Author: Preston Lauterbach

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Martin Luther King Events in Memphis This Week

CREDIT: mlkonline.cm

Forty years ago the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came to an end in Memphis. This week, veterans of the Civil Rights movement, men and women who marched beside King, and those who followed in his footsteps as fighters for social change converge on the city to remember the man and carry his dream forward. Here’s a roundup of local events commemorating Martin Luther King Jr.

April 2 — At the Peabody Hotel: Rev. Al Sharpton hosts the 10th annual National Action Network convention. The convention runs through April 5. Events scheduled for the 2nd include meetings on affordable green housing, healthcare, and labor. Visit nationalactionnetwork.net for a complete schedule.

At the University of Memphis, Rose Theatre; 10a.m.: Forum on the MSU 109, the students who staged a sit-in at the president of university’s office.
1:30p.m. Forum, behind the scenes and untold stories, including members of the militant Black Invaders group.
6p.m., Scholar Angela Davis speaks on “Martin Luther King Jr. and Global Civil Rights.”

April 3 — The website of the April 4th Foundation says that its Symposium for School Children seminar scheduled for April 3 at 1:00 in the Cook Convention Center has been cancelled.

At City Hall, 125 N. Main Street,
11 a.m.: Sanitation Workers Appreciation hosted by the National Civil Rights Museum

At the National Civil Rights Museum;
5:30 p.m.: Former MLK speechwriter Clarence B. Jones will discuss his book What Would Martin Say? and sign copies in the National Civil Rights Museum auditorium.

7 p.m.: Civil rights leaders will gather for a cocktail reception and to share stories about King for the “In Remembrance There Is Life.” Clarence B. Jones, Rev. Samuel Billy Kyles, Dr. Benjamin Hooks, former Shelby County Sheriff and Mayor Bill Morris, and Dr. Jerry Francisco will speak. Tickets for this event cost $50.

April 4 — At the National Civil Rights Museum: Rev. C.T. Vivian, civil rights movement veteran and former King associate, and historian Cynthia Griggs Fleming, will lead a candlelight vigil at the time and place of the King assassination.

At the Cook Convention Center:
The April 4th Foundation hosts a banquet and awards ceremony to commemorate King and honor Georgia congressman John Lewis and entertainer Harry Belafonte. Visit april4thfoundation.org for ticket information.

In brief:

The environmental organization Green for All will host a three-day conference from April 4-6 at the Cook Convention Center called “The Dream Reborn.” Events will focus on the creation of a green economy strong enough to lift poor Americans out of poverty. Visit dreamreborn.org for more information.

A high tea and fashion show is planned to honor Luther C. McClellan, the first African American to graduate from the University of Memphis at the Plush Club at 12:45p.m. Saturday April 5.

Stay tuned to memphisflyer.com for coverage of selected events.

–Preston Lauterbach

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News The Fly-By

Modern-Day Poll Tax?

“The vote is the most powerful instrument … for destroying the terrible walls that imprison men.”

So said President Lyndon B. Johnson, who signed the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act that outlawed poll taxes, literacy tests, and other measures enacted in the South to keep African Americans from voting.

Last month, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the state of Tennessee to remove obstacles — including what they call a modern-day poll tax — that keep formerly imprisoned men from the polls. The suit seeks to nullify sections of the Tennessee Code that restore voting rights to felons only under certain conditions.

Traditionally, a felon who receives a pardon, serves a full sentence, or completes parole or probation can apply for the right to vote. In 2006, though, the state legislature added new amendments that force felons to pay victim restitution and be current on child support payments, when applicable, before voting again. The American Civil Liberties Union contends that “no one should have to pay any fine or any monetary obligation as a condition to vote,” according to ACLU Voting Rights Project attorney Nancy Abudu.

The ACLU Voting Rights Project conducts public voting education programs, which brought them in touch with the plaintiffs, including Shelby County resident Terrence Johnson, who owes both restitution and child support, the latter amounting to $1,200 despite the fact that he maintains custody of his daughter.

“With respect to child support,” Abudu says, “one of our biggest concerns is that people who owe child support but have never been convicted of a crime don’t have their voting rights taken away. It creates a double standard.”

The 2006 restitution amendment was sponsored by Memphians Kathryn Bowers in the Senate, who has since resigned after a guilty plea in a Tennessee Waltz case, and Joe Towns Jr. in the state House. Though the ACLU has referred to the legislation as a modern-day poll tax — citing legal measures that prevented African Americans from voting during Reconstruction — both sponsors of the amendment are African American.

Abudu explains that the suit is not race-based.

“But if you look at the history of the law and the current context of the law, you can’t ignore the racial implications,” she says. She adds that the disproportionate numbers of minorities imprisoned means that the felon voting law affects them unequally.

Of the more than 25,000 male inmates incarcerated in Tennessee in June 2007, roughly 48 percent of them were African American.

The defendants — Governor Phil Bredesen, coordinator of elections Brook Thompson, Secretary of State Riley Darnell, and Shelby County election administrator James Johnson, in addition to elections administrators in Davidson and Madison counties — have not responded to the suit. Abudu hopes that the case will be heard this summer.

Abudu believes that the ACLU suit also reinforces the main goal of the penal process. “If you’re looking at rehabilitation, allowing someone to vote helps,” she says.

Towns could not be reached for comment. James Johnson indicated that he’s unable to address pending court cases.

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Music Music Features

Grave Matters

“It doesn’t take long, if you read about soul music, to find out that James Carr was considered one of the most gifted soul singers ever,” says Steve Suskie, 58, a retired school counselor from Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Carr sang “Dark End of the Street” for Memphis-based Goldwax Records back in 1967. Many fans and critics consider it the pinnacle of soul music. Carr suffered from mental illness, though, and enjoyed no enduring financial success from his artistic triumphs. He lived out his last years jumping from one housing project to another with a sister and succumbed to lung cancer on January 7, 2001.

“I came to Memphis to find musicians’ gravesites, including James Carr’s,” Suskie says.

Suskie visited New Park Cemetery to pay Carr his respects, but the manager told Suskie that Carr had no gravestone. “That hit me hard,” Suskie says. “It just seemed like a real injustice that a guy this great didn’t have a headstone and probably wouldn’t be remembered.”

Suskie decided to take up a collection for a gravestone. Research led him to former Stax trumpeter Wayne Jackson, who played on the signature songs of Otis Redding and Sam & Dave. Jackson also toured with Carr, whom he described as the best vocalist he’s heard. “Wayne not only knew James but loved him and couldn’t believe he didn’t have a headstone,” Suskie says.

Spooner Oldham, the Muscle Shoals session musician and songwriter, contacted Suskie and donated money. MusiCares — a subsidiary of the Grammy Foundation — chipped in, and the group paid for a stone with funds to spare.

To visit Carr’s resting place, take Third Street, head west on Raines Road, and turn right on Sewanee. New Park Cemetery is about three miles down on the right at 3900 Sewanee. To find Carr’s grave, follow the driveway around to the right as you enter New Park. Carr’s marker is on the right, three rows back from the “Fleming” marker, visible beside the driveway.

“I was 15 or 16 when Memphis soul was at its peak. It was a huge part of my life,” Suskie reflects. “It’s been so rewarding to do something for James.”

Like Suskie, 34-year-old Arlo Leach, a Chicago teacher and jug-band enthusiast, traveled south searching for graves of his favorite musicians. “I found out where Will Shade was buried and saw that it was just an empty field of unmarked graves,” Leach recalls. “Most of the other musicians [I visited] have modest gravestones, and fans leave flowers or harmonicas behind. For Will Shade, there was nothing. It didn’t seem fair.”

Shade’s Memphis Jug Band celebrated the Bluff City in recordings beginning in 1927 with “Fourth Street Mess Around” and continuing with “Going Back to Memphis,” “Memphis Shakedown,” and others until the band’s recording career concluded in 1934. Shade died a penniless widower on September 18, 1966, at age 68 and was interred in the potter’s field known as the Shelby County Cemetery, located on Ellis Road off North Germantown Road.

Though largely forgotten at home, Shade’s ragged tunes are a favorite of old-time music fans, and Leach’s project has attracted global support. More than 400 packed the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago on January 27, 2008, for a Will Shade benefit headlined by Memphis-reared bluesman Charlie Musselwhite. The event, organized by Leach, raised more than enough money to buy a headstone for Shade’s unmarked grave.

A dedication ceremony is scheduled for May 3rd. “We’ll have a few people say a few words,” Leach explains. “Then we’ll retire to the Center for Southern Folklore for a jam session. People can come and play or listen.”

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Music Music Features

James Carr Honored with Headstone; Sang “Dark End of the Street”

While locals argured about Pat Kerr Tigrett’s Beale Street brass note last week, Memphis music fans from outside the city helped honor one of our dead music legends with a headstone.

James Carr sang “Dark End of the Street” for Memphis-based Goldwax Records back in 1967. Many fans and critics consider it the pinnacle of soul music. Carr, who suffered with mental illness, appeared every bit the troubled man whose voice on records pulled the hearts of listeners like an old memory.

Carr lived out his last years with a sister, jumping from one housing project to another. Whether Carr was the victim of exploitative management or his illness rendered him unable to function, he enjoyed no enduring financial comfort from his recording success.

Carr succumbed to lung cancer January 7, 2001 and was laid to rest in New Park Cemetery at 3900 Sewanee Road in southwestern Memphis. Carr’s grave would have remained unmarked if not for the efforts of fans and colleagues from outside Memphis who purchased a headstone that cemetery staff put in place in late February.

To visit Carr’s resting place, take Third Street south, head west on Raines Road, and turn right on Sewanee. (You’ll see horses hitched up in residents’ yards, an unusual sight in the city limits.) New Park is about three miles on the right. The cemetery is full of flat markers, and devoid of landmarks. To find Carr’s, follow the driveway around to the right as you enter past the New Park sign. Carrs marker is to the right, three rows back from the “Fleming” marker visible just beside the driveway.

New Park also holds the graves of Memphis music icons Rufus Thomas, Al Jackson Jr., Herbert Brewster, Johnny Ace, Bukka White, and members of the Bar-Kays.

— Preston Lauterbach

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News The Fly-By

Still a Struggle

In front of an audience that included museum founders Chuck Scruggs and D’Army Bailey, the National Civil Rights Museum board of directors announced eight new board members at a meeting last week.

The board has been criticized for privileging corporate membership over community activists with experience in the civil rights movement. In November of last year, the state of Tennessee — the museum’s owner — included board membership guidelines in its new lease agreement with the museum board.

Under that agreement, the state mandated that 60 percent of board members be African-American and that the board represent a number of specific special interests. State representative Johnny Shaw from Hardeman County represents the state legislature; local director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Dorothy Crook represents labor; former Martin Luther King Jr. speechwriter Clarence Jones represents civil rights scholarship; while Urban Child Institute member Kenya Bradshaw, Southern Christian Leadership Conference president Dwight Montgomery, and Crichton College’s Darryl Tukufu represent civil rights and community activists. Additional new members include FedEx Express senior vice president Cathy Ross and pastor Gina Stewart.

Following the meeting, the board opened the floor for 20 minutes of public feedback, with two minutes per speaker. A number of civil rights foot soldiers came forward with prayers and calls to support the museum and its mission despite the outside criticism.

“I think it’s time for this city to come together,” said longtime local minister and former civil rights marcher Robert Harris, “with the same mind and the same goals. Until we do that, I don’t think anything will be accomplished.”

Former museum marketing director Judith Black added, “So much of the publicity about this place is negative. It’s hard to get the positive word out if you’re having to fight the negative.”

As the meeting adjourned, however, a protester approached the board members, shouting “This is class-ism.” Another local activist loudly attempted to address the departing members.

For a more complete version of this story, visit memphisflyer.com.

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Civil Rights Museum Board Names New Members at Contentious Meeting

The National Civil Rights Museum board of directors announced eight new members at a public meeting Thursday evening to an audience of 50, including museum founders Chuck Scruggs and D’Army Bailey, and local activist Deke Pope.

The board has been criticized lately for favoring corporate-linked membership over members with civil rights movement experience. The Lorraine Civil Rights Museum Community Oversight Committee, a grassroots group unaffiliated with the museum, offered numerous nominations of its own. Meanwhile, the state of Tennessee — the museum owner — included board membership guidelines in the recent lease agreement with the museum board.

The state mandated a 60 percent African-American membership, which the board met with its new nominees, as well as representation from a number of specific categories.

The eight new members: State representative Johnny Shaw from Hardeman County fulfills the state legislator requirement; local director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Dorothy Crook represents labor; former Martin Luther King Jr. speech-writer Clarence Jones represents civil rights scholarship; while Urban Child Institute member Kenya Bradshaw, Southern Christian Leadership Conference president Dwight Montgomery, and Crichton College’s Darryl Tukufu represent civil rights and community activists. Additional nominees include FedEx Senior Vice President Cathy Ross and pastor Gina Stewart.

Following the meeting, the board opened the floor to public feedback for 20 minutes, with two minutes alloted per speaker. A number of civil rights movement foot soldiers came forward with prayers and calls to support the museum and its mission despite the outside criticism. “There was innocent blood shed in this city,” Dr. Jerry Jones declared, “and it has got to be paid for. It’s not going to be paid for with people playing games,” he said, in reference to the controversy.

Charles Todd, a former critic of the board’s make-up said that the public should look into the work of the museum before passing judgment. “I don’t think it’s y’all’s fault,” he told the board members. “A lot of it is our fault as a community. We did not know how this museum worked. A lot of times, when you start talking with each other, you can get some things done. If I can do anything to volunteer and help this organization I would be glad to do so.”

“I think it’s time for this city to come together,” said Robert Harris, longtime local minister and former civil rights marcher, “with the same mind and the same goals. Until we do that, I don’t think anything will be accomplished.”

Former NCRM marketing director Judith Black added, “So much of the publicity about this place is negative. It”s hard to get the positive word out if you’re having to fight the negative.”

Laurice Smith, the chairperson of the Lorraine Civil Rights Museum Oversight Committee, ran well over her allotted time-period while criticizing the museum board’s reluctance to clear its nominations with the oversight committee.

Board member Maxine Smith (no relation), 79-year-old former NAACP executive director and decorated civil rights veteran, clarified the fact that the state lease makes no stipulation for the board negotiating or communicating with any other body in its internal business.

The meeting adjourned, though a protester approached the board members shouting “This is class-ism,” while another local activist loudly attempted to address the meeting as it dispersed.

–Preston Lauterbach

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News

Civil Rights Museum Board to Expand and Discuss Potential New Members

The 31-member board of directors of the National Civil Rights Museum will meet Thursday at 4 p.m. at the museum to review the recommendations of its nominating committee. The board will add three new seats and replace three departing members.

The organization has come under fire from critics in recent months, who have demonstrated outside the museum and pressured the board to add more members with a background in the civil rights movement. Those critics see this as a crucial moment.

“The struggle for community control of the National Civil Rights Museum has entered a final and most critical phase,” began a letter from Judge D’Army Bailey, one of the museum’s founders who was ousted from the board’s presidency in 1992, sent to supporters on Monday.

“The [museum board] will show whether and how it responds to the pleas of community and national civil rights leaders for more sensitivity and diversity on the governing board of this, black America’s holiest and most historical site.”

Beverly Robertson, executive director of the museum since 1997 and president of the board, explains that the state of Tennessee mandated an expansion of the board in its lease agreement with the museum. “One of the state’s provisions is a 60 percent African-American representation on the board,” Robertson says. “Another is to make sure that we have someone that represented labor, a historian or civil rights activist. We need to be able to do that and maintain a balance of people who wish to engage their companies and corporations in helping to advance this mission.”

Robertson says that the board assessed the strengths of its current membership to determine what sort of members need to be added. “We need several things,” she says. “We need people who represent different perspectives, whether its labor or the grass roots community. We need people who are fund-raisers, and we need educators who can figure out new ways to engage young people and build our programs. We need people with technological backgrounds to reach kids who download, iPod, Tivo, and podcast. If we’re not doing those things, then our message isn’t resonating. We need young people on the board as well.”

“This Lorraine Motel site is important to the world not because of this board, but because it is where King died,” Bailey wrote.

He accuses the board of operating secretly, ejecting black legislators from a recent meeting, and minimizing black participation. His letter says that the board rejected a proposal from labor leader Bill Lucy to add eight new members via a joint committee of board members and civil rights veterans. A second community group, the Lorraine Oversight Committee, requested input into the new board nominations as well, while the Arkansas Delta Truth and Justice Center submitted a list of recommended board nominees to the museum board.

Robertson says she welcomes the input from citizens and organizations alike. “Everybody should feel that they have a voice,” she says. “I don’t think we’ve been restrictive in the past. Board members reach out to people they know [for new members], but that’s typical of every board.”

In continuing his running critique of the board as too corporate, Bailey wrote, “During the civil rights movement we had white moneyed support but they weren’t making the policy and strategy choices… The corporate and other well-to-do people who currently serve on the Museum Board are needed and welcome to raise money. However this doesn’t qualify them to make the judgments on how our black history should be told… .”

Why doesn’t he count Ben Hooks or Billy Kyles as civil rights representatives?” Robertson asks. “Maybe in the process of keeping the lights on and the doors open here, we haven’t scanned the external environment as much as we needed to. That’s not to stay that we don’t welcome people volunteering or putting names in the hat. In the long run we’ll be better off for it. I find it so interesting that people think we’re fighting this. We’re not.”

The four-member board nominating committee includes First Tennessee Bank executive vice president Herb Hilliard, Tower Ventures chief manager Billy Orgel, philanthropist Lucia Gilliland, and Baptist Hospital senior vice president Greg Duckett. The meeting is open to the public.

Visit memphisflyer.com later this week for a wrap-up of the meeting.

— Preston Lauterbach

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News The Fly-By

Behind the Number

CREDIT: Lars Christensen | dreamstime.com

In January, The Commercial Appeal raised eyebrows with its decision to display the estimated number of babies born to local single mothers for the year.

The Urban Child Institute (UCI) sponsors the display and supplies the number, which is a composite of childbirth figures from 1999-2005. UCI president Gene Cashman explained that the organization hoped to start a public conversation about single parenthood, its effects on children and, by extension, life in Memphis. The Flyer took the bait and sat down with several members of the institute to have that conversation and look behind the number.

Cashman explained that the institute is a conglomerate of physicians, academics, and social workers in a nonpartisan, data-driven public-policy research center.

UCI spun off from the 1995 merger of Le Bonheur Children’s Medical Center and Methodist Hospital. Le Bonheur’s parent company liquidated its business holdings, which funded the nascent UCI under former Le Bonheur president Cashman. UCI claimed $159 million in assets on its 2006 IRS 990 form.

UCI issued grants to organizations dealing with teen pregnancy, youth alcohol and drug abuse, and violence in its early years without effect, before recently deciding to address these problems themselves while continuing to issue grants.

The number of single-parent births, published every Monday in the CA, represents UCI’s first step in this new direction. It has succeeded at least in generating conversation, much of it critical.

The director of community affairs for the local Planned Parenthood, Christie Petrone, called the meter “disconcerting, because it stigmatizes women without offering solutions.”

Others have said that the meter lacks context. Members of the institute admitted that the number may not reflect its concerns, which are far more complex than the meter indicates.

Cashman explained the UCI’s motives thusly: “We have all of this data [about problems facing children in Memphis]. One major thing that pops up in all these ills and issues is a single-parent birth. If you’re looking at infant mortality, it’s a major indicator. If you’re looking at crime or poor educational performance, it’s there. All of those things seem to tie back in to that phenomenon. Hopefully, the odometer can bring a level of discussion and activity to those issues.”

Issues such as crime, UCI believes, are rooted in brain development, a fact any observer would be hard-pressed to discern from the meter.

“The basic science can’t be overlooked,” Cashman said. “The brain begins developing about two weeks after conception. It’s hard-wired — about 80 percent by age 3 and 90 percent by age 5. It doesn’t matter if you’re rich, poor, black, or white.

“With that [knowledge], you get an appreciation of emphasizing the front end [of life]. That’s not to say that there aren’t things that can be done to help someone later in life, but there needs to be emphasis put on the front end. Researchers [are] realizing that the origins of social problems are back in early development. That gets back to the odometer.”

According to the American Community Survey, 52 percent of the births in Shelby County in 2005 were to single mothers, which, according to UCI, destabilizes Memphis and detracts from the quality of life.

Not so fast, said Petrone. “[UCI] assumes that births to single mothers are unintentional. This is offensive to those who choose to become single mothers by divorce, adoption, or otherwise,” Petrone said.

“The overriding issue with the population we’re concerned about is poverty,” explained Hank Herrod, a UCI fellow and professor of pediatrics at the University of Tennessee. “Starting from the time the baby is conceived, these women are under tremendous stress. This influences hormonal things that influence brain development in the child. A lot of them don’t have tools to stimulate the [child’s] brain. If they don’t have the resources, they don’t have books around. The whole single-mom thing is designed to bring attention to the child.”

Though the meter is short on solutions, UCI social worker Barbara Holden Nixon offered a few.

“When the stress [of being poor] is there, they’re not going to be doing the things that science tells us can make a difference in that child’s life,” she said. “They’re too busy trying to survive. If we can get the attention of that community, tell them, ‘Talk to your baby, hold your baby, look into your baby’s eyes.’ … These things that cost nothing can change the outcome for that child.”

“We should invest in these families,” added Katie Spurlock, another UCI social worker, “so we don’t have to pay down the road through remedial education and the criminal justice system.”

Cashman insisted that his organization can change direction if the meter fails. “The criticisms that we get seldom mention children,” Cashman said. “When the criticisms don’t mention children, that’s when we think they’ve missed the point. It’s not a judgment about the way anyone’s living. It’s about making [disadvantaged children] a higher priority.”

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News The Fly-By

Abort Mission

This week marks the 35th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade, in which the court ruled that anti-abortion laws violate citizens’ constitutional right to privacy.

Coincidentally, the 105th Tennessee General Assembly convened in Nashville earlier this month, making immediate progress on a proposed amendment to the state constitution that could limit abortion rights. It passed the Senate Judiciary Committee 6-2, with Memphis Democrats Jim Kyle and Beverly Marrero providing the nays.

The Tennessee Supreme Court ruled in 2000 that the state constitution protects abortion rights, thus limiting the power of any future Supreme Court reversal to change abortion law in Tennessee.

Christie Petrone, director of community affairs for the regional Planned Parenthood, follows developments in abortion law in the state and explains the paradox of local abortion rights.

“The women of Tennessee have greater protection, from our constitution, than a lot of other states. Our protection goes beyond Roe v. Wade. If the Roe v. Wade decision were overturned, abortion would immediately become illegal in many states,” she says. “But we face more anti-choice legislation here than other states. This amendment is an arbitrary attempt to chip away at Roe v. Wade.”

In what would amount to a reversal of the 2000 ruling, the proposed amendment says that the state constitution provides neither protection for abortion rights nor funding for the procedure.

“If this amendment passes, it sets up the system to allow legislators to ban abortion,” Petrone explains. “Right now, they can’t.”

Amendment supporters, including sponsor Diane Black, a Republican senator from Gallatin, say that the language could lead the way for legal restrictions on abortions without legislating an abortion ban.

Under the amendement, women seeking an abortion would have to wait 48 hours for a “period of reflection.” Clinics would be permitted to perform abortions only in the first trimester of a pregnancy, while abortions later in the pregnancy would have to take place in a hospital. Abortion providers would be legally bound to present detailed descriptions of the process to women seeking the procedure.

“This is a legislative tactic to take private decision making away from women,” Petrone says. “The decision to have an abortion is a private one that should be made between a woman and a doctor, not a woman and her legislator.”

The proposed amendment still has a long way to go. It must pass through the full Senate and House of Representatives — it failed in the House in 2006 — before requiring approval of two thirds of legislators in the next General Assembly. Tennessee citizens would vote on its inclusion in the constitution in 2010.

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News

Kathryn Perry Thomas

Memphis lost a link to its history last week when Kathryn Perry Thomas died at the age of 92. Thomas, a classical pianist featured in an August cover story in the Flyer, was the last living Memphian to have played with jazz bandleader Jimmie Lunceford, who taught music in the Bluff City before going on the road in 1930. Thomas’ brother Andrew Perry was a member of Lunceford’s first band the Chickasaw Syncopators.

Thomas spent her career here as an educator in the Memphis City Schools teaching English and Spanish, first at Manassas High School in North Memphis, her alma mater, class of 1932, and later at White Station.

The Comrades N Community organization recognized Thomas as one of their Women of Stamina last year. She also received the Jimmie Lunceford Legacy Award from local culture activist Ron Herd at his educational Jimmie Lunceford Jamboree in October 2007.

Thomas donated her remains to science. If the secrets to kindness, vitality, and longevity lie in the human body, then we just got one step closer to learning them. “She was an educator the end,” Herd remarked.

— Preston Lauterbach