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Footlight Dance Centre’s Don Quixote: Friday, Saturday, Sunday Page 3
Local Real Estate Office Pays It Forward by Lending Community Service Hours at Hop Porter
WRHS Junior Ty Reinemann Talks About His Goals and His Biggest Passion
Page 5
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M a y 1 5 , 2 0 1 3 • V o l . 6 • N o . 2 0 • w w w .T h e W e e k l y S u n . c o m
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read about it on PaGe 6
SurTHRIVING Muffy Davis to give motivational speech at Wellness Festival BY KAREN BOSSICK
I COURTESY PHOTO
Riley Wins Art Contest BY KAREN BOSSICK
F
ormer Bellevue resident Emily Riley has won “Best of Show” at the Perrine Bridge Festival Art Contest in Twin Falls. Riley’s parents represented her at a display at Rudy’s: A Cook’s Paradise in Twin Falls Friday evening. Riley’s artwork will appear on event posters, ads, postcards, T-shirts and other advertising media related to the Perrine Bridge Festival. The annual festival, held in September, includes a BASE-jumping exhibition from the Perrine Bridge into the Snake River Canyon, a fun run, food and entertainment and kayak and bike races. Proceeds go to St. Luke’s Magic Valley Health Foundation’s Fund for Children with Special Needs to be put toward special equipment, therapy, special services and counseling. Emily Riley’s woodcut featured the Perrine Bridge, said her mother Nan Riley. It was part of a series of woodcuts of local icons, such as a collapsing barn. Riley, a 1999 graduate of Wood River High School, was a protégé of John Blackburn, a former art teacher and high school principal who now serves as assistant superintendent of the Blaine County School District. She also worked for a spell at the Toneri-Hink gallery in Ketchum. Armed with nearly $30,000 of scholarship money, Riley attended Reed College, a private liberal arts college in Portland, Ore., before receiving a degree in printmaking at California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. There, her mother said, “she ruled the print room.” Now living in Portland, Riley has been able to make a living with her arts, even purchasing her aunt’s 1907 Chandler & Price clam letterpress. She also paints, creating what she calls “Tiny Scary Portland Paintings” and jasper paintings of acrylic and charcoal. And she makes etchings, lithographs and serigraphs. “I have the unusual fortune to have parents who were neither determined that I become a wealthy professional nor that I retire my impractical dreams, marry and have a gaggle of squalling country children. They actually support my desire to become an artist, and not just as a hobby, but as a career!” she says. Riley’s paintings, drawings, prints and greeting cards are available at emilyrileyart.com and rxletterpress. tws
t was all about surviving after Muffy Davis careened off a cat track on Bald Mountain, slamming into one tree and then another in a ski accident that left her paralyzed from the chest down. But a few years ago, as she surveyed a room full of women who had dealt with breast cancer, the former Sun Valley ski racer realized that surviving was not enough. “I realized that these women were much more than survivors—they were thrivers. Thriving means not just getting by. It means setting goals and reaching them. It means attacking life,” said Davis, who was at the Susan G. Komen conference as a motivational speaker. Davis, who consistently challenged Picabo Street for the finish line before her accident, has certainly strived to thrive. She earned a run on Baldy named Muffy’s Medals after earning a handful of medals in Paralympics competitions in Nagano, Japan, and Salt Lake City. Then she switched gears, winning three gold medals in handcycle competition at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. She hopes to repeat her success at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. In the meantime, she has become a successful motivational speaker who will offer her “SurTHRIVE!” message Memorial Day weekend in Sun Valley when she talks at the Sun Valley Wellness Festival. Davis’ presentation will be at 9:30 a.m. Saturday in the Continental Room of the Sun Valley Inn. Marianna Lee, who was nicknamed Muffy by her mother after a line of dolls, couldn’t conceive of the word thrive as she pummeled her lifeless limbs during three months at the Craig Rehabilitation Hospital in Denver. “I hate my legs! I hate my legs!” screamed the teenager
who worried she would never date again. Then, one morning, when her mother walked in to give her a massage, she found Muffy calm and smiling. “I just had a talk with my Higher Power, and I’m going to be okay,” Davis explained to her mother. “He told me there are many lessons to be gained from this experience, that there are some things I’m going to have to do in this wheelchair. It’s a temporary inconvenience, but it’s okay. And you’re just going to have to be okay with it, too.” Davis set about doing things she’d never had time for while ski racing. She videotaped a campaign speech for junior class president from her hospital bed—and won. The next year she was elected student body president, homecoming queen and valedictorian at Wood River High School. At Stanford University, she graduated with honors and a degree in human biology. She helped out at the local children’s hospital, taking kids with cancer for rides in her chair. She formed a speakers’ bureau of disabled people to clear up misconceptions about people with disabilities. And she served on a number of task forces, earning a prestigious award for special service to the Stanford community. But when she saw her old rival win Olympic silver in Lillehammer, Norway, she sobbed. “I was happy for Picabo but, then, I started realizing where I could have been. It took me a long time before I could call her to congratulate her. I wanted to, but it was really hard,” Davis recalled. While that night was one of the most difficult of Davis’ life, it inspired her to get back on the slopes. Never mind the ski instructors for the disabled who tried to dis-
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COURTESY PHOTOS
“For me, surviving is not good enough. I want to thrive,” said Muffy Davis, who now lives with her husband and daughter in Salt Lake City.”