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Sentinal 3-9-07: Chad & Libby Kennard -
Couple share a passion for elderly people
New exhibit at Mesa County Library chides gay people, says divorce a sin
Student overcomes illness, problems to graduate early
By ERIK LINCOLN The Daily Sentinel
Monday, January 08, 2007
Despite facing numerous challenges in making it through high school, one
Grand Junction teenager persevered, graduated early and will begin
attending college this month.Autumn Brown, 17, spent eight months during her
freshman and sophomore years at Grand Junction High School with a cyst on her
ovary, a painful and debilitating condition known as endometriosis.
She said she was in school about twice a week and felt as though her teachers
didn't believe what she was telling them."I basically got my homework and left,"
Brown said. "People treated me like I was lying and like nothing was really
wrong with me." Her grades suffered from not being in class full-time, and
classes where attendance was necessary, such as a science lab, couldn't be made
up.It took eight appointments and five doctors to finally diagnose Brown's
condition, she said.
"I'd have to work really hard at getting (my grades) up again, and then I'd
get sick again and not be able to go to class," Brown said. "I just decided that
I couldn't handle it anymore."
When she and her mom, Vivienne Brown, went to interview to enroll her at R-5
High School, Autumn Brown immediately saw a difference in the school and her
attitude toward it. She said she "didn't exactly like"
Grand Junction High. "There's too many kids in the class; the teachers
didn't really know you. It was very impersonal, and if something happened, they
honestly didn't really care."
After Brown started school at R-5 during the second semester of her junior
year, her mom and grandma, Shirley O'Brien, saw an immediate change. "She
was happy to go and happy coming out," O'Brien said. The teachers at R-5
know her by name and care about her, Brown said. "If something's wrong,
they always try to talk to you," she said.
R-5 teacher and work coordinator Al Kreinberg said Brown knows one of the
keys to success: not letting anybody get in your way. "Instead of feeling
sorry for herself, she went after it, transferred to R-5 and made up for the
time she missed," Kreinberg said. Kreinberg said Brown had been extremely
active in the R-5 community and said she will be an asset to the rest of the
community now that she has graduated. "I'm really looking forward to
seeing what she'll be doing in the future," Kreinberg said.
Brown said the support of her mom and grandmother was important to get her
through her first two years of high school. "My mom was there for me for
everything," Brown said. "When I wasn't going to school, she would pick up my
homework." On Nov. 17, Brown graduated early from R-5, and she is now
enrolled in a medical preparation course at Western Colorado Community College.
She plans to enroll at Mesa State College full-time, where she hopes to earn an
associate's degree in radiology. Her interest in radiology came from her
love of photography and talking to people.
"I really like different types of people, and I love listening to their
stories," Brown said. She volunteered at Community Hospital for two days a
week for five years and worked in every department. While in the
nursing department, Brown said she became emotionally attached to a patient.
For two months, Brown spoke with the woman and brought her books until the woman
died. "That's basically when I decided I couldn't be a nurse," Brown
said. "They have 12-hour shifts, three times a week, and I only saw
her for four hours, two times a week."
Brown said radiology will offer her the chance to hear patients' stories but
in a shorter period. "You see them for an hour, and then they're out,"
Brown said. Brown said she always has been a self-motivated person, and
her family knows she's on a course for success. Brown lived with her
grandmother for a month before her family moved to
Grand Junction, and O'Brien enrolled her into kindergarten. "I told
everyone she was 5 going on 30," O'Brien said.
Whatever Brown wants to do, her mom knows she'll work at it until she does
it. "She's always had plans, ever since she was little," Vivienne
Brown said. "We always knew that whatever she said she was going to do,
she was going to accomplish."
By BOBBY MAGILL
The Daily Sentinel
Do you want God's protection?
If you're gay and you want to marry your same-sex partner, well, God
apparently has better people to protect, according to a strongly worded new
display in the Mesa County Library posted by a group called Christians for
Healthy Families.
The group posted the display on the library's public exhibit wall in the
building's rear stairwell in response to a pro-gay-marriage photography
exhibit called "Love Makes a Family," which appeared on the wall last August.
Anyone who wants to post a display can get a permit from the library and
exhibit their display for a month.
Christians for Healthy Families' exhibit compares marriage to a bowl that's
filled with blue paint, representing a man, and pink paint, representing a
woman. When mingled in the bowl, the paints turn purple, showing that a man
and a woman become "one" when they're married, the display says.
But when two paints of the same color mingle, nothing happens, and because
they have no choice but to mingle outside the bowl, well, it makes "a big
mess."
"Do you want God's protection?" the display asks. "Call on God today. Your
eternity depends on it."
The display also criticizes divorce as being sinful.
"I got the idea after the homosexual display in" August, said Carol Anderson,
a divorcee who said she made up the name of her group when filling out the
display permit application. "They had a pro-homosexual display at the library,
which I didn't feel was appropriate because I'm a Christian."
"Thank goodness free speech goes both ways," she said.
"Love Makes a Family" was a traveling rental exhibit sponsored in part by
Western Equality, a Grand Junction gay rights advocacy group, and featured
photographs of same-sex families meant to combat homophobia and "open minds
and open hearts," display sponsor Jeff Basinger said in August.
When Anderson saw "Love Makes a Family," she said she felt "disgusted."
"I remember one (photograph) said that this child was saying they were lucky
to have two mommies, but obviously it takes one male and one female to create
a child," Anderson said, adding she hopes her display will "touch people's
hearts."
Basinger said he was equally disgusted by Anderson's display Friday.
"The content is offensive to me while recognizing that they deeply believe in
what they're putting out there," he said. "It's alienating and offensive to
single parents, to divorced individuals, obviously to gays and lesbians. To
me, it is fueling ideological conflict rather than creating a conversation."
Few library patrons were paying attention to Anderson's display Friday
afternoon. Most patrons the Sentinel talked to said they hadn't read it, but
one who did declined to give his name, saying the display is "pretty cool."
Shana Wade, the library's public services director, said the library has
received "a few" comments from people who disagree with the display.
"Most people understand we're not sponsoring it," she said. Groups posting
controversial displays "just want to be heard. That's why we have this place."
Shari Daly-Miller, a local
artist and president of Western Equality, said she applauds the library for
encouraging a discussion on the issue.
"As an artist, I see that the creator gave us all the colors of the spectrum,"
she said. "A rainbow of diversity makes the world beautiful."
But, she said, "Gay, bisexual, lesbian and transgender families already exist.
You may not care for a particular color, so don't put it in your painting, but
it's not going away."
She said a lot of gay people in
Grand Junction are Christians, and many of them believe that "Jesus
told us to love one another, and that until you can live up to Jesus, you
don't have a lot of room to criticize other people."
Anderson said gay people know they're wrong.
If there's one thing they should do after reading her display, it's this, she
said: "They know it's not the way they were created. Pray. Read their Bible.
Talk to me."
_________________________________________
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Grand Valley
