COME ALIVE!

I tell my broadcast journalism and announcing students that it is not true you must be a type "A" personality to have a radio and or TV career. You need not bounce off the wall 24 hours a day. And that is true, too, of all types of performing.  It is just that when the Curtain goes up? When the Camera Light comes on? When the Microphone Switch is thrown.  THEN YOU COME ALIVE!

I think most people can intellectualize the concept.  And I think most of us have heard how that BIG star "SO AND SO" is really nice and shy in person.  But sometimes you need something or someone special to illustrate it.  Man did I get it in my email today.

That is Stephenie Davis up there. I used to call her student.  Now I call her friend. She was a division 2 all conference basketball star.  She was an all around track athlete and  javelin champion in high school. She graduated with honors. But believe me it never shows in person. She is so calm, so warm, so polite, so unassuming.

Peggy and I used to love to go to the restaurant where Stephenie served breakfast.  She would walk up to us, form this huge ear to ear grin, and say, "THE USUAL? " Who does that anymore?

But there is a larger story to this posting. I get lost in time frames these days.  But I think it was about two years ago that a coaching job didn't really work out for Stephenie. And she was back waiting tables. She was getting tired and feeling sick to her stomach. She was losing a lot of weight. She thought it was the long hours and hard work.

It turns out she became critically ill with what turned out to be Chrons disease. Surgery followed. They took away most of her stomach. There would be a long rehabilitation period.

Well SHE IS  BACK...and when the CAMERA SHUTTER SNAPS? Stephenie Davis COMES ALIVE!  Moved by some of the people who kept her alive, Stephenie is heading to nursing school in Portland next semester.  And it looks to me like, and hey I'm way predjudiced on this one, she is going to have plenty of cab fare money from MODELING on the side.

She is one of those athletes you CAN dress up.  Hey Steph, does that nursing school have a basketball team? Just wondering.