Their Story Matters, with Sara troy and her guest Elizabeth Mehren, on air from November 5th
Elizabeth’s volunteer work with The Immigrant Story, a small nonprofit in Portland, Oregon, inspired her to write I Lived to Tell the World. Through her involvement, she heard powerful stories of resilience and hope from immigrants and refugees who had overcome incredible challenges. These experiences deepened her appreciation for the courage and strength it takes to start anew in a foreign country and motivated her to honor these narratives. Her book serves as a testament to these remarkable individuals, capturing their enduring spirit and the invaluable lessons they impart.
Elizabeth’s mission is to spark a national dialogue on immigration and honor the lessons taught by survivors of the Holocaust, genocide, and war about overcoming unimaginable adversity. Her work celebrates the democracy many take for granted, emphasizing that each survivor in her book, I Lived to Tell the World, treasures every day of freedom. She carefully chose over 50 survivors from diverse global conflicts to capture a broad perspective, and each story resonates with hope, resilience, courage, faith, humor (even dark humor), and a profound gratitude for the opportunities they found in America. Though these individuals now live in the Pacific Northwest, their experiences are universal, reminding us of the enduring impact of hope and resilience. With a growing focus on Holocaust and genocide education and the pressing issues surrounding immigration, racial justice, and refugees, I Lived to Tell the World shines a light on lives shaped by strength and purpose despite painful pasts.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Elizabeth Mehren is a writer, editor, and educator based in Portland, Oregon. After working at The Washington Post, she became a national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and later spent a decade on the faculty at Boston University. Mehren earned undergraduate and graduate degrees at UC Berkeley and has written for national magazines, appeared on television and radio, and received awards for teaching and journalism. I Lived to Tell the World is her fifth book.
Stories from Survivors of Holocaust, Genocide, and the Atrocities of War
“Machetes were for the poor. You had to pay to be shot. Can you imagine paying someone to shoot you?”
Emmanuel Turaturanye, recalling the bloody irony of the genocidal massacres in his native Rwanda
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Their Story Matters with Sara Troy and her guest Carol J. Chumney, on air from September 12th
NEW BOOK EXPOSES GLASS CEILING FOR WOMEN POLITICIANS AND ELECTION SECURITY VULNERABILITIES
The Arena: One Woman’s Story, about her experiences as a woman in the political arena. In 1991, Carol gained election to the Tennessee state legislature at the age of 29. She passed a landmark childcare reform, as reported in TIME magazine and the New York Times. As a veteran state legislator, experienced trial attorney, and Memphis city councilwoman, in 2007, she came within seven points of being elected the first woman mayor of Memphis.
Women are still not proportionally represented in the U.S. Congress, state legislature, statewide executive and mayor positions in the United States. There has never been a female president of the USA.
In 1920, American women secured the right to vote. Tennessee was the 36th state necessary to ratify the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Amendment passed by only one vote in the state house. Despite a hundred years of women’s suffrage, there has never been a woman governor of Tennessee. The portraits of 46 men who served as mayor hang on the wall in the Memphis city hall. To date, a female has never been elected mayor of Memphis. In an interview, Carol Chumney will talk about her experiences as a woman in this political arena. She will also address why two things need to happen in order for the doors to open to higher office for women: election reform and a cultural shift away from gender bias. She can talk about:
Gender bias and the “glass ceiling” in 2023 and her motto that “you first have to see it to defeat it”
What compelled her to public service
Her legislative work on a variety of women’s issues, such as the famous “potty parity” bill (increased the number of restrooms for women in public arenas), sponsoring Tennessee’s first stalking law, and a bill mandating a 48-hour stay in hospitals for new mothers
She was responsible for the legislation that dramatically changed Tennessee’s child care laws
Election integrity and the need for election reform
Her work taking the fight for election security to the U.S. Supreme Court and Congress
Carol J. Chumney is an elected Shelby County (TN) Circuit Court Judge (she took the bench September 1, 2022). Prior to this, she was an attorney in private practice in Memphis, TN. She served thirteen years in the Tennessee state house, earning numerous awards. Chumney served four years as a Memphis city councilwoman, standing up against pension and spending abuses by officials. She made valiant efforts to be elected county mayor in 2002 and Memphis mayor in 2007 and 2009.
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Their Story Matters with Sara Troy and her guest Ruth Smith, on air from July 25th
I was born with water in my veins – or so it seems.
As a child I often wished that gills had been standard issue for humans. Water and I have always had an inseparable connection. For forty-two years, teaching and coaching of swimming in pools in Australia and overseas has been my genius.
At 14 I became an active Australian Surf Life Saving Club member and the first professional female Beach Inspector in New South Wales. My professional and volunteer hours were…wet. In my early career in the disability-care field I was fortunate to be introduced to hydroptherapy, The Halliwick Method and numerous influential mentors.
Water is my ‘impact vehicle’, the medium through which I facilitate the transformation of lives, especially when children with intellectual or physical challenges are added to the mix.
As National winner of the 2022 Australian ‘Teacher of Aquatics – Access & Inclusion’ award my work leading the Aquatic Therapy industry in Australia has been recognised by our national peak body.
Put simply it’s a water-based healing modality that utilises specialised equipment and techniques to enhance students’ proprioception, motor planning, self-regulation, fine and gross motor skills, cognitive focus, muscle tone, communication and co-ordination. Water safety and propulsion is a common therapeutic goal.
I’m inspired working with ‘neuro-diverse’ and physically challenged youngsters. It’s a soul-driven mission that I can’t explain. Simply, it’s a privilege from which I derive inexplicable and immeasurable satisfaction and sense of self-worth.
My legacy is to remain at the cutting edge, develop both research and university-level post graduate courses and continue the development of the next generation of aquatic professionals.
While ever I’m physically capable I’ll continue to have water logged skin and smell like a chlorine advertisement. Working with this challenged cohort is often like looking into another’s soul. At other times it’s like they have allowed me to cross over their threshold and am invited into their world. Maybe only fleeting at times, but it is there I have my greatest impact.
My WHY.
This if two fold.
Aquatic therapy – using the magical medium of water to work with students 1:1 with challenging behaviours which precludes them from participating in the traditional group swim class. For example, cerebral palsy, downs syndrome, autism, non verbal, hearing impaired, other rare conditions. AT uses the water to developed proprioception, motor planning skills, fine and gross motor skills, focus, pro social behaviours, co-ordination, etc. AT uses specialist equipment and has a multidisciplinary approach.
Around the world there is an increase of students with challenging behaviours into our traditional swimming lessons. Our teachers here in Australia are not well prepared for this neurodiversity within their lessons. I am concerned that we may lose more teachers from this industry if we don’t have them feeling empowered, confident and competent to work with this population. I, with my colleague Lyn, we are Aquatic Mentors and we are setting about providing training and support to swim school operators and their staff around this very subject.
It all started at Uni. I was doing Sport Science and was heading to the Australian Institute of Sport where I would be THE person to create the fastest swimmers on the planet. I was always interested in the way the body moved in water. I took an elective which saw me working with a pediatric physio who used the water as her therapy medium. I was hooked. Later in my travelling the world I was fortunate to work with James McMillan in England who developed the Halliwick method of teaching “handicapped” people to move efficiently throu the water. Returning home, another touch point was working with allied health professionals in the transport accident rehab facility – head injury unit. Again, water was used by the physios and OT’s for rehabilitation.
Those years stayed with me as I grew a family. I continued to be involved with teaching, coaching while helping people with disabilities finding employment. I found it easy to be amongst the neurodiverse community and in 2015 I was able to combine by love of the water and my gift of working with students with challenging behaviours in my own swimming centre.
I continued to travel and learn more and more after doing all I could here in Australia. I travelled to the USA and Canada and hope to plan another study tour to the Phillipines where they are doing interesting things in this space as well.
My dream is to have a Centre of Excellence for Aquatic Therapy, a purpose-built pool in Australia where the allied health professions can have rooms for their clients as well. It would be a multidisciplinary approach for clients from around the world all under the one roof. It would also be a place where people can come and train to be aquatic therapists from all around the world.
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Their Story Matters with Sara Troy and her guest Lisa Wilkes, on air from April 18th
As far back as I can remember, I eagerly participated in charitable ventures. This stems from being an extreme empath—it wasn’t intentional, exactly, but I always searched for ways to better the lives of those around me. Sometimes it seems I have a special built-in antenna that allows me to sense any suffering within a five-mile radius. Then I take all the necessary steps to alleviate that suffering, even if it means staying awake for nights on end or working myself to the bone.
I clearly recall saving an injured bunny rabbit when I was seven years old. I found the wounded bunny on the playground at school. My first instinct was to carry the rabbit home, gently, in the safe and plush fabric of my lunchbag. Then I brough the bunny to the vet for immediate medical attention.
When I was nine, I wrote a guest editorial in the local newspaper (I grew up in the Chicagoland area, in a town called Glenview) listing all nearby animal rescues in need of donations, should any youngsters have extra money to spare from birthdays or recent holiday gifts.
It never really occurred to me to do anything other than help out wherever I could, whether that meant assisting animals or humans. The thing is, most folks seem to be deeply interested in personal gain, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s great to strive for bigger, better, more ambitious goals. It is wonderful to challenge ourselves, reaching for impressive new goals, and expand our horizons. But, for me, the motivation was different. I always accepted a fresh new challenge with the underlying intent to help others through its completion.
Throughout middle school and high school, I tutored my peers in all subjects four to five days per week. I stayed late after school, trying my best to explain lessons they were struggling to understand. My parents are both educators, so I suppose I was born to appreciate academia! I loved my classes, which made me quite nerdy. But I was a compassionate nerd, eager to help my classmates. At my twentieth high school reunion last year, a beautiful and brilliant friend of mine named Sheena reminded me of the time I rode four miles on my bike to deliver her missed assignments when she was out sick from school for a week. I had forgotten that incident! But it definitely sounds like me. I think finding ways to help others is a source of fuel for my soul. It is my sustenance. My internal batteries are charged through acts of service.
Fast-forward to college, where I created and launched a brand-new mentorship program linking University of Florida students to disadvantaged students in the nearby elementary school. I received the Member of the Year award for my university’s philanthropy club, and went on to complete two years of full-time service with AmeriCorps (the domestic version of the Peace Corps). I built houses in conjunction with homeless families. I also prepped adolescents for their next chapter of life by tutoring high school dropouts, to help them pass their GED exam so they could pursue higher education or more advanced work opportunities. 90% of my students passed the exam that year, which was astonishing and really impressive.
My main areas of concern are animal rescue and basic human rights. I have watched this nation become increasingly divisive and hateful over the past few years. Sure, there was always bigotry brewing right below the surface, and ethnic minorities as well as the LGBTQ+ community were often subject to its wrath. But it feels as though hate was given a special platform on which to thrive. Since 2016, I have seen the harm caused to those who are most vulnerable. Violence has been inflicted on ethnic minorities for no reason other than the color of their skin, and these injuries are more public than ever, thanks to modern technology and cell phone footage. Yet I haven’t seen a huge societal shift toward equality, not yet anyway. It seems many politicians and subsets of society are more determined than ever to deny racism’s existence. Here in Florida, teachers are no longer allowed to present American history. They have to adhere to a strict set of standards and intentionally ignore any topics involving racial injustice. It’s frightening that repressive, power-hungry politicians are so thirsty for support that they are wiling to pander to society’s most extreme white supremacists. Frankly, it scares the hell out of me. My newest novel, Mid-Flight, addresses racial injustice in no uncertain terms. I wanted to remind the world that there are consequences to this type of unacceptable discrimination and marginalization. My fictional novel intends to serve as a warning and a reminder that action is needed from each one of us, within our own individual spheres, if we hope to attain the equality and dignity which has—shamefully!—been denied to people of color.
I also noticed blatant attacks on women and the LGBTQ+ community. This is another theme of my newly-released novel, Mid-Flight. When Texas cracked down on women’s rights, restricting medical care and basic autonomy for women, I stepped into action, Quickly. My social work clients and those I had met through my nonprofit work were suffering so much. Women who were raped, harassed, and threatened were suddenly denied the right to control their own bodies. It was a slap in the face after already enduring unspeakable trauma, and I could not watch these individuals suffer immensely at the hands of misogynistic politicians and narrow-minded extremists. So I launched my own project, with the help of a fellow social worker. We created a website providing information and resources to women who no longer had any access to medical care. We shared transportation networks, contact information, and helpful tips to those whose rights had been stripped overnight. In addition, I threw myself into every volunteer opportunity offered by Planned Parenthood. I spent hours making care kits for men and women in low-income communities. I met with leaders to discuss ways we could expand our reach and help even more women. I hit the ground running, long before that egregious decision was announced by the Supreme Court in June of 2022.
Believe it or not, between writing books and pursuing my master’s degree and working as a flight attendant and fighting for human rights, I also immersed myself in the world of animal rescue. I began fostering homeless pets during the pandemic. Over the course of three years, I fostered 29 cats, two dogs, two birds, and a bunny. I am happy to report they all went to safe homes where they are currently living their best lives! In addition, I became a leader on my airline’s animal rescue team, SWATT, earlier this year. SWATT is a group of airline employees who use our travel benefits to fly rescued dogs and cats all around the country, to their new homes. The program is fully volunteer. It is so heartwarming to transport a rescued pet to its new family; I cry every single time! I can’t help it. It’s just so sweet to greet the new family and witness their eagerness to welcome this adorable furbaby into their home.
I believe this is a crucial moment in history. Every generation receives opportunities to protect those in need, but this present moment (right here and now, in each of our lives) feels like a critical turning point. We have witnessed incredible steps toward acceptance and compassion. Animal cruelty is now a felony here in America, and it’s about time! The bill passed unanimously in the Senate. There is a movement toward preserving our planet and ensuring ethical, sustainable harvesting of natural resources. Same-sex marriage and interracial marriage have finally been codified into law, after weighty opposition from those who stood to benefit from hate-fueled discrimination.
Yet there is so much work to be done. And I am eager to tout the importance of taking a stand in favor of compassion. In the animal rescue world, I constantly see animals who are tortured and killed. With a shattered heart, I continue my pursuit of rescuing as many homeless pets as possible.
And I know women, ethnic minorities, many within the LGBTQ+ community (especially trans individuals) who still cannot receive access to basic human rights, including medical care. I have watched my patients and friend suffer from re-traumatization of crimes committed against them. When those in power deny resources to the individuals who need it most, we all need to speak up. The responsibility rests on our shoulders to voice our concerns loudly, publicly, and without ceasing. We also need to roll up our sleeves and get to work. Through my novels, my work with nonprofits, and my actions within the community, that’s exactly what I intend to do.
BIO
Lisa Wilkes is an American flight attendant, animal rescuer, and author. She has spent 13 years as a flight attendant, jetting across the globe and collecting inspiration for her writings. Her debut novel, Flight Path, is a fast-paced romance laced with serendipitous encounters.
In 2022, Lisa earned her Master’s in Social Work from the University of Texas at Arlington. While in graduate school, she interned as a community liaison. Lisa also completed an eight-month apprenticeship in the Behavioral Health Unit of a hospital, assisting patients in outpatient treatment programs. In addition, she has written web content for multiple nonprofit organizations and recently joined the leadership board for a national aviation-themed animal rescue group. Lisa continues to serve as a powerful advocate for the LGBTQ+ community and women’s rights organizations across the country.
In her second novel, Mid-Flight, Lisa transports readers to the year 2038. A flight attendant uncovers a political ploy to decimate one-fifth of the population. To combat this sinister plan, she must risk everything. Including her breathtaking new romance.
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Their Story Matters with Sara Troy and her guest Kimberly Butler, on air from March 27th.
I first heard Kimberly when she was a guest speaker on Deb Drummonds Show Up, Stand Up and Speak up event, (next one April 8th) Kimberly blew me away, but more than that, I felt I heard her from the core of who she is, and of cause I had to interview her.
On this show which is long because we covered so much, we discuss her journey from an orphanage to opening up the biggest doors in the world as a photographer. Her experiences with stars, politicians and Barbara Walters (she was her personal photographer) and the trust they had in her.
We speak about her memoir, the books to come, and her linage which goes back one thousand years, related to royalty, presidents and leaders. Her life has know many struggles, seized opportunities and with a determination to succeed her way, from the very core of her being.
Photojournalist and celebrity photographer Kimberly Butler has published her first book, “The Art of Fear: A Photographic Memoir”, an epic poem featuring 34 exquisite yet disturbing images – without using Photoshop — where she faces her fears to reveal the childhood trauma she experienced when, at 8 years old, she was removed from her home and placed in Ottilie Orphan Home in Jamaica, New York. The young woman posing in the photographs wearing a gas mask – a metaphor for the protective walls Butler built around her life – is her own daughter, Caitlin, whom she adopted from a Lithuanian orphanage – coincidentally – at the age of 8 years old.
“I wanted to share my journey to help others,” says the award-winning photographer. “Those who are born into circumstances that make life even more difficult than it already is — whether due to dysfunctional childhoods or personal demons. And, of course,” Butler adds, “this turns out to be just about everyone to some degree or another.”
The locations for the photographs in this 104-page softcover book include a collapsed abandoned building, a deserted icy beach during winter, and an empty church and cemetery – each representing the loneliness, isolation, and fear she fought to overcome by using masks to cloak feelings of shame and worthlessness.
“The Art of Fear: A Photographic Memoir” features a foreword by award-winning novelistNeil Gaiman, whom Butler includes in her memoir among the photographs of her daughter. He describes it this way: “Kim produced several gallons of paint, and had me put my hands into the paint, and took photographs of me making marks on the paper floor; and photos of me just watching my hands drip. By the end of that shoot I trusted her completely. And in some odd way, she trusted me.”
Of the collection of photos in “The Art of Fear,” Gaiman writes, “It was stranger, more poetic, at once beautiful and in-your-face, futuristic and old. They seemed like messages from a future in which the air was harder to breathe, in which we were struggling to live in the world we had made…She says I’m her muse, but all I ever do is tell her how beautiful and strange her pictures are, and how hard it is for me to get them out of my head…There is nobody like Kimberly Butler.”
Kimberly Butler has photographed hundreds ofcelebritiesand world leaders including five U.S. presidents. Her credits include covers of New York Times best sellers andgallery shoots for major broadcast networks. She was also a regular contributor to PEOPLE magazine for more than a decade. Butler has traveled extensively in theMiddle Eastand the former Soviet Union as a photojournalist and documentary filmmaker inJordan, Jerusalem, Gaza, and Chechnya. For the past two decades she has been the creative force behind the American Library Association’s CelebrityREADposter series, exhibited nationwide in public schools and libraries. In 2018 she exhibited her photographic series on banned books in NY called “CENSORED.” Butler is a native New Yorker and lives in Manhattan.
Please reach out to Kimberly in person for her book.
All of our shows/interviews are done by donation, if you enjoyed this show please support us here with either a one-time donation or subscribe and support, thank you. and please support Our Forgotten Children’s anthology and help to bring this book into production.
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