This reality hit home for Gwinnett County residents Wendy and Wendell Weaver.

From socializing with their friends and family to cruise vacations, the couple would revolve their life around eating, causing their combined weight total to escalate up to 981 pounds.

It wasn’t until Wendell was diagnosed in 2012 with Sarcoidosis and his weight had increased to 471 pounds, that he sought the help of Dacula Fitness owner and personal trainer Scott Green.

Weaver says, “That was probably one of the most humbling days of my life, my first day in this gym. I knew I was bad. I knew I was out of shape, I mean I’ve always been pretty athletic my whole life and I slowly, slowly went down this journey where I was getting worse and worse. I don’t think I realized how bad I was.”

Dacula Fitness owner and personal trainer Scott Green has known the Weavers for many years and was acquainted with their health and weight struggles. Green says, “You can change a person’s body, but if you don’t change their way of thinking, they will go right back into it. And that’s what I wanted to do with Wendell.”

Although the first 100 pounds came off relatively quickly and Wendell’s health continually improved, Weaver still experienced an ongoing battle each week to continue his progress to lose weight. He says, “After the first 100 pounds, it got a litter tougher. Actually, it got a lot tougher. I don’t think I lost but a pound or two the next month even though I was putting in all the work.”

But it was Weaver’s disciplined work and determination that became increasingly important in later months when Wendy was faced with her own personal health crisis.

As her violet-blue eyes glistened with tears, Wendy said her personal wake-up call came when she was hospitalized for a severe bacterial infection.

She says, “I was in the hospital and I had a severe bacteria in my body, they had told me that I was so overweight that they could not weigh me on a regular scale and they had to take me downstairs and take me out of the hospital and Wendell, my husband, couldn’t go with me. And they had to take me outside where the hospital brings in stock. Five security guards took me down there. And at that point in my life, at that moment, I knew that I had to make a change. …they weighed me and we went back upstairs and it was 510 pounds.”

It was then that Wendy decided to join Wendell at Dacula Fitness with personal trainer Scott Green. Green says the first step to living a healthier life is to “first forgive yourself, because there are no quick fixes with weight loss.”

The Weavers say making smarter decisions in their food choices came naturally as they progressed with their training regime with Green. Wendell says that his new goal today is to inspire others to take the first step in their personal journey to living a healthier life.

It has been a year since the Weavers began their difficult and courageous journey to a new and sustaining healthier life. A month after our interview in April, Wendell reached his goal weight 200 pounds and Wendy is currently at 205!

In addition to the Weaver’s new found healthier way of life their inspirational journey has encouraged family and friends to join them in the gym to achieve their own personal health goals.

Warning, you will be moved to tears as you listen to their incredible personal journey together, so have tissues prepared.  Click here to listen to the podcast.

From success to significance, from the courage to teach, to the courage to lead, Kennesaw State University President emeritus, Betty Fae Siegel PhD., is an educational trail blazer who leads by example.

Holding the record as the longest serving woman president of a public university in the nation; from 1981 until 2006, Siegel served as the first woman to head an institution in the 35-unit University System of Georgia.

Written on the hearts of the students she led for twenty-five years, Siegel’s over thirty years of academic and world leadership stems from her quintessential embodiment of what she teaches about character education.

The daughter of a coal miner, Siegel grew up in Harland County Kentucky during the depression. As she gleaned wisdom beyond her youth through observing and later patterning her life after her Appalachian family Siegel says, “When I grew up I was surrounded by people who appeared heroic to me. And I learned so much from family and the importance of family in my life.”

For Siegel, understanding not only your family history but the core of what makes you who you are, is what truly builds the foundational principles of your character and compassion for others.

On a visit to Ireland to give a speech on “Ethical Leadership” at the University of Ulster, Siegel, upon meeting John Hume, winner of the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize, asked her who she owed her Scottish-Irish ancestry to?  Siegel says, “The only thing I could think of was a statement from my grandmother, the saint that she was, when she meant to honor someone she would say of them, ‘They are not sorry people.’” Siegel says Hume understood what her grandmother meant by this statement.

This as she says “is a very high compliment to a mountain born person. You don’t come from sorry stock! … So I’m proud of my mountain roots.”

Stemming from the cornerstone of respect, trust, optimism, intentionality, and service Siegel says character education has the potential to reach those outside of the institutional walls of public and private universities and colleges, an onto a global landscape of democratic leadership in action.

After 911 Kennesaw State University placed a 32 ton Remembrance Rock on the campus which encourages each student to ask these questions throughout their life.

• Who am I?
• Where do I come from?
• Where am I going?
• What is the meaning?
• How do I matter?
• What is my legacy?
• Whose am I, and whom do I belong?
• To what do I testify?
• Am I fulfilling my purpose and passion for life?

In her book, co-written with Dr. William J. Purkey, Becoming an Invitational Leader: A New Approach to Professional and Personal Success, Siegel writes, “Instead of seeking to control others, an invitational leader seeks to cooperate with others. Instead of trying to emphasize the divide between leader and follower, the invitational leader sees others as his or her associates.”

Truly words to learn and live by. To listen to our delightful and enlightening conversation click here for the podcast.

But, undeterred by being given a terminal diagnosis by her doctor, Eve, her husband Michael and her parents Andy and Carolyn Bralley, sought out a place for her to heal and look towards the future. For Eve and her family this meant finding a place of tranquility and connection to nature.

Cook says, “In my mind and in my husband’s mind we’ve always wanted to move to the mountains and we’ve always wanted to have a place where people can gather and retreat and have community.”

While Eve was battling refractory Hodgkin’s lymphoma, the Bralley’s purchased 216 acres of Landsong, in Sautee, GA. Her parents later set aside 70 acres where they built the Elohee Retreat Center.

As a unit the Bralley’s and Cook’s discovered that deep healing involves the entire family being so intertwined by love that one person’s life inevitably affects all others.   Additionally as a family they felt they were uniquely prepared for dealing with this life threatening illness.

The family came to this conclusion as a result of Eve’s PhD in Pharmacology emphasizing on nutraceuticals involved in inflammation. After graduation she worked at her parent’s company as a consultant to physicians practicing functional medicine.  And with a PhD in Medical Science her father Andy was a leader in the development of cutting edge tests for functional medicine and was on the editorial boards of the journals Alternative Medicine Review and Integrative Medicine.  Coupled to this scientific fluency the family has three generations as well as decades of meditation experience.

As a result, Eve and her family dedicated their first year at Landsong to her healing from the toll the cancer treatments had taken on her frail body.

Cook says, “The land helped us. We would make trails and I would sit by the waterfall. The land supported healing not only for me, but for my family also. And with that whole process all we could think about or talk about was how we could share it with people.”

Today, Elohee, which means earth in Cherokee, is a place where guests may take part in weekend or week-long educational and experiential courses.

Cook says, “My path has been shown to me and I just hope and wish for everyone who comes here to see the healing potential and allow that to bathe them and experience the joy that can come from letting go and saying yes.”

In her candid and heartfelt interview, Elohee Executive Director Eve Cook, PhD, rising like a phoenix from the ashes, discusses the courageous six year journey she and her husband Michael took to find healing and hope in the Appalachian Mountains of Northeast Georgia.

You can listen to the podcast of Eve’s inspiring journey here.

A week later Billy (as he prefers to be called) and I sat down for an interview where he reflected on the changing scope of newspaper journalism and why local community papers have survived in their respective regions.

Although he and his wife Patty have lived in Toccoa, GA for over 42 years, Billy was born and raised in southwest Pelham, GA where his father was the owner and editor of the community paper and his mother was a fifth grade school teacher.

Chism says when remembering his mother’s influence on his life, “I guess that’s where I get my love of education. I remember sitting at the dinner table every night and my mother and father would discuss the issues of the day, and they would ask my opinion and I would join in and that’s probably where I get my love of community.”

As the WCN editor Chism says his desire was always to keep the stories interesting and local. He says, “If something is not interesting then why even put it in the paper? It doesn’t have to be big or momentous, even if it’s just a tiny tidbit.”

Although the list is too long for this blog to elaborate on the retired WCN editor, what will be remembered by the residents in White, Habersham and Lumpkin counties is Billy’s sincere since of community spirit and the way he always elevated and encouraged everyone he met. But the most memorable of all will be his words of wisdom from his column Down the Chism Trail!

In the Thursday, August 25, 2016 edition Billy entitled his most favorite column, These Things I Believe. I asked him to read this column to the WPPR listeners and listed below are his five points.

1) Our world is a sacred place. 2) Lift people up; don’t tear them down. 3) Peace is harder than war, but we can help bring about peace. 4) The real economy is more than dollars and cents. 5) We are ALL stories. The Community Life in Northeast Georgia podcast interview is here.