trying to help their child a lot of people want to help and offer their knowledge,” John notes. That’s when a whole new world of science was opened to the Colliers. A key link in this new network came after John found a YouTube video of a panel of doctors discussing experimental or “off-label” drug therapies for sarcomas. One of the doctors from Stanford University, who specializes in immunotherapy for sarcoma in adults, said something that John would never forget: ”What if there is no clinical trial that a patient qualifies for? What if that patient is the one that responds to immunotherapy?” Upon seeing that, John realized that there may be doctors out there who were willing to try nontraditional or experimental therapies on cancers like Rucker’s, even if there was not a specific clinical trial or data to prove that it worked. John knew it was a long shot, but emailed the Stanford doctor to see if she could help Rucker. She immediately responded but told John she only treated adult patients. However, she said she would forward John’s email to a colleague of hers who practiced pediatric oncology at Stanford Children’s Health. That’s when the key link occurred. On a Saturday night while the Colliers were eating dinner at the pool, Dr. Sheri Spunt, who turned out to be the country’s leading expert in pediatric rare tissue sarcomas, called John’s cell phone. She had received the email about Rucker, and she was ready to help. That call would lead to a trip to Palo Alto, which would lead to a surgery to remove a lesion in Rucker’s lung and, perhaps most notably, an in-depth genomic sequencing to guide their therapeutic options going forward. That sequencing took John back to his comfort zone for a moment. “There was this treasure trove of data, and something I’ve been trained to do for my job is analyze data,” he says. “A spreadsheet doesn’t scare me.” The data would take him to all sorts of potential experimental therapies and the man who’d be a part of their journey for the long haul. Charles Keller is one of very few people whose 50 April/May 2021
mission is to create therapies for rare pediatric cancer, and almost one year before Rucker would pass away, the Colliers funded and set in motion the first and only study of SEF with Keller at its helm at Children’s Cancer Therapy Development Institute in Portland, Oregon. “I told people our goal is to cure Rucker, but if we are not able to do that, we are going to leave a trail for people to come behind us and we are going to cure this disease for other people,” John says. And indeed that has become his and Katie’s mission since Rucker passed away last fall. Through the Rucker Collier Foundation, they continue to fund Keller’s SEF study in Rucker’s memory as well as to support other families battling SEF and other rare soft tissue sarcomas that leave patients with few options. The foundation’s website provides for others all the research, experts and resources the Colliers fought so hard to find. “I want all the work we did to not disappear but to be the starting point for the next person who gets diagnosed with this, and they can start way further along than if we didn’t do this,” John says. “We’ve already started the marathon, and we can pass the baton and tell you how do to it and run next to you and give you water.” Currently a 26-year-old single mom of four kids who has stage IV SEF—one of the people Katie connected with through Facebook—is trying to get to Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York City from North Carolina, and the Colliers plan to help her get there through the foundation. They also want to
WAYS TO SUPPORT THE FOUNDATION Here’s how you can support the work of the Rucker Collier Foundation: uFollow updates on ruckercollierfoundation.com and @ruckercollierfoundation on Instagram. The Colliers are planning to hold an annual event around Rucker’s birthday in June to celebrate his life and raise awareness for SEF. uDonate a financial gift to the foundation on ruckercollierfoundation.com. uAttend the Character Meet and Greet event at Vestavia Hills High School organized by RISE on the morning of April 3. The Rucker Collier Foundation will be its beneficiary this year. uEncourage any organizations that fundraise for other nonprofits and companies that have charitable arms to consider giving to the foundation. VestaviaHillsMagazine.com 51
help others get access to genomic profiling Rucker had done, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars and often isn’t covered by insurance because it’s considered experimental. “The genomic profile of the disease helps you figure out what therapies might be effective,” John explains. “I think that will be the future for cancer treatment. You will see therapy customized to what your cancer is made of, not what bucket it fits in from the top.” It’s the Colliers’ hope that they can help other cancer patients jump through extra hoops to get access to experimental therapies like the one they found for Rucker toward the end of his journey. There were no conventional means for their doctor to get it for Rucker, so John and Katie jumped high. “We had to go to the manufacturer to get it for Rucker, and we had to get a compassionate use exemption and get the FDA to approve it specially for Rucker’s case,” Katie says. “It’s frustrating that kids are put at a disadvantage just for being kids. Children’s cancer might be rarer than adult cancer, but children possibly respond better and have a longer life to live if they are cured.” 52 April/May 2021
For example, the Colliers learned that in some chemo drugs you can give children more drugs in proportion to their body weight than adults because their livers can get it out of their system faster and handle the toxins better than adults. “It makes you wonder how many failed trials never made it to children that might have worked,” Katie says. She also noted that most cancer trials start and end with adults and never get to children despite the fact that children are often more resilient and that childhood cancer research only receives about 4 percent of government funding of all cancer research. Although the Rucker Collier Foundation began just a few months ago, the Colliers have been busy doing good in their son’s memory. Over the holidays they delivered warm meals to the oncology floor staff at Children’s of Alabama who were working on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and they have been dreaming about creating an activity room outside the oncology clinic in memory of Rucker for the kids who have to spend so much time there. As a part of their efforts to also support childhood cancer organizations that
supported their family, the foundation is now sponsoring the Saturday night DJ-ed dance at each session of Camp Smile-A-Mile. “(The dance) was Rucker’s absolute favorite thing,” Katie says. “He was on the dance floor until 11 p.m., and we were the last ones to leave.” Rucker’s legacy also lives on literally through his cancer tissues, which his parents donated to Keller’s study after he passed. Keller and his team have replicated it to create cell line that researchers will be able to use for SEF research for years to come. Now that it’s been created, the researchers will implant tumor tissue in mice and test new therapies for SEF on them. The end goal is to bring these therapies to trial and to current patients, especially as the number of cases will likely go up as an increase in genomic testing will allow for more sarcoma patients to receive a more precise diagnosis. When the cell line that will make all of this possible came into being earlier this year, Keller asked the Colliers if they wanted to name it with the standard set of just a few letters. In that moment, a brave boy who held two thumbs up came to their minds, and the name was clear: “EZ-PZ.”
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54 April/May 2021
Broadway
in the
Dark Actor Tommy McDowell talks about what life looks like a year into pandemic times—and how his career has strengthened his resilience time and time again. BY MADOLINE MARKHAM PHOTOS BY MARY FEHR & CONTRIBUTED
VestaviaHillsMagazine.com 55
F
For Tommy McDowell, March 12, 2021 marked one year. One year since he’d been on a Broadway tour stage. One year since he’d been amongst the camaraderie of fellow performers. One year since he’d known his friends in the industry were working. One year since he’d experienced the dynamics you can only find in live theatre. “When you are seeing a live show, the actors and the audience are so invested I feel like you almost start breathing together,” Tommy shared with us from the other side of Zoom call earlier this year. “You are feeling these things together. There’s something about the fact that you have that moment and then it’s gone. It’s an experience that really sticks with you, and it can change your mind and heart about things.” For the past 15 years Tommy toured the country with productions like American Idiot and Roundabout Theatre Company’s iconic revival of Cabaret. With New York City as his home base, he’d performed on cruise ships bound for Tahiti and
56 April/May 2021
Alaska, played a Duck Dynasty role in Las Vegas and reprised his Cabaret roles in a coastal town in Maine. Most recently he’d landed the role of Peter in the 50th Anniversary Tour of Jesus Christ Superstar when a new virus that had hardly been on his radar shut down a show in Cleveland—and then the whole tour. “I’ll never forget we were sitting around in a company meeting, and they said there’s this virus that’s going around and it affects your lungs,” Tommy recalls. “We were going to be careful and not sign autographs at the stage door and wash our hands and sanitize. And then the mayor of Cleveland came on TV and said they’d limited gatherings of 500 or more, and that’s when we knew we were getting the rug pulled from under us. And we all assumed that it wouldn’t last more than a couple of months.” That’s also how Tommy found himself back in Vestavia Hills for more than just a few days since his years growing up and studying vocal performance at Birmingham-Southern College. “It’s been nice in a way,” he told us. “I’ll get
OPPOSITE PAGE: Clockwise from the top: Tommy as Peter in the 50th Anniversary National Tour of Jesus Christ Superstar in 2019; 5th Floor Theatre Company’s production of Urinetown in 2010; and backstage at Roundabout Theatre Company’s Cabaret in 2016
VestaviaHillsMagazine.com 57
Tommy with Jesus Christ Superstar castmates Aaron LaVigne (Jesus) and Jenna Rubaii (Mary) in 2019
Tommy with his parents before a performance of Jesus Christ Superstar the week before the production shut down in 2020
The cast and creative team of Ella Minnow Pea developmental lab (now named LMNOP) in 2012
Timehop alerts on my phone, and I’ll pull up pictures from the past 11 years. There are days where I say, ‘I did all this in one day?’ You are constantly running around, and it does wear you thin. So it’s been nice to relax here and focus on family and friends and myself rather than do everything I can just to stay afloat.” Tommy also counts himself fortunate knowing that he has a job to go back to when theatre starts back up again. Jesus Christ Superstar is tentatively scheduled to go back on tour in the fall of 2021, and in the meantime he’s taken on a new skillset learning to tune pianos while living in the same house he’d lived in when in for his first musical theater performance of Fiddler on the Roof at Vestavia Hills High School. In those years, though, he’d mostly been focused on music itself: voice lessons, choral performances, playing trumpet in the school band, 58 April/May 2021
Tommy outside Landmark Theatre in Syracuse, New York with producer Steve Gabriel and castmate Sarah Parker before starting previews in 2019
and guitar and piano too. It was ties to his high school friends that drew him into the music world professionally one step at a time though. After graduating from college, his best friend from Vestavia Hills, Ahmad Farzad, who had gone to Berklee College of Music, invited Tommy to move to Boston to play bass in his band. A couple of years after that another Vestavia Hills friend Melissa Morgan helped him get a job singing at Busch Gardens in Virginia in a show called Holiday in Roma in the Italy section of the park. It was at Busch Gardens that Tommy now says that he could see how people could make a living in the arts for the first time. By 2008 he’d hit the ground running with auditions in New York. First came two tours of children’s productions, playing Flat Stanley and then Snail in A Year with
Frog and Toad, which led to his most challenging role to date as a “swing” in a national tour of American Idiot. “What’s a swing?” you might be wondering. We had the same question. “The swing has to be ready to cover all the ensemble tracks (if they were out of the show or got called up to serve in their understudy role for a principal actor),” Tommy explains, “so you have to know their staging/blocking, their specific choreography and their vocal track at any given moment. I had copious notes for every track, and I had to go on for each male ensemble track at some point. It was baptism by fire. They say being a swing is the hardest job on Broadway, but I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything.” Right after that he got to work on a production called LMNOP with Rebecca Luker, a Broadway actress who also called Birmingham home and who tragically passed away from ALS complications in December 2020. “Watching her in that rehearsal process was a master class,” Tommy recalls. “She had such a depth of emotion, and she was so kind and giving even outside of the work.” And then after that production, nothing. Tommy didn’t book a job for three and a half years, save a couple of new musical readings at the Eugene O’Neill Musical Theatre Conference—totaling about four weeks worth of work. After that long period of waiting came a role in The Duck Commander Musical in Las Vegas that was based on the TV show Duck Dynasty, but it ended four weeks into its run due to low ticket sales. (The silver lining there was that Willie Robertson told Tommy, who played Willie’s brother Jase, “I was watching you up there and didn’t know if I was watching my own brother Jase or you.”) Needless to say, talking to an actor about the play by play of their career shows you how resilient they have to be, and how better prepared for a pandemic they were after hearing “no” time and time again as they try to book jobs. But still, as he awaits the return of post-pandemic theatre, Tommy says he misses not only the camaraderie of each cast member bringing something different to life on stage and off with their personalities and quirks but also seeing his friends perform. He has stacks upon stacks of playbills in his New York apartment from shows he’s been to over the years, including roles his closest friend from the American Idiot tour Kelvin Moon Loh has played in The King and I, SpongeBob and Beetlejuice. Tommy’s theatre friends who aren’t in New York right now are now scattered across the country, many of them living with their parents. One friend who had been in Wicked when everything shut down started a music therapy degree. One of his castmates from VestaviaHillsMagazine.com 59
Jesus Christ Superstar moved to Portland, Oregon just because he’d always wanted to live there. “It’s difficult, but we’ll make it through,” Tommy notes. “We are all pretty resilient.” And it’s that resilience that will no doubt carry him until he picks up his guitar on stage as Peter again. The first time Tommy saw this production of Jesus Christ Superstar was in London when a friend of his from American Idiot was playing Jesus. “I was blown away by the show. I was in tears,” he recalls. “They stayed true to the brown album that was released in 1970, and I really respected that. I loved how modern yet muted the costumes and set were.” And so when he auditioned for the role of Peter in 2019, it felt like a good fit in more ways than one. “He’s this subdued character,” Tommy says. “He’s not lavish. He’s a loyal follower of Jesus except for that one time when he’s like, ‘I don’t know that guy.’ I don’t think I’ve ever been afforded the opportunity to play a part that was as well-suited to my personal abilities as this.” And come this fall—or sometime hopefully not too long after that—that’s just what Tommy will be doing again.
A CAREER SNAPSHOT IMD Tommy McDowell, and here’s the roles you’ll find: Jesus Christ Superstar (50th Anniversary Tour): Peter Cabaret: Max, Herman American Idiot: Swing The Musical Adventures of Flat Stanley: Flat Stanley A Year with Frog and Toad: Snail Jersey Boys: Nick Massi The Duck Commander Musical: Jase Once: Earmon/Guitar, Mandolin, Piano Urinetown: Bobby Strong Hairspray: Link Larkin Grey Gardens: Joe Kennedy Jr./Jerry The Who’s Tommy: Tommy Joseph & The Technicolor Dreamcoat: Rueben
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OUT & ABOUT
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VHHS BASKETBALL GAMES
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Vestavia Hills High School basketball games wouldn’t be complete without the cheerleaders, Rebeletes, fans and of course the players this season. 1. Claire McPheeters and Sophie Whitson 2. Maddie Hagler and Diane Westhoven 3. Ally Perry 4. Betsy Glenn 5. Anna Bochnak 6. Abbie Stockard 7. Garrett Smith 8. Claire McPheeters 9. McKenna Pate 10. Malone Gammill, Ella Hallman, Caroline Cox and Sophie Whitson 11. Diane Westhoven and with her parents, Gail and David 12. Grant Uldrich 13. Molly Holmes
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OUT & ABOUT
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The Heights Village in Cahaba Heights held a day of pop-up shops, giveaways and more on Feb. 13. 1. Missy and Lillie Armstrong 2. Suzanne and Anne-Ryan Mayfield 3. The Barron Family 4. Kristin and Pam Bradford 5. Jill Leahy and Claire Coleman 6. Amy and Bob Hancock 7. Rihanna and Nolan Zhang 8.
Hollins and Sam Rush
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MY VESTAVIA HILLS DAVID LEONG
Photographer + Vestavia Hills High School Dad
Inspiring Faces
COVID-19 Vaccines It was fulfilling when I had the opportunity to be a part of the team that vaccinated residents of LongLeaf Liberty Park Senior Living Community earlier this year. The expressions of thanks on residents’ faces were inspiring.
Eating Local
Cajun Seafood House Cajun cuisine is one of my weaknesses, so I love supporting Cajun Seafood House. Killan and his staff go out of their way to ensure a great meal. I’m looking forward to their Crawfish Boil this year!
Friday Night Lights
VHHS Football Games Being a cheer dad of daughters at the high school, Friday nights in the fall are special evenings where I get to feel a sense of pride and community as we host regional high schools.
A Quiet Retreat
Library in the Forest This hidden gem of our city with its beautiful design offers a gorgeous view of the surrounding woods. Quiet afternoons enjoying the landscape with a good book or laptop are few and far between.
Photogenic Spots
McCallum Park With Little Shades Creek quietly flowing under its iconic bridge, McCallum Park is one of my favorite places to take pictures. It’s not the largest park, but it’s one of Vestavia’s little hidden secrets.
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The Ridge Marina APRIL 23-25
DEMO 2021 BOAT MODELS Visit RussellMarine.net
THE RIDGE MARINA 256-397-1300 l 450 RIDGE MARINA ROAD l ALEXANDER CITY, AL 35010
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