Tag: Featured Stories

By Lisa Singleton-Rickman | Living 50 Plus FLORENCE — When David “Coach” Williams stepped inside his classroom on the first day of school in August at Mars Hill Bible School, he surveyed the scene with a little different perspective from all the years past. This year marks Williams’s 50th and final year of teaching at the school that he calls

By Chelsea Retherford | Living 50 Plus Richard Pflueger amicably tapped paddles with his teammate, Don McNutt, and their two opponents, Pflueger’s wife, Jan, and Linda Orr, following the final game of the day one hot Wednesday in June. Richard had barely broken a sweat after alternating five or six friendly, yet competitive games with several other players throughout the

By Chelsea Retherford | Living 50 Plus While Richard and Jan Pflueger are credited with starting the Shoals Area Pickleball league, and initiating conversations about adding public courts in Florence and Muscle Shoals, Richard said it was Don McBrayer who first introduced the sport to north Alabama students in the early 1970s. McBrayer, professor emeritus of Physical Education at the

By Chelsea Retherford | Living 50 Plus At 53 years old, Lori McGuire said she feels more physically fit than she has ever felt in her life, but she couldn’t say that two years ago. A teacher, a caretaker, and a mom of three, she said she was used to putting everyone else’s needs before her own for years. “I

By Chelsea Retherford | Living 50 Plus Leawaiia Little is proud to call several of her former high school classmates her closest friends. While most friendships tend to naturally dwindle as years go by, the Deshler Class of 1972 seems more tightly knit than ever. Little will argue that at this season in her life, these close friendships mean more

By Chelsea Retherford | Living 50 Plus They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but Charles Spruell Old is here to prove the naysayers wrong. At 64, Old has found a fairly lucrative hobby in woodworking, even as he readies to retire from a 20-year-long career in pipe welding. “Oh, four or five years ago, I decided

By Metro News The value of hobbies is undeniable. A 2014 study published in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology found that employees who engaged in creative hobbies outside of work were more creative on work projects and had a better attitude on the job, while a separate study published in Psychosomatic Medicine in 2009 reported that individuals who