Category Archives: Inspirational

After 100-plus foster homes, a family at last

Inspirational
Walk for the Waiting
The Walk for the Waiting at War Memorial Stadium in 2017.

Meghan raced into Christie Erwin’s arms and hugged her excitedly. And then she was given a red armband because she no longer needs Erwin’s help to find a family.

The reunion occurred at the Big Rock Fun Park, where Erwin’s organization, Project Zero, brought waiting foster children and potential adoptive parents together in hopes of finding matches.

Meghan, 17, whose name is changed here, has been in foster care since she was two years old. She’s one of 4,729 Arkansas foster children who have been removed from birth parents who were drug addicts or abusive or had other issues – a number that’s down from last year’s 5,113. There are programs to help the birth parents get their lives together and get their kids back, but eventually some lose their rights.

It is not an easy life for the children. Meghan had been in more than 100 foster homes until moving in with current foster parents Jason and Karen Johnson, whose names also have been changed. Continue reading After 100-plus foster homes, a family at last →

Four reasons why Martin Luther King gets a holiday, and you and I don’t

Inspirational, Politics

Martin Luther KingDr. Martin Luther King Jr. died 50 years ago this past week, which makes this an appropriate time to consider why he has a national holiday named after him, and you and I don’t.

Here are four of many reasons.

He sacrificed for his ideals. Everyone thinks they’re persecuted these days. King really was. There’s a reason his most famous writing was titled “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” He was in jail when he wrote it. While he’s been elevated to American sainthood since his death, 63 percent of respondents in a 1966 Gallup poll had a negative opinion of him (and only 12 percent a highly favorable one). Many saw him as an agitator. The FBI investigated him as a communist back when that accusation carried serious implications.

Listening to his sermon in Memphis the night before he died, it’s clear he believed he would not live long, which is understandable. He’d been stabbed in Harlem and struck in the head by a rock in Chicago. The physical strains of leading his movement must have been life-threatening. “I have seen the Promised Land,” he said in Memphis. “I may not get there with you.” He was right. He was shot the next day at age 39. Continue reading Four reasons why Martin Luther King gets a holiday, and you and I don’t →

The next University of Arkansas athletic director? Put it on the Fitz

Inspirational, State government

Fitz HillI don’t know who the next Razorback football coach should be, but Dr. Fitz Hill should be the University of Arkansas’ next athletic director.

Hill until last year served as president of Arkansas Baptist College in Little Rock. The historically black school, founded in 1884, was in a death spiral when Hill arrived there in February 2006. Its student body had dropped to less than 200. Its facilities were in disrepair, and its centerpiece, Old Main, was a decaying hunk of brick and mortar. It was only a matter of time before the school closed its doors.

That’s when Hill showed the difference one man with a vision, a dream and a lot of passion can make. He determined that ABC would be the college for students other colleges rejected. He recruited people off the street, offering them a chance for an education and redemption. The college’s enrollment grew well past 1,000. He inspired the support of heavy hitters such as former Alltel CEO Scott Ford while taking advantage of the government’s New Markets Tax Credit Program. As a result, Old Main was completely refurbished, and many other improvements were made on campus. Finally, Hill made ABC’s mission about much more than just granting degrees. The school housed a program for prison inmates, offered a GED program, and took over a crime-infested car wash down the street, using the proceeds to purchase nearby rundown homes.

Truly, ABC became not just a college, but an opportunity center. He simply would not accept that some people are fated to fail.  Continue reading The next University of Arkansas athletic director? Put it on the Fitz →

Be thankful, because it’s not all bad

Inspirational, Politics, U.S. Congress

By Steve Brawner

© 2017 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Problems are not hard to find, but there’s also much good in the world if we look for it. In the spirit of this Thanksgiving season, let’s do that for a change.

In Iraq and Syria, ISIS is all but defeated. After taunting the world with their cruelty and barbarism, the jihadists have lost one city after another. When Iraqi and American-led coalition forces last week retook the city of Rahway, ISIS was left with only isolated rural areas in that country, and Syria is in a similar situation. Remember that black-clad spokesman who would threaten the world and then behead an unfortunate victim, all captured on video? He’s long dead, and the fighters that remain are now surrendering.

The defeat of ISIS is liberating Iraqis and Syrians from that horrible group. Meanwhile, millions worldwide are being freed from another type of bondage. In 1990, 1.9 billion people lived in extreme poverty on less than $1.25 a day, according to MDG Monitor, published by various United Nations agencies. In 2015, that number had been more than cut in half, to 836 million. That’s more than a billion fewer people, even as the world population has grown. In 1990, nearly half of all people in developing nations lived in extreme poverty. By 2015, that figure had been reduced to 14 percent.  Continue reading Be thankful, because it’s not all bad →