Author: WOAmemphis17

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Pat Morgan

WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT
2005

COURAGE
for a woman who, facing active opposition,
backed an unpopular cause in which she deeply believed:

Pat Morgan

In the Memphis area, 6,000 homeless men, women and children are fed and sheltered from local service agencies. We see them on the streets and at intersections wearing ragged dirty clothes that look as if they’ve been slept in. We fear contact with them, thinking they’ll ask us for a handout or worse yet, try to rob us. We don’t want shelters or services in our neighborhoods and organize against them to keep the homeless off “our” streets. We fail to make eye-contact, much less stop to listen to their stories. Pat Morgan, Executive Director of Partners for the Homeless, is a woman with the courage to both listen and act on their behalf.

Pat’s story starts the typical way; a Donna Reed Mom whose marriage falters transforms into the single mother of three, struggling to keep things afloat. Pat was working as a real estate broker when she volunteered to help two hours per week at the Downtown Church Association’s Food Pantry. From there she moved to the Street Ministry and the work became her passion. She listened to stories of untreated addiction, abuse and mental illness and realized that what is needed is a “continuum of care.”  She attended more meetings and became more active. When a friend told her that for someone so smart she was ignorant, she went back to school. She graduated from Rhodes College in 1991, at age 51.

Long active in the Democratic party, she believed that the solutions to homelessness are political. After graduation she interned in Al Gore’s office then survived on a variety of temp jobs. When Clinton announced for president, she quit her job to join the campaign. “Pat’s Excellent Adventure” included time on the bus in New Hampshire and tromping through snow with much younger campaign workers. She became co-director of the Washington Operations Office.

After the election she was appointed Program Analyst at the U.S. Interagency Council on the Homeless. Working closely with Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Special Needs Programs, Pat brought her experiences in front-line service delivery to the table. She spent 6 ½ years working with the White House Domestic Policy Council.

In 1999, Pat returned to Memphis to be closer to her family. She became Executive Director for Partners for the Homeless, a public-private partnership begun in 1995. The group’s mission is to coordinate, develop and implement solutions for homelessness in Memphis and Shelby County. She is now working with representatives from 55 organizations to create a holistic intervention program targeting 20,000 at-risk households. She has secured $5 million from HUD for local Continuum of Care applications. She serves on the state council for creating a plan to end homelessness in Tennessee.

Though she now works primarily in program development, policy and service delivery, Pat has not forgotten the people she met through Calvary’s Street Ministry. She still goes out at 12:30 am looking for people sleeping on the street. She knows their names and histories. She asks questions and really listens to their stories. “I’ve only been mugged twice,” she says, “and not by the homeless.”

It takes courage to walk into the broken lives of these men, women and children and work for holistic solution. Pat Morgan has the passion and the courage to do just that.

Pat Morgan retired in 2011 and published a memoir in 2014 titled The Concrete Killing Fields: One Woman’s Battle to Break the Cycle of Homelessness.

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Rosalyn Nichols

WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT
2005

DETERMINATION
for a woman who solved a glaring problem despite
widespread inertia, apathy or ignorance around her:

Rev. Rosalyn Nichols

In March 1998, Rev. Rosalyn Nichols attended the third funeral of a
childhood friend, killed by what she calls “relational violence.” She delivered the eulogy, and then asked herself “What can I do to prevent this from happening again?”

Her answer was action — first through Sisters4Life, a small group of women who united after loss of their friend Rosmari Pleasure, shot to death by an ex-boyfriend.

In the years since organizing the first Rosmari Pleasure Memorial 5K Walk/Run, Rosalyn has made domestic violence her singular cause within her service as a pastor.

She organized and leads A More Excellent Way, Inc., a non-profit organization focused on ending domestic violence. Local crime statistics confirm the need – more than 11 percent of homicide cases last year were domestically related. Domestic violence counselors estimate only 1 in 10 cases of assault is ever reported.

“At the heart of it, we have to change the way some people think about how to live in love,” Rosalyn, 41, says. “This ‘break up to make up, that’s all we do’ mentality has to go. We have to change attitudes before we can change behavior.”

Rosalyn attended Booker T. Washington High School and LeMoyne-Owen College where she graduated cum laude with a major in biology. She earned her Master of Divinity summa cum laude in 1996 from Memphis Theological Seminary. After a turn as visiting professor at a seminary in Zimbabwe, Rosalyn joined Metropolitan Baptist Church as associate pastor.

She served there for five years before turning her attention full time to A More Excellent Way. Her mission is to promote and encourage loving, healthy relationships in the home, school, workplace, neighborhood and places of worship toward the elimination of violence.

She says, “We want to teach men and women what healthy relationships look like, to make good, stable marriages a functional, acceptable cultural norm.”

The original 5K race has grown into a full weekend called Love4Life dedicated to domestic violence awareness. On the second weekend in November, it includes the 5K run, a conference, a memorial service for families of slain victims and a Sunday “prayer and praise’’ service. Another program of AWay Inc. is called the Circle of Courage which provides training and resources on domestic violence for churches and other faith-based communities. And Love Talks is a study program being developed for high school and college students with a pilot program in place at Booker T. Washington High School.

In 2001, Rosalyn founded at her dining room table with eight other people a ministry that became Freedom’s Chapel Christian Church. In May 2004, she earned her Doctor of Ministry degree from Virginia Union University in Richmond and moved her church into its first worship center. Freedom’s Chapel has grown to about 50 members and has celebrated 15 baptisms of adults and children. “The church and AWay Inc. share the space,” Rosalyn says. “Both are very interested in relationship building and both are faithful to a vision.”

Rosalyn Nichols turned her grief and dismay into action and is determined each day to teach Memphis to love without hitting, without hurting, without violence.

For that work, despite inertia, apathy and ignorance around her, Rosalyn Nichols is the 2005 Woman of Achievement for Determination.

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Kathy Kastan

WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT
2005

HEROISM
for a woman whose heroic spirit was tested and
shown as a model to all in Shelby County and beyond:

Kathy Kastan

At 40, Kathy Kastan was happy, healthy and fit, as far as anyone could tell.

The physician’s wife and mother of three sons in Cordova was avid about exercise — running, biking, swimming and weight lifting. She had no family history or health factors that connected to heart disease.

But something was wrong. Shortness of breath and shoulder pain she attributed to the stress of the move to Memphis and her mother’s death. But then on a bike trip with friends, she became nauseous and pain flowed down her shoulder and arm. The first cardiologist diagnosed mitral valve prolapse and prescribed antibiotics, but exercise continued to cause shoulder pain and going up and down steps was difficult.

On a hiking vacation in Colorado she collapsed with classic chest pain that radiated from her jaw to her back. A second cardiologist ran tests but could not find the problem . “Go exercise,’’ he said. Four days later she collapsed again. Treatments either failed or caused other complications so that eight months later, at age 42, Kathy had double bypass surgery. Her third cardiologist provided proper medication.

“I had gone from a woman with symptoms after exercise to popping nitroglycerin like candy,’’ Kathy said. “Now I have a normal, busy life. I exercise four to five days a week.’’

Her search for good care for herself led her to WomenHeart, the
15,000-member national coalition for women with heart disease, and to
leadership in the cause of women and heart health. Based in Washington, DC, WomenHeart is the only advocacy group for women with heart disease. “WomenHeart got me someplace. They virtually got my life back,” she says. She now serves as president.

In February 2005, Kathy stepped into an international spotlight in a full-color advertising campaign that shows her, in an open white blouse, revealing the sternum-length scar she calls her badge of courage.’’

Kathy has become an indefatigable advocate for women’s health. She has met with President George Bush and First Lady Laura Bush, speaks at community and political forums and encourages medical students and doctors to care for women differently.

Kathy grew up, daughter of a physician, in the San Francisco Bay area. She earned her bachelor’s and two graduate degrees at Washington University in St. Louis and was a practicing psychotherapist for 14 years.

Six years ago, she and her husband Michael moved from Baltimore to Memphis where Michael is director of the St. Jude Cancer Center at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Now her photograph and her story are in The Wall Street Journal, Smart Money and women’s magazines across the nation. “This shouldn’t have happened to her,’’ the ad says.” Ignorance almost killed her.’’

She is excited about calls she’s had from local women who saw a news story about the scar photograph. She hopes they can be organized into a local support group for women with heart disease.

“It’s the number one killer,’’ Kathy says. “And it can happen to you.”

Kathy’s heroic efforts will go far towards saving women’s lives by building awareness of this unseen killer.

In February of 2010, Kathy Kastan was awarded the Woman’s Day Red Dress Award for her dedication and tireless devotion to women and the heart disease movement. Kathy Kastan, LCSW/Ma Ed., has been Director of Duke Medicine’s Women’s Health & Advocacy Initiative since October of 2011. She is Past President, Emeritus of the Board of Directors of WomenHeart: The National Coalition for Women with Heart Disease. Ms. Kastan is the Past Chairman of the Board of Directors and board member for the Greater Southeast Affiliate of the American Heart Association. She is currently serving on the Board of Directors of the Triangle’s American Heart Association. Kastan authored From the Heart: A Woman’ Guide to Living Well with Heart Disease. She is also a frequent blogger on the Huffington Post.

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Rebekah Jordan

WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT
2007

DETERMINATION
for a woman who solved a glaring problem despite
widespread inertia, apathy or ignorance around her:

Rebekah Jordan

In a community where city employees routinely worked two or three jobs to provide for their families, the idea of a living wage was a hard sell, to say the least.

Lucky for Memphis, the young woman who took on the job of selling it had the tenacity, fortitude and intelligence to sell, sell and sell again.

Rev. Rebekah Jordan, daughter of a Memphis minister and a Memphis school teacher, set out to train in college to teach, but found her way to an internship in social change — and the rest is now very important Memphis history.

Rebekah saw the powerful connection between ministry and social change. She went to seminary and sowed the seeds of what became the Mid-South Interfaith Network for Economic Justice as she prepared for ordination. Working with union leader Fred Ashwill and Rev. Steve Shapard, they laid ground work to form a faith community focused on work related issues.

Beginning in November 2002, coalition members researched what a living wage in Memphis is and shaped the campaign and ordinance. In summer 2003, they began to meet with City Council members.

Through numerous setbacks, political shenanigans and even disputes among the campaign’s community supporters, Rebekah persevered. She drew and redrew strategy, rallying volunteers to go door to door with petitions, to come to rallies in bitter cold, to call council members and press them to appear at hearings and to vote for the living wage.

She was informed, insistent, unflagging, respectful, respected.

And successful.

The final aspects of a living wage ordinance passed in Memphis in November 2006 extending guarantee of $10 an hour with benefits or $12 an hour without to all full and part time city employees, employees of most city contractors and companies that are granted property tax exemptions.

In celebrations of the victory, Rebekah graciously credited the coalition of faith, labor and community groups and those individuals who steadfastly answered the call to rally or contact council members or otherwise answer.
But all who participated in the campaign know that the reason Memphis now has a living wage is because Rev. Rebekah Jordan was determined that Memphis workers have a living wage.

Rev. Andre Johnson of Gifts of Life Ministries captured Rebekah’s impact in these words at a worship celebration: “When all hope seemed lost, she continued to fire us up with her emails and phone calls, telling us where we needed to be and what we needed to do when we get there! …and with her leadership, we have assembled a nice diverse group of people from all over Memphis who have shown us support. From Christians to Jews and Muslims; from black and brown; from white and all around; from Germantown to Downtown; from Boxtown and Uptown; from rich and poor; from inner city and suburb, from gay and straight, from PhD to no D, from CEO’s to mopping floors.”

Rebekah Jordan is determined that low-wage workers be treated with respect and justice. Even as she leads the push to bring the living wage to county government employees, she is now also organizing a Memphis Workers Center where immigrant workers could learn about their workplace rights and organize to improve working conditions.

This 2007 Woman of Achievement has just gotten started!

 

Reverend Rebekah Jordan (Gienapp) is the writer of a blog called The Barefoot Mommy which gives parents advice on how to raise children free of racism, sexism, and homophobia. Her blog has been featured in The Washington Post, The Lisa Show, and Brownicity.

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Karla O. Davis

WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT
2013

INITIATIVE
for a woman who seized the
opportunity to use her talents and created her own future:

Karla O. Davis

Karla’s initiative has taken her down a path that leads from Chicago to Memphis and from Memphis to Nashville, from the Environmental Protection Agency to Memphis Hope, and from there to the Tennessee Commission for Labor and Work Force Development. Each move has resulted in improved lives for people touched by her work.

Born and raised by a loving family (her parents have been married for 58 years!), Karla lived in Chicago until leaving for Atlanta to attend Spelman College. Knowing that she wanted to become an engineer, she returned home to continue her studies. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in bio-engineering from the University of Illinois, Chicago.

She went to work for the Environmental Protection Agency. Over the course of 16 years, she assumed a number of management level positions and earned numerous awards for service along the way. While working in Chicago, she met her future husband, Terry Davis, through salsa dancing. In 2006, after enduring years of brutal winters, the couple decided to move to his home town of Memphis. Lucky for us!

Using her excellent networking skills, Karla took the initiative to meet Ruby Bright, director of the Women’s Foundation for a Greater Memphis. Impressed by Ms. Bright, Karla offered to volunteer for the foundation. This connection led to a position as director of Urban Strategies for Memphis HOPE. She committed herself to creating opportunities for families of the former Dixie Homes and Lamar Terrace communities. This was a huge challenge as most families were headed by single mothers whose situations had been deemed hopeless by others.

Karla was responsible for establishing cooperative relationships with other organizations, identifying funding opportunities and leveraging resources to help move these families out of poverty. She says Memphis HOPE’s goal was to “serve the whole family, by connecting adult residents with employment preparation and job training programs, connecting youth with tutoring and enrichment programs, and connecting seniors and the disabled with service programs.” Karla accomplished this by supporting a range of intervention strategies designed to permanently lift these families out of poverty and into self-sufficiency. Over 400 families benefited.

In 2011, Tennessee Governor-elect Bill Halsam offered her the job of Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development. She says, “I was shocked and incredibly excited and honored. This was bigger than I could have ever dreamed.” She accepted. She was one of six women to be appointed to his 24-member cabinet. She now commutes between Memphis and Nashville. Karla manages a staff of nearly 2000, with offices all over the state, and administers a $220 million annual budget. She has embraced the massive task of bringing an industrial and agricultural based workforce into the world of technology and advanced manufacturing.

People who use the services of her department are often in crisis. They may be unemployed, have lost their jobs unexpectedly, need job training. In our current economic climate, they often feel desperate. It is her goal to provide them with excellent customer service so that they know that they are respected and that their voices are heard.

She says: “My entire career has revolved around public administration of some sort. I wish I could say I always wanted to be a public servant, but really it found me. Memphis has been a place of tremendous opportunity for me. I count moving here as one of the best decisions I ever made.”

Karla Davis uses her initiative with compassion and kindness to improve the lives of those she serves.

For this, we salute her.

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Felica Richard

WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT
2013

DETERMINATION
for a woman who solved a glaring problem despite
widespread inertia, apathy or ignorance around her:

Felica Richard

Felica Richard knows what it is to be misused and abused. She knows about being hurt – with verbal and emotional abuse, molestation and rape – and not telling anyone. She knows how important it is to have access to the right help when you ask for it.

Her own experience has made Felica Richard determined to help survivors of violence feel strong and feel good about themselves. She has created an organization, recruits fellow cosmetologists and works beyond her paid job as a victim navigator at the Family Safety Center to offer extra support for those in need.

Felica has lived in Memphis all her life. She grew up on the city’s north side, third of five children in a family where her parents were not married but her dad lived a few blocks away.

Her school friends at Craigmont Middle and High School often sought her out for advice. Even at that early age, Felica found herself drawn to the wounded and rejected.

She understands now that it was the molestation by a family member and the rape during a date as a young teenager that caused her not to love herself. This under laid her drinking and promiscuity as a young adult, her bounce between multiple colleges and stack of college loan debt. She married – but won a divorce within six months to escape verbal and emotional abuse.

Eventually Felica entered and completed cosmetology school and began to work full-time as a hairdresser while also beginning a social work degree. After coursework at Southwest Tennessee, Middle Tennessee and University of Memphis, Felica earned her bachelor’s degree in social work in 2009. She interned at the Shelby County Crime Victim Center and continued to “do hair” part-time.

By then Felica had been a mom for six years, having adopted at birth a baby girl born to a family member.

Since she graduated from high school in 1989, Felica has had a dream of building a safe haven for hurt women and their children. Felica calls the organization she founded in 1999 Women Loving Themselves First believing “If I can get the mother together, she can take care of children. I’m looking to help her build her self esteem, give her hope, love herself and then she can give love. You can’t give what you don’t have.”

She began her outreach simply with a routine of communicating encouraging emails and prayer requests. In 2009, she began offering direct services to women referred to her by other agencies. She provides help with their immediate needs, especially temporary emergency housing, often by reserving motel rooms in her name – to protect the fleeing woman. “I pay a night and they pay a night,” Felica says. She rents a U-Haul for those who need it and puts their belongings in storage. Sometimes she styles their hair for free.

Now a full-time navigator for domestic violence victims at the Family Safety Center, Felica still recruits colleagues in local salons to give violence survivors professional makeovers to prepare them for court or a job interview. She is offering training on the dynamics of domestic violence to local professional stylists.

Her goal is to raise funds for a gated community where survivors of abusive, violent relationships could live during their healing, both single women and mothers, with programs for children, comprehensive case management and constant security.

“I’m a server. . . I went into social work because that’s where God needs me and I can help women. . . I compare myself to David and domestic violence is Goliath. I believe that giant can come down – I really do.”

With her passion for helping and her determination to be of service, Felica Richard will be here to help women damaged by violence for many years to come.

 

Felica Richard now works with the Shelby County Crime Victims and Rape Crisis Center as Community Engagement Supervisor.

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Constance McMillen

WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT
2011

HEROISM
for a woman whose heroic spirit was tested and
shown as a model to all in Shelby County and beyond:

Constance McMillen

Constance McMillen was just a girl who wanted to have fun, like any other high school senior looking forward to senior prom in the spring of 2010. But when she was told by her vice principal, principal, superintendent and school board attorney she would not be allowed to attend her prom – because she wanted to bring her girlfriend – everything changed.

Constance McMillen reported her school to the American Civil Liberties Union which informed the Itawamba County school district that the rule was illegal. Change it by March 10, said the ACLU, or we’ll sue. The school’s systems response was to cancel the prom on March 10 and issue a press release that generated national and international news attention. Constance’s life hasn’t been the same since and that’s putting it mildly. “They cancelled prom and I was on CNN the next day!” she says.

The ACLU immediately filed suit. Constance received text and Facebook messages saying she had ruined prom for everyone and that she didn’t deserve to go to that school. Her best friend, who had been like a sister to her, stopped talking to her on March 10 and they have not spoken since.

In court a few days before the April 2 prom date, school officials testified there would be a prom privately hosted by parents and that Constance and her girlfriend could go. But when she went to get a ticket, she found it had also been cancelled. Eventually it seems that officials and parents decided to have two proms — most students attended one held in another community and Constance was able to get tickets to one where only six students showed up.

Constance let her lawyers know. She had originally filed for only a dollar in damages but after the fake prom, the publicity – and the duplicity – she was harassed and had to move in with a family in Jackson, Mississippi, five hours away, to finish high school.

A federal judge ruled that Itawamba Agricultural High School in Fulton, MS, violated Constance’s First Amendment rights. She filed for damages and settled out of court for $35,000 with a promise from the school system to change their sexual orientation and gender identity policy.

“It wasn’t about the money,” Constance says, “as long as they changed their anti-discrimination policies. Still, they were trying not to change it, but we got onto ‘em and told ‘em if they didn’t, we would file for contempt of court, so eventually they changed it.”

Constance, who lives with her paternal grandmother in Fulton, got connected to the ACLU and gay activists through her mother, a lesbian who lives near Biloxi. “She just tries to live and do what she’s got to do, but she didn’t think it was right,” Constance said.

Constance is majoring in psychology at Northeast Mississippi Community College.

Invitations to speak on panels and at rallies come from all over. Constance has been interviewed by Ellen DeGeneres who also gave her a $30,000 college scholarship. She has been honored as a Woman of the Year for 2010 by Glamour magazine. She has led gay pride parades in New York City and California, has met President Obama at a White House reception and lobbied Congress.

People are asking her to tell her story and why she chose to be out front
The ACLU reported fewer calls this year from students needing support around prom season – and that several kids called to say that their school officials had heard of “that girl in Mississippi” – and so they said, ”sure, you can take your girlfriend.”

What’s the best thing to come from all this? “That it changed things for people,” Constance says, “first at my school and then over the country. It was already illegal, really, but since this was in federal court, now it’s in black and white that no school can do what they did to me. It is illegal to stop someone from going to prom based on their sexual orientation.”

Constance took an enormously heroic step for a young woman who was raised hearing that gay people can’t go to heaven. She has become a spokesperson for gay rights and hopes her studies lead to a career as a psychoanalyst so she can scientifically study the hostile effects on overall health on individuals forced into the closet.

Constance McMillen is our 2011 Woman of Achievement for Heroism.

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Sheila White Parrish

WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT
2007

HEROISM
for a woman whose heroic spirit was tested and
shown as a model to all in Shelby County and beyond:

Sheila White Parrish

Sheila White had a job few women have ever held. She worked for the railroad, the Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railway Co. to be exact. In fact, she was the only forklift driver and the only woman in the railroad company’s track maintenance operation at the Tennessee Yard in Memphis when she was hired in 1997.

After she complained about being subjected to what she considered sexual
harassment, the railway investigated and gave a male employee a 10-day
suspension without pay and required him to take sensitivity training. But then a supervisor gave Sheila’s forklift job to a man, saying that other workers had
complained that employees with higher seniority were passed over for the job.

Sheila was transferred to track laborer work — pulling spikes from rail ties, laying track — heavy work. She filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, alleging that the company had retaliated against her. After her new supervisor learned of her EEOC charge, he and Sheila had a disagreement with resulted in his reporting her as insubordinate. She was suspended without pay, then filed a grievance which resulted in a finding that she was not in fact insubordinate. The railroad reinstated her with full back pay for the days of work she had missed.

But Sheila sued the railroad, beginning a nine-year battle for justice. She alleged that the decision to take her forklift job away and her suspension without pay were retaliation of her sex discrimination complaint, in violation of Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964. That law protects employees from discrimination based on race, sex, religion, color or national origin.

At a five-day trial in 2000, a jury found that Sheila did not prove sex discrimination but had been retaliated against. It awarded her $43,500 in compensatory damages and $54,285 in attorney fees. Both sides appealed.
In the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court, Judge Julia Gibbons requested that the entire bench hear Sheila’s case and later wrote for the majority that the change in job duties from forklift operator to track maintenance was an “adverse employment action” in part because it was “dirtier” and less prestigious, even though it paid the same.

“Taking away an employee’s paycheck for over a month is not trivial, and if
motivated by discriminatory intent, it violates” the law, Judge Gibbons wrote. BNSF appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the debate was over what kinds of actions by management could be defined as retaliation following an employee complaint. The high court ruling in late 2006 held that retaliation in violation of Title VII includes conduct that might dissuade a reasonable employee from making or supporting a charge of discrimination.

Sheila’s case expanded the scope of what constitutes “unlawful retaliation.” That can now be based upon conduct causing harm outside the workplace, such as a scheduling change that might seem immaterial to many employees but that would, for example, “matter enormously to a young other with school-aged children.”

Today employers must scrutinize every management decision that affects an
employee who complains of discrimination. Federal law to protect workers has been changed and workers today and into the future will be better protected thanks to the heroic battle of Sheila White Vs. Burlington Northern & Santa Fe.

Sheila White Parrish travels and shares her story in workshops and among women’s groups.

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Caroline Turns

WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT
2009

HEROISM
for a woman whose heroic spirit was tested and
shown as a model to all in Shelby County and beyond:

Caroline Turns

This girl likes her nails painted pretty and pink and wears her hats to match.

She’s a 9 year old fashionista and a gourmet cook who, thanks to Make-A-Wish Foundation, has traveled to Paris to work on her pastries!

Yet since age 7, Caroline Turns has been surviving a childhood cancer so rare that the doctors at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital had only seen it once in the hospital’s 46-year history. That cancer is pancretoblastom. It appears in children age 9 and younger and is believed to be caused by left-over fetal cells.

From the time of her diagnosis, through difficult treatments and today, Caroline remains positive and upbeat. She has shared her story with others locally and throughout the nation through newspaper articles in Memphis and Dallas and through widely-read blogs and Internet sites.

In late spring 2007, Caroline developed a stomach ache that just wouldn’t go away. At first her parents and pediatrician thought she just had some kind of stomach virus. When the discomfort and nausea persisted, she was put on antacids. By late July, she was in excruciating pain and was admitted to LeBonheur Children’s Medical Center. On July 27, a CT scan showed a tumor. Time to move on to St. Jude for further testing.

At the meeting in which her parents received the cancer diagnosis, Dr. Stephen Skapek told them “We think your daughter is curable.” No percentages, but that word alone was reason for hope.

While her doctors discussed treatment plans, her parents discussed how to best help her through this enormous challenge. Her mother Marcjana immediately decided on a “no tears in front of Caroline” rule. Her father Patrick left his job and became Caroline’s full-time caregiver.

Her doctors came up with chemotherapy and surgery.

First, Caroline underwent nine rounds of chemotherapy at St. Jude. Side effects were excruciating but she persevered.

Removing the tumor, which was the size of a baked potato, was considered essential to her cure. Due to the shape of the tumor, Caroline’s doctor felt that the best way to successfully remove it would be with a multi-organ, single donor transplant.

Doctors at St. Jude searched for a hospital willing and able to perform such a complex procedure and found the Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Miami Transplant Institute.

The dangers of the surgery and problems following such a surgery are huge, but after much research, soul-searching and a trip to Miami to meet the doctors, Patrick and Marcjana agreed.

Caroline and Patrick moved to an apartment in Miami to await a donor. In June, 2008, one was found. Marcjana rushed to Miami to be there for the surgery. After an operation that lasted almost ten hours, Caroline came out with a new stomach, liver, pancreas, small and large intestine.

Three months later she was back home in Memphis and able to visit her third grade class at Dogwood Elementary!

But Caroline still has a long road ahead. She has returned to the hospital several times to fight off infections that are so very dangerous to a transplant survivor the first year following surgery. And in October two glitter-sized spots of cancer were found on her lungs. This resulted in more surgery, several more rounds of chemotherapy and radiation.

Despite all, she forges ahead.

Her mother’s no crying rule and her father’s daily presence have provided a good base for Caroline and fit well with her sunny disposition and natural optimism. She continues her fight against this powerful disease, maintaining friendships with staff at both St. Jude’s and Holz Children’s when she’s in the hospital.

When she’s home – life is not about her health. It’s about normal kid stuff and family stuff — baking cookies, attending parties, checking in with school friends and just enjoying family time.

When asked how she’s able to do all this, our heroic nine year old says, “I just know it’s going to turn out right.”

Her heroic spirit is a model for us all.

Caroline Turns passed away on June 22, 2009.

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Chelsea Boozer

Women of Achievement
2013

COURAGE
for a woman who, facing active opposition,
backed an unpopular cause in which she deeply believed:

Chelsea Boozer

Chelsea Boozer was a student journalist and editor in chief of the University of Memphis Helmsman when she began working on stories about unreported rapes on the campus. The resulting struggle for access to public documents and to secure students’ safety led to a battle that threatened the newspaper’s funding and Chelsea’s reputation.

Her steadiness during it all led Candy Justice, faculty advisor of the Helmsman, to say: “Nobody can take her courage away as far as I’ve seen.”

Ironically, Chelsea began her career as a nervous junior high student who liked to write. And she was good. One of her teachers in Marion, Arkansas, even accused her in seventh grade of letting her mom produce a story for her advanced literature class. Her mother had to go attest that the work was actually Chelsea’s!

The journalism bug bit this self-described “news nerd” early – she was editor of the junior high school paper, took a journalism class in high school and edited that newspaper senior year.

She crossed the river to major in journalism at the University of Memphis where she became deeply involved in journalism organizations and the Helmsman while also maintaining strong grades. She was managing editor January to May 2012 and editor in chief May to December 2012 when she graduated first in the College of Communications.

Her drive for the truth led to repeated fights with the university for access to public documents – a right protected by the federal Clery Act which requires universities that receive federal financial aid to disclose information on crimes that occur on or near campus.

She angered faculty and Student Government Association leaders with a three-part series that documented free tuition paid for SGA members and the money-losing football program. Invited to an SGA meeting, she was publicly chastised by the SGA president who got a standing ovation for his remarks, including the dean of students.

But the hostility rose to new levels in March last year when the Helmsman began to write about rape.

First there was a battle for records related to a November assault incident that university officials had not disclosed. Then the student journalists found out about another alleged rape that had happened in March – but again it had not been disclosed. It involved a registered sex offender who was posing as a student and living illegally in university housing.

Chelsea as managing editor and her reporter on the rape story met with campus Police Services and interviewed students at the housing complex – and later faced police reports alleging that they made threats, were rude and hostile, claims Chelsea disputed. In an open letter to Police Services, Chelsea criticized the department for failing to notify students of the March rape.

But when director of residence life and an official from Judicial Affairs met with the newspaper’s faculty advisor, they said there had been discussion of arresting Chelsea. However the Judicial Affairs officer said the police reports – alleging that Chelsea made a scene and refused to leave the campus police office – “didn’t ring true” so there would be no arrest.

The harassment – the pressure brought on Chelsea for doing her job – outraged faculty, alumni and national journalism organizations.

When the Student Activity Fee Allocation Committee notified Justice that the Helmsman would receive $50,000 instead of the $75,000 it had the prior year or the $80,000 requested – Helmsman staff and some journalism professors believed it was based on the paper’s critical reporting about the university. She and her faculty advisor alleged the cuts were a First Amendment violation as SGA members retaliated for her work. The allocation committee consists of four university administrators and three students including the SGA president and vice president.

The funding cut infuriated alumni and inspired a website for donations to “Free the Helmsman.”

A university investigation agreed with the Helmsman’s claim and the funding was restored. Last week university President Shirley Raines announced 2013-2014 funding will remain at $75,000.

Chelsea has won numerous awards and was recognized by Memphis Magazine in October 2012 as one of five women who make a difference. She is now is a reporter at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Student Press Law Center director Frank LoMonte called Chelsea “Mike Wallace with molasses syrup – disarming but deadly.” She says her courage came easily “because I knew we were on the truth side and doing something important and really right.”