Archive for September, 2011

Lyn Riddle

On seeing all that’s beautiful and good about life

by Lyn Riddle

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Sep
23

Natalie Dopp is a senior at Riverside High School.

She runs track, volunteers at Meals on Wheels and has a smile so big it makes you think there can be nothing wrong in the world.

This past week, that smile was the most obvious thing about her.

That’s because Natalie was voted by her peers to this year’s homecoming court, an honor bestowed to five seniors, and three in each of the younger grades.

It’s commonplace in most schools for the homecoming court and especially the queen to be the most popular, prettiest girls.

And that’s what the senior class at Riverside saw in Natalie, who has Down syndrome.

“She’s small, cute and bubbly,” said her teacher Karen Carnes, who nominated Natalie for homecoming court.

“We talked about it for several years, but decided to wait until she was a senior,” said Carnes. “We didn’t do any politicking.”

Natalie’s mother, Gail, said she thinks the vote for Natalie is a testament to the character of the students at Riverside and their upbringing.

“There are lots and lots of pretty girls there,” she said. “They picked a young lady for her inner beauty and spirit. It exemplifies the heart of the school.”

Natalie has been at Riverside since the new school opened in 2005. As a special needs student, she was able to stay in public school until she is 21. She’s 20 now.

Carnes said everyone at school knows Natalie. They know Natalie’s loving heart.

“She doesn’t know how to hate,” her mother said. “Wouldn’t it be nice to be like that?”

Riverside students are accepting and open minded about differences, Carnes said.

“Students here are just great kids. I’ve never had an issue with any of these kids being hateful toward mine,” she said.

Carnes has taught special education at Riverside since 1992 and for seven years before that in Anderson. She spent 16 summers as a teen and young adult working with kids at Camp Spearhead, a camp for kids older than eight with special needs.

Studies show special education teachers burn out within five years.

What keeps Carnes there is the unconditional love she gets from students like Natalie. Half of her class of 10 has Down syndrome, which is caused at conception by the development of an extra chromosome. People with the syndrome typically have a similar look and the symptoms can range from mild to severe. Some people will never be able to care for themselves; others can live independently.

Natalie falls in the medium range.

Her mother said when Carnes called her Monday morning to say Natalie had been chosen, she was astounded. Never would she imagine her daughter would have such an honor.

“I wasn’t picked for homecoming,” she said, and laughed. “I called my husband and I could barely get the words out.”

That afternoon when Natalie’s brother Andrew, who is 18 and also a senior at Riverside, brought her home, Mrs. Carnes met them at the car.

“She looked at me through the car window and her smile was from ear to ear,” she said. “She got out and gave me a huge bear hug.”

Natalie’s family will be well represented the night of Oct. 14 when she walks out onto the field at Riverside’s stadium: her parents, her brothers, grandparents, who are moving here this weekend from the Chicago area, and her aunt and uncle from Charlotte.

She wants to wear a pink dress and maybe even pink shoes. She wants both her brothers, Andrew and Ethan, 17, to escort her.

She’ll go to the homecoming dance with them.

“I’m a princess queen,” she said.

No matter who is crowned homecoming queen that night, Natalie has already won.

“It’s a big deal, and she’s part of it,” her mother said. “She will never, ever forget this.”

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Susan Simmons

Small box store anyone?

by Susan Simmons

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Sep
12

Reading about Walmart’s flirtation with a possible Supercenter on Church Street brought back the memory of how vexed I felt, years ago, when the big box giant abandoned its Laurens Road megastore for the siren call of Woodruff Road.

What had once been a few blocks drive from Gower Estates suddenly demanded an interstate and gridlock traffic. Yes, yes, said gridlock equaled hundreds more potential Walmart shoppers. But every time I passed that empty box down from Michael’s I felt snubbed.

Times do change: sans Supercenter, the city of Greenville is now an “underserved market.” Walmart isn’t saying when a formal proposal for the corner of Church and University Ridge might appear at City Hall – but its execs have been meeting with the two neighborhoods likely to make the most noise, in favor and opposed.

Of those, the Alta Vista Neighborhood Association is more alarmed than pleased about the footprint Walmart would bestow. Haynie-Sirrine, on the other hand, is excited about abundant low prices right on their doorsteps, instead of two long bus rides away on gridlock row.

Alta Vista hasn’t committed to “no” or Haynie-Sirrine to “yes.”  These are still flirting days. One big question looms over all, for neighborhoods and city alike: whether the big box giant will act like, well, a big box giant.

When Walmart’s proposal comes, spokesman Glen Wilkins told the Greenville News, it will be for a 100,000 square-foot store – 60,000 square feet larger than the city master plan for that block of Church Street allows. Told that’s too big, it won’t fit, you’ll have to go smaller, Wilkins says Walmart “couldn’t make a store work for much less.”

He has to know that to give his bosses 100,000 square feet, City Council would have to hand Walmart its very own Amazon moment and shred the city’s master plan. Toss the zoning, ignore the protests and forget all thought of the walkable, mixed-use “urban neighborhood village” the city and community conceived after weeks of public hearings, workshops and neighborhood charrettes.

If this is indeed what Walmart envisions, I have a word of caution: Greenville City Council is no state Legislature. I’m reminded of a quote from Greenville writer Ashley Warlick’s marvelous essay in the August issue of Garden & Gun magazine: “Greenville is a place that’s thought very carefully about itself and how it wants to grow.”

In a dozen years, she writes, city leaders have reimagined downtown to such an entrancing degree that people drive in “from the other country off Woodruff Road and its big-box stores” to enjoy it.

What City Council reimagines for Church Street is a tree-lined, median-divided boulevard with wide sidewalks, and for Haynie-Smith and Alta Vista, affordable housing, public green spaces and a series of compact, mixed-used buildings creating “a vibrant environment for living, working and shopping.”

Haynie-Sirrine Neighborhood Association president Felsie Harris was on the panel that created that plan. As she told The News, “Everybody wants (Walmart)” as long as the retailer respects the master plan.

Smaller is not an impossibility. Walmart recently rolled out two new store models elsewhere – Walmart Market and Walmart Express – that focus on groceries and limited general merchandise and average 40,000 square feet or less.

No, they’re not Supercenters, but Church Street is not Woodruff Road. Walmart can be a welcome neighbor, if it can bring itself to act like a neighbor. That means respecting the neighborhood’s plans and dreams – plans and dreams that don’t, by the way, have to include a big box giant.

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Lyn Riddle

On getting healthy despite life’s challenges

by Lyn Riddle

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Sep
5

Caroline Harrington gained 15 pounds while her son, Aden, was in the hospital.

Junk food. Vending machine food. Hospital food.

M&Ms.

It was a steady diet of bad food and worry.

Aden was three when doctors discovered he had cancer, Wilms disease, which began either in utero or in the months after birth as a tumor in a kidney and spread to his lungs. Stage 4.

Harrington said she and her husband, Scott, decided Aden should take part in a study that looked at the results of light chemotherapy and no radiation for the disease, which is one of the more curable cancers.

It worked for nine months.

But then in May of last year, the cancer returned and the whole weight of modern American medicine was applied to Aden’s case.

Almost a week of hospitalization for chemotherapy every three weeks.

“You lose sleep and eat and this becomes the normal routine,” she said.

But she learned from a nutritionist who was treating her mother that there could be more to the protocol than medicine. He encouraged certain healthier foods and nutritional supplements.

They decided to give it a try.

Aden never developed the sores common with chemotherapy, Mrs. Harrington said. She doesn’t know for sure it was the supplements but the other children did develop sores.

“This whole time we were trying to get Aden healthy, and I realized I needed to get healthy, too,” she said.

The woman who describes herself as a meat and potatoes girl became a vegetarian. She read books on the subject and ate tofu and actually started cooking for the family, which she said, she didn’t do before.

“Meal by meal, day by day,” she said.

And she started running. She had never been a runner before. She owns a highly sedentary business, a web development and marketing firm. She grew up in Simpsonville, where her father, Ray Guenthner, served on City Council. He runs the acoustic cafe Coffee Underground.

Harrington, 37, met her husband after she graduated from University of South Carolina and he from Winthrop. Scott Harrington, 41, works as a server at Rick Erwin’s.

Nine months ago, she started her regimen.

Tuesday, she returned from a four-day trip to Alaska, where she ran a half marathon and raised $3,500 for Children’s Security Blanket, a Spartanburg organization that provides essential items to families of children with cancer.

She chose the organization because most money raised for cancer goes to research and she knows the financial burden families face. She remembers talking to a woman in the hallway at Greenville Memorial Children’s Hospital who said all her daughter wanted to eat that day – when she was undergoing chemotherapy – was Chic Fil-A. But she couldn’t afford it.

Mrs. Harrington said Aden’s hospital bills are the equivalent of two car payments. And they have good insurance.

She chose Alaska because she decided if she was going to put that much effort into health, she was going to have the reward of going someplace she’d never been. The whole family went and the weather was cold and rainy.

Except on race day.

The temperature was 59 and the sun was shining. Bold blue sky hovered overhead.

It was a family event with 2K races for children that she found heartwarming.

She ran the whole way – 13.1 miles.

“Aden’s run his race. Now I’ve run mine. Mission accomplished,” she said.

Aden turned six on Aug. 28. He is cancer free. He started first grade at First Presbyterian.

Caroline Harrington has started a non-profit organization to educate families about healthy eating and supplements during cancer treatment. For information go to www.doeverything.org.

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