By Reginald Stuart With holiday shopping chances evaporating as ideas, time, funds and opportunities appear to disappear, this year’s deadly coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic 2020 and the widespread economic disruption at home and abroad, has trampled lives and plans for many at home and around the world. For people still pondering how to address the challenge, two new real-life books, overshadowed by the year’s drama, may be ideal stocking stuffers for people of any age. “Conversations About Education, Careers and Life,” gives readers an upclose look at the future as seen by a dyed-in-the wool college educator and his son. a…
Author: Reginald Stuart
By Reginald Stuart WASHINGTON, DC — News media coverage of the deadly COVID-19 virus thrust fresh attention on the media’s dramatic decline in news reporters and programs to adequately focus on the impact the virus is having on diverse segments of Nashville and communities of all sizes across the state and nation in need of extra help — the elderly, poor and people of color. The news media has slackened its Civil Right era push to integrate its ranks and expand its coverage, the public has learned since the start of this century, as the Internet and social media have…
By Reginald Stuart NASHVILLE, TN — As health workers around the city, region, state and world do all they can to help combat the deadly airborne coronavirus, known in the health world as COVID-19, political leaders at all levels of government across America this week continued to figure how to salvage and recharge the derailed economy that has thrown millions out of work and money, shut schools and put an overall pause on everyday life as we knew it at the beginning of the year. The $2.3 trillion federal Coronavirus, Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act is federal tax…
The deadly airborne Coronavirus, known in the health world as COVID-19, continues to strike around the city, state, nation and world. It has proven it will draw the life out of anyone, regardless of race, creed, color, age, financial status, ethnic belief, religion or sex. Health officials around the globe have worked tirelessly searching for a cause of the virus and a cure. All to no avail so far. There are more people surviving the disease than succumbing. Still, the fatality numbers continue to skyrocket, including many people we know in some way. The Rev. Percy Clark When Percy Clark…
“National strategy” needed to defeat virus By Reginald Stuart NASHVILLE, TN — America needs a “national strategy” to combat and mitigate Coronavirus, the deadly airborne disease that is sweeping the globe at a tornado pace and leaving countless people in its tracks, said Dr. James E.K. Hildreth, nationally known medical scientist and president of Nashville’s Meharry Medical College. “We are giving the virus to each other,” said Dr. Hildreth, who has spent more than three decades researching fast moving, widespread virus outbreaks, including the HIV and Ebola virus. “We (humans) are the vector for the virus,” he said, explaining…
By Reginald Stuart Signs abound across Nashville, Tennessee, across the nation and around the world that Spring 2020 has been derailed and life disrupted in myriad ways by the deadly Coronavirus COVID-19) plague sweeping the planet. Keeping one’s “social distance”, (approximately six feet away from the person’s closest to you, as public health officials call it, is now the world’s operating language of the day. The demand for universal exercise of social distance distancing stems from the rapid spread of the disease around the world, regardless of race, creed, income, color, ethnic origin, religious beliefs or sexual orientation. More than…
As a devoted wife, dedicated mother of five and career elementary school teacher, Mary Churchwell gave meaning daily to one of her favorite gospels: “My Living Shall Not Be in Vain.” A devout member of Seay-Hubbard United Methodist Church since her marriage at the church in 1951 to Robert Churchwell, she is said to have helped somebody in someway at nearly every stop in her life’s road. She was part of a model couple that tackled life’s array of challenges with persistence and humility over the years. They became admiringly referred to by their children as “the architect and engineer.”…
By Reginald Stuart WASHINGTON, DC — Just as the late Detroit automobile executive George Russell did decades earlier when he embraced Meharry Medical College and helped catapult it into the future with a new look and attitude, another fellow Detroiter, attorney David Williams, came to Nashville in 2000 and enthusiastically and persistently gave Vanderbilt University his trademark bear hug, helped in every way he could to carve its niche for this century. As a Vanderbilt Law School law teacher, university general counsel, vice chancellor, teammate with Chancellor Nick Zeppos and eventually athletic director, Williams found no mountain high enough,…
By Reginald Stuart Long before anyone realized Aretha Franklin was a rare music jewel, she helped draw neighbors to her father’s Baptist Church in Detroit as one of the Franklin sisters performing at the small, yet popular, Bethel Baptist Church pastored by the Rev. C. L. Franklin. “We would avoid going to our church near by (Tabernacle Baptist) to go hear the Franklin sisters,” said David Williams, recalling his younger days in the Motor City, his hometown and the city where he grew up. Little did Williams, now Vice Chancellor of Vanderbilt University, or his friends know they were getting…
By Reginald Stuart NASHVILLE, TN — When noted academic executive David Williams II joined the leadership team at Nashville’s Vanderbilt University in 2000, few realized at the time Williams would become an essential member of the university’s brain trust charting and navigating its steady progression toward becoming a model of the nation’s evolving diversity in higher education. “This is not the place I came to 18 years ago, I never had any idea it (Vanderbilt) would change,” Williams said in a recent Tennessee Tribune interview. “Vanderbilt is doing this quietly,” he said, acknowledging the institution’s steady approach toward its status…