Tag: Featured Stories

By Chelsea Retherford | Living 50 Plus While most landscapers work in mulch, soil and seed, Andy Brown works with stone and water, often building streams where there once were none. The results can vary from a simple fountain to a koi-filled pond, or even a waterfall cascading down a backyard bluff into the Tennessee River. “I can look at

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By Chelsea Retherford | Living 50 Plus A model employee is lifting morale and bringing smiles to area nursing home residents and physical therapy patients around the Shoals with his infectious grin and loving nature. That star employee stands about two-and-a-half feet tall on four paws and answers to the name Bernie. Now, at the age of two, Bernie is

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By Chelsea Retherford | Living 50 Plus When U.S. Navy veteran Riley Young returned home from Vietnam, he found work as a security officer at the former Reynolds Metal Company factory in Sheffield. When he heard there was a military police reserve unit in the Shoals, he admits that he assumed it was open to Army veterans only. “One of

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By Chelsea Retherford | Living 50 Plus Dihanne Westfield has always been service-minded, and those around her tend to take note. That’s why her good friend, Dorothy Buchanan, began asking Westfield to join a local Rotary Chapter several years ago. Initially, Westfield’s answer was “no.” As a retired educator who was heavily involved with her church, and who regularly volunteered

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By Chelsea Retherford | Living 50 Plus When Steve McEachron was a child, he said his infatuation with Smokey the Bear and his fascination with big, red fire trucks drove his dreams to one day fight fires. He had no idea those aspirations would come true through his work with the Alabama Forestry Commission. However, as McEachron puts it in

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By Chelsea Retherford | Living 50 Plus Like many students before her, Janna Malone entered college hoping to find a career in the music industry yet also wondering what opportunities might be available to someone who wasn’t after the spotlight. “I had a musical family,” she said. “I had played piano since I was six, I sang in church, all

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By Chelsea Retherford | Living 50 Plus Pam Fleming remembers when her fellow Kiwanis Club members voted “yes” to appoint her as the first female vice president of her Sheffield Chapter, but that memory is bittersweet. Although enough members backed her, one member strongly voiced his disapproval with a warning: If they allowed a woman to serve as vice president,

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