“As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to appreciate working with middle-aged people, older people, and children. Maybe it’s because I can relate with the middle-aged man who hurt his back cutting the lawn or strained his shoulder playing basketball with his kids.”

“In a given day, I might perform a minimally-invasive endoscopic stone procedure, a laparoscopic-assisted robot procedure, and an open-cancer operation.”

“If we can help get someone to the point where they are staying away from using the substances that brought them here, we have the ability to help provide them tools to find ways to deal with the situations that drove them to the substances in the first place.”

“He always had something in the closet—scrubs, etc., ready to go. That was his happy place taking care of babies.”

“…Walker Baptist is open 24/7, so my days don’t necessarily end when I leave for the day. If there’s an issue in the night at the hospital, we pick up the phone and help each other.”

“A good leader pushes everybody to their limits so that they feel great,” Michael says. “I want to be great, but I also want everyone around me to be great.”

“When it came time to figure out where we were going to settle, my husband received job offers from across the country,” Lindsay smiles. “One day a postcard came in the mail from Huntsville and that changed everything.”

.”One night, Walker High School was playing Curry and I counted 11 defensive starters, 11 offensive starters, and a cheerleading complement that I had delivered,” he beams.

Morris didn’t have a childhood dream of becoming a doctor or a surgeon, nor was it a career he had planned after graduating from high school. [He] had something more valuable: his parents’ support.

“My parents told me, ‘You do what you want to do, just do it right,’” he says.

[ Dr. Steve Johnson] was working with Buddy Cross and Mike Brasfield,” he says. “He said, ‘We need some help. Why don't you come out here and practice with us?’ I wanted to live in a small town, so I said I’d try it.”

“Even in cosmetology school, I was telling [the] girls, ‘I am going to own my own salon,’” she recalls.

“I grew up running the halls with Alicia and getting ice cream and wheeling the residents to the beauty shop,” Joette says. “You know, it's just in our blood.”

“Bevill State is thankful for the continued support from the Walker Area Community Foundation and the Drummond Family. The overall goal of this project is that Bevill State has a facility that is a vibrant part of the college community….” stated Dr. Joel Hagood, President of Bevill State Community College.

“There are some women that come to Thrive and do not have a support system, so this is a place where women can come together with one goal in mind: to make a better life for themselves and their children,” says Thrive Together Walker County Success Coach Courtney Reeves.

“I have learned some, and I think people around me have learned some, because I may be the only person of color they come into contact with. And, I want them to know that I am not a unicorn or an exception. There are many more educated black women out there.”