Tracie Hawlett called home at her curfew time, about 11:30 Saturday night, to tell her mother she and a friend were lost in Ozark on the way home from a party in Headland. The next word her parents heard was the tragic news that they had been found dead on an Ozark roadside.
Witnesses said Hawlett's late-model Mazda 929 was found about 30 yards from the Herring Street-James Street intersection in downtown Ozark, just five blocks from the Dale County Jail, Sunday afternoon.
Sources near the scene said both the bodies of Hawlett and her friend, fellow Northview High School senior J.B. Beasley, were found in the trunk of the car, but the Ozark Police Department was not releasing any information about the crime on Sunday.
Investigators from both the Ozark and Dothan Police Departments, the Alabama Bureau of Investigation and the Dale County Sheriff's Department were on the scene.
Both were 17-year-old students at Northview High School, where on Tuesday they would have begun their senior year at Northview. Instead, their classmates begin the year facing yet another tragedy.
The victims were the third and fourth Northview students to die tragically in the past year. Fifteen-year-old Anthony Bryan is charged with the Feb. 26 murder of his older brother, John David, and the non-fatal shooting of his mother, Paula Bryan. Both brothers were also Northview students.
Adam Gay, a tight end for the Northview Cougars football team, died from injuries sustained in an automobile accident earlier this summer.
When students report to school Tuesday, they will have counseling available if needed, said John Michael Hornsby, Dothan City Schools manager of grants and public information.
"If students need it, we'll provide it," Hornsby said. "You always wonder why something like this happens. All we can do at this point is offer our prayers and support for friends and family."
Darlene Dezso, a therapist with Brightleaf Counseling and Recovery, said the girls' friends and classmates will need time to talk about their feelings of grief and loss. There may even be some guilt and fear, she said.
"They're going to need trauma in-briefing, because they're going to have tremendous shock on top of the impact of the trauma," Dezso said. "They need to keep talking about it with someone who can help de-brief them and separate them from what's happened, how they feel, what they're thinking and how to externalize that.
"It's so much different than your normal grief, although they have to deal with that, too."
Dezso said parents and teachers should look for signs of depression, anxiety, sadness, not being able to function normally, not being able to concentrate, isolation, fear of what's going to happen to them and even survivor guilt.
Within 20 minutes after hearing the latest distressing news Sunday night, Northview band director Tim Gilley was still trying to make sense of the tragedy. Hawlett was a second-year majorette at Northview.
"Of course, your first thoughts go out to the family and what they're going through, their feelings about the tragedy and the loss," Gilley said.
"When you think about tragedies we've suffered at the school in the past, you think it will definitely hit home with our students."
Gilley did not know Beasley, but remembers Hawlett as an "extremely pleasant girl.
"She always had a smile. She had a great sense of humor and was very fun to be around. I think all the students really liked her because of that. I never knew her to be in a bad mood.
"She always seemed happy to see you."
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Thursday, May 22, 2014
Sunday, May 18, 2014
Nature's Day of Reckoning
When hurricane forecasters first named Hurricane Opal, it was basically a formality in the second-most active hurricane season in history. Opal seemed like just another weak, underdeveloped late-season storm.
But on the night of Oct. 4, 1995, Hurricane Opal cut a wide swath of destruction in the Wiregrass, pounding the area for more than five hours with winds in excess of 80 mph, before heading north and causing more than $200 million of damage in Alabama alone.
The more than $2 billion of damage Hurricane Opal left in Alabama and Florida made it the third most costly hurricane in history, behind Andrew in 1992 and Hugo in 1989.
Today, The Dothan Eagle remembers the impact the hurricane made on the Wiregrass during the first week of October 1995.
The first week of October 1995 began like any other autumn week in the Wiregrass.
The announcement of the O.J. Simpson Trial verdict on Tuesday, Oct. 3 competed for some of the usual fall conversation with football, festivals, and school. But mostly, people were just busy with their own lives.
Jim Dennis and his wife were anticipating the birth of their first child and Lenard Windham was trying to help organize Ozark's first rodeo scheduled for the weekend.
A Dothan country radio station was gearing up for Wednesday night's Country Music Association Awards. Jeffrey and Paige Dulac had just remodeled their kitchen.
No one gave much thought to the storm making its way through the Gulf of Mexico and quietly mustering unprecedented strength.
By Tuesday afternoon, Hurricane Opal had taken precedence over everything, rudely changing thoughts, schedules and plans a day before its 80-plus mph winds, altered area buildings and landscape, turning the week upside down for Mrs. Dulac and everyone else.
"I was hearing reports the storm was going to hit, and I felt kind of silly because I had never experienced anything like this," Mrs. Dulac said.
"I told our cleaning lady I had to run to the store because I needed more ice and things like that, and I came back and really felt foolish."
Literally overnight, the hurricane had picked up its forward speed in the Gulf of Mexico and dramatically dropped its barometric pressure.
The drama began Tuesday as the storm continued its path toward the Florida Panhandle.
Wiregrass American Red Cross chapter director Mary Turner calls her volunteers.
At Flowers Hospital, Randy Taylor checks the parking lot to remove any loose objects that could become flying debris, while Dennis does the same at Extendicare Health Center.
The Extendicare assistant administrator has other concerns: his wife is eight months, three weeks pregnant and her doctor tells the couple that the drop in barometric pressure that accompanies a hurricane can sometimes cause premature labor. Kaitlyn Dennis is born nine days after the hurricane on Oct. 13, a day after her parents attended Bob Dylan's hurricane relief concert in the Dothan Civic Center.
Meanwhile, Windham makes storm preparations on his 2,500-acre Skipperville farm. He feeds the cattle early in the day, so they will be on safer ground among the trees during the storm. He also puts all loose objects in the barns and nails down the roofs of his chicken houses.
The real fun begins in Wednesday's early morning hours when a 1:45 a.m. telephone call interrupts Mrs. Turner's sleep, summoning her, disaster services director Irene Hearn and other officials to a meeting at Dothan-Houston County Emergency Management Agency at 2 a.m.
At 8, the first shelter in the area opens at Westgate Recreation Center and the first evacuees begin arriving at 11.
At 9, Hot Country 96.9, which one day earlier had been planning a major promotional contest in conjunction with Wednesday night's Country Music Awards, begins broadcasting hurricane updates every 15 minutes.
By early afternoon, store shelves begin to empty as residents were snatching all the fresh water, batteries and other supplies needed to ride out the storm. Lines of cars are on the highways, especially U.S. 231 South, and at gas pumps.
Emergency rooms are busy during the day, treating accident victims trying to get as far north as possible ahead of the storm. Hospital activity decreases as the hurricane draws closer, said Janie Powell, Marilyn McKissack and Jennifer Johnson, patient care services director, emergency room manager and manager of labor and delivery, respectively.
Meanwhile, the weather had deteriorated. A tornado touches down in Cottonwood and another funnel cloud is spotted near Daleville at Cairns Army Airfield.
At 3 p.m., 96.9 plays its last record and begins wall-to-wall hurricane coverage.
A second shelter opens at 4 p.m. at the Dothan Civic Center. The city's two main shelters - the civic center and Westgate - sheltered more than 700 people that night.
The eye of Hurricane Opal hits Hurlburt Field, near Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., at 5 p.m., packing wind gusts of up to 144 mph. The storm still has much of that punch when it hits the Wiregrass.
By 7 p.m., Opal knocks out electrical power in the area and begins a five-hour assault on the Wiregrass with winds in excess of 80 mph.
In downtown Dothan, as power is interrupted across the Wiregrass, The Dothan Eagle's presses start printing Thursday morning's edition - some five hours earlier than normal in an effort to beat the possible power outage. As the winds and rain pound the area, the newspaper is able to successfully complete its entire press run and newspapers are delivered with few delays across the area as residents survey the damage at sunrise.
Not long after the heaviest winds hit the area, the Dulacs lose one of their two trees at their Girard Avenue home in Dothan. Later that night, they find an oak tree had crashed on top of their carport.
In Headland, a tornado dropped a pecan tree on Dennis Daughtry's mobile home while he's sleeping in the back bedroom about 8:30 p.m. He rushed outside to disconnect his electricity, gas and water and rode out the rest of the storm at a neighbor's home. For months after the hurricane, Daughtry would live in a tent while awaiting FEMA assistance.
During the worst of the storm, the only connection to the outside world is the radio and only two stations were able to continue broadcasting throughout the night. WDJR uses the services of Tom Nebel (then at WTVY and now the station's general manager) and begins taking calls from residents throughout the Wiregrass reporting conditions and damage in their area.
"I'm in Dothan," one of the station's more than 500 callers that night tells WDJR's Jerry Broadway and Mitch English. "It's raining really hard. The wind is blowing. There are trees down. I can tell the power lines are down."
After WTVY was knocked off the air for what is believed to be the first time in the station's 40-year history, Nebel started doing full-time breaks with WDJR. After 7:30 p.m., he remained on the line for the next five hours.
Three or four times during the night, Broadway braves the winds to re-fuel WDJR's generator.
"You haven't lived until you've poured gas in a generator with the wind blowing 90 mph," Broadway said. "But it was scary enough just being in here listening to the wind howl and when our heavy, metal back door blew off between 10-11, it sounded like someone had fired a shotgun at the end of the hall. I thought the roof had caved in on us.
"It was the longest night I've ever spent with the exception of the night my first child was born. It was just a wild night. I'm glad I had the opportunity to do it and I hope I never have the opportunity again."
The next day, crews are busy on the streets with clean-up as residents do the same at their homes. There is little damage to Windham's and wife Bonn's home.
His farm is another story. When he inspects the damage at 4 a.m., following the hurricane, Windham finds one of his 300 cows has been killed, along with almost 2,000 of his 9,000 chickens. There was damage to the roofs of all 10 of his chicken houses. Windham later found a hay barn had been blown into the highway.
"That night, sitting at the house listening to the wind, I had absolutely no idea it was that bad," Windham said. "We had hardly a limb fall out of our pecan trees there. But everywhere else, it was just devastating."
In the shelters, people no longer in fear for their lives now turn their anxieties toward their homes and loved ones.
It was now a matter of cleaning up the damage and trying to get life back to normal. High school football games were played that Friday night and Ozark held its jamboree and rodeo that weekend.
But on the night of Oct. 4, 1995, Hurricane Opal cut a wide swath of destruction in the Wiregrass, pounding the area for more than five hours with winds in excess of 80 mph, before heading north and causing more than $200 million of damage in Alabama alone.
The more than $2 billion of damage Hurricane Opal left in Alabama and Florida made it the third most costly hurricane in history, behind Andrew in 1992 and Hugo in 1989.
Today, The Dothan Eagle remembers the impact the hurricane made on the Wiregrass during the first week of October 1995.
The first week of October 1995 began like any other autumn week in the Wiregrass.
The announcement of the O.J. Simpson Trial verdict on Tuesday, Oct. 3 competed for some of the usual fall conversation with football, festivals, and school. But mostly, people were just busy with their own lives.
Jim Dennis and his wife were anticipating the birth of their first child and Lenard Windham was trying to help organize Ozark's first rodeo scheduled for the weekend.
A Dothan country radio station was gearing up for Wednesday night's Country Music Association Awards. Jeffrey and Paige Dulac had just remodeled their kitchen.
No one gave much thought to the storm making its way through the Gulf of Mexico and quietly mustering unprecedented strength.
By Tuesday afternoon, Hurricane Opal had taken precedence over everything, rudely changing thoughts, schedules and plans a day before its 80-plus mph winds, altered area buildings and landscape, turning the week upside down for Mrs. Dulac and everyone else.
"I was hearing reports the storm was going to hit, and I felt kind of silly because I had never experienced anything like this," Mrs. Dulac said.
"I told our cleaning lady I had to run to the store because I needed more ice and things like that, and I came back and really felt foolish."
Literally overnight, the hurricane had picked up its forward speed in the Gulf of Mexico and dramatically dropped its barometric pressure.
The drama began Tuesday as the storm continued its path toward the Florida Panhandle.
Wiregrass American Red Cross chapter director Mary Turner calls her volunteers.
At Flowers Hospital, Randy Taylor checks the parking lot to remove any loose objects that could become flying debris, while Dennis does the same at Extendicare Health Center.
The Extendicare assistant administrator has other concerns: his wife is eight months, three weeks pregnant and her doctor tells the couple that the drop in barometric pressure that accompanies a hurricane can sometimes cause premature labor. Kaitlyn Dennis is born nine days after the hurricane on Oct. 13, a day after her parents attended Bob Dylan's hurricane relief concert in the Dothan Civic Center.
Meanwhile, Windham makes storm preparations on his 2,500-acre Skipperville farm. He feeds the cattle early in the day, so they will be on safer ground among the trees during the storm. He also puts all loose objects in the barns and nails down the roofs of his chicken houses.
The real fun begins in Wednesday's early morning hours when a 1:45 a.m. telephone call interrupts Mrs. Turner's sleep, summoning her, disaster services director Irene Hearn and other officials to a meeting at Dothan-Houston County Emergency Management Agency at 2 a.m.
At 8, the first shelter in the area opens at Westgate Recreation Center and the first evacuees begin arriving at 11.
At 9, Hot Country 96.9, which one day earlier had been planning a major promotional contest in conjunction with Wednesday night's Country Music Awards, begins broadcasting hurricane updates every 15 minutes.
By early afternoon, store shelves begin to empty as residents were snatching all the fresh water, batteries and other supplies needed to ride out the storm. Lines of cars are on the highways, especially U.S. 231 South, and at gas pumps.
Emergency rooms are busy during the day, treating accident victims trying to get as far north as possible ahead of the storm. Hospital activity decreases as the hurricane draws closer, said Janie Powell, Marilyn McKissack and Jennifer Johnson, patient care services director, emergency room manager and manager of labor and delivery, respectively.
Meanwhile, the weather had deteriorated. A tornado touches down in Cottonwood and another funnel cloud is spotted near Daleville at Cairns Army Airfield.
At 3 p.m., 96.9 plays its last record and begins wall-to-wall hurricane coverage.
A second shelter opens at 4 p.m. at the Dothan Civic Center. The city's two main shelters - the civic center and Westgate - sheltered more than 700 people that night.
The eye of Hurricane Opal hits Hurlburt Field, near Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., at 5 p.m., packing wind gusts of up to 144 mph. The storm still has much of that punch when it hits the Wiregrass.
By 7 p.m., Opal knocks out electrical power in the area and begins a five-hour assault on the Wiregrass with winds in excess of 80 mph.
In downtown Dothan, as power is interrupted across the Wiregrass, The Dothan Eagle's presses start printing Thursday morning's edition - some five hours earlier than normal in an effort to beat the possible power outage. As the winds and rain pound the area, the newspaper is able to successfully complete its entire press run and newspapers are delivered with few delays across the area as residents survey the damage at sunrise.
Not long after the heaviest winds hit the area, the Dulacs lose one of their two trees at their Girard Avenue home in Dothan. Later that night, they find an oak tree had crashed on top of their carport.
In Headland, a tornado dropped a pecan tree on Dennis Daughtry's mobile home while he's sleeping in the back bedroom about 8:30 p.m. He rushed outside to disconnect his electricity, gas and water and rode out the rest of the storm at a neighbor's home. For months after the hurricane, Daughtry would live in a tent while awaiting FEMA assistance.
During the worst of the storm, the only connection to the outside world is the radio and only two stations were able to continue broadcasting throughout the night. WDJR uses the services of Tom Nebel (then at WTVY and now the station's general manager) and begins taking calls from residents throughout the Wiregrass reporting conditions and damage in their area.
"I'm in Dothan," one of the station's more than 500 callers that night tells WDJR's Jerry Broadway and Mitch English. "It's raining really hard. The wind is blowing. There are trees down. I can tell the power lines are down."
After WTVY was knocked off the air for what is believed to be the first time in the station's 40-year history, Nebel started doing full-time breaks with WDJR. After 7:30 p.m., he remained on the line for the next five hours.
Three or four times during the night, Broadway braves the winds to re-fuel WDJR's generator.
"You haven't lived until you've poured gas in a generator with the wind blowing 90 mph," Broadway said. "But it was scary enough just being in here listening to the wind howl and when our heavy, metal back door blew off between 10-11, it sounded like someone had fired a shotgun at the end of the hall. I thought the roof had caved in on us.
"It was the longest night I've ever spent with the exception of the night my first child was born. It was just a wild night. I'm glad I had the opportunity to do it and I hope I never have the opportunity again."
The next day, crews are busy on the streets with clean-up as residents do the same at their homes. There is little damage to Windham's and wife Bonn's home.
His farm is another story. When he inspects the damage at 4 a.m., following the hurricane, Windham finds one of his 300 cows has been killed, along with almost 2,000 of his 9,000 chickens. There was damage to the roofs of all 10 of his chicken houses. Windham later found a hay barn had been blown into the highway.
"That night, sitting at the house listening to the wind, I had absolutely no idea it was that bad," Windham said. "We had hardly a limb fall out of our pecan trees there. But everywhere else, it was just devastating."
In the shelters, people no longer in fear for their lives now turn their anxieties toward their homes and loved ones.
It was now a matter of cleaning up the damage and trying to get life back to normal. High school football games were played that Friday night and Ozark held its jamboree and rodeo that weekend.
Two Northview Seniors Found Dead in Car Trunk
Tracie Hawlett called home at her curfew time, about 11:30 Saturday night, to tell her mother she and a friend were lost in Ozark on the way home from a party in Headland. The next word her parents heard was the tragic news that they had been found dead on an Ozark roadside.
Witnesses said Hawlett's late-model Mazda 929 was found about 30 yards from the Herring Street-James Street intersection in downtown Ozark, just five blocks from the Dale County Jail, Sunday afternoon.
Sources near the scene said both the bodies of Hawlett and her friend, fellow Northview High School senior J.B. Beasley, were found in the trunk of the car, but the Ozark Police Department was not releasing any information about the crime on Sunday.
Investigators from both the Ozark and Dothan Police Departments, the Alabama Bureau of Investigation and the Dale County Sheriff's Department were on the scene.
Both were 17-year-old students at Northview High School, where on Tuesday they would have begun their senior year at Northview. Instead, their classmates begin the year facing yet another tragedy.
The victims were the third and fourth Northview students to die tragically in the past year. Fifteen-year-old Anthony Bryan is charged with the Feb. 26 murder of his older brother, John David, and the non-fatal shooting of his mother, Paula Bryan. Both brothers were also Northview students.
Adam Gay, a tight end for the Northview Cougars football team, died from injuries sustained in an automobile accident earlier this summer.
When students report to school Tuesday, they will have counseling available if needed, said John Michael Hornsby, Dothan City Schools manager of grants and public information.
"If students need it, we'll provide it," Hornsby said. "You always wonder why something like this happens. All we can do at this point is offer our prayers and support for friends and family."
Darlene Dezso, a therapist with Brightleaf Counseling and Recovery, said the girls' friends and classmates will need time to talk about their feelings of grief and loss. There may even be some guilt and fear, she said.
"They're going to need trauma in-briefing, because they're going to have tremendous shock on top of the impact of the trauma," Dezso said. "They need to keep talking about it with someone who can help de-brief them and separate them from what's happened, how they feel, what they're thinking and how to externalize that.
"It's so much different than your normal grief, although they have to deal with that, too."
Dezso said parents and teachers should look for signs of depression, anxiety, sadness, not being able to function normally, not being able to concentrate, isolation, fear of what's going to happen to them and even survivor guilt.
Within 20 minutes after hearing the latest distressing news Sunday night, Northview band director Tim Gilley was still trying to make sense of the tragedy. Hawlett was a second-year majorette at Northview.
"Of course, your first thoughts go out to the family and what they're going through, their feelings about the tragedy and the loss," Gilley said.
"When you think about tragedies we've suffered at the school in the past, you think it will definitely hit home with our students."
Gilley did not know Beasley, but remembers Hawlett as an "extremely pleasant girl.
"She always had a smile. She had a great sense of humor and was very fun to be around. I think all the students really liked her because of that. I never knew her to be in a bad mood.
"She always seemed happy to see you."
Witnesses said Hawlett's late-model Mazda 929 was found about 30 yards from the Herring Street-James Street intersection in downtown Ozark, just five blocks from the Dale County Jail, Sunday afternoon.
Sources near the scene said both the bodies of Hawlett and her friend, fellow Northview High School senior J.B. Beasley, were found in the trunk of the car, but the Ozark Police Department was not releasing any information about the crime on Sunday.
Investigators from both the Ozark and Dothan Police Departments, the Alabama Bureau of Investigation and the Dale County Sheriff's Department were on the scene.
Both were 17-year-old students at Northview High School, where on Tuesday they would have begun their senior year at Northview. Instead, their classmates begin the year facing yet another tragedy.
The victims were the third and fourth Northview students to die tragically in the past year. Fifteen-year-old Anthony Bryan is charged with the Feb. 26 murder of his older brother, John David, and the non-fatal shooting of his mother, Paula Bryan. Both brothers were also Northview students.
Adam Gay, a tight end for the Northview Cougars football team, died from injuries sustained in an automobile accident earlier this summer.
When students report to school Tuesday, they will have counseling available if needed, said John Michael Hornsby, Dothan City Schools manager of grants and public information.
"If students need it, we'll provide it," Hornsby said. "You always wonder why something like this happens. All we can do at this point is offer our prayers and support for friends and family."
Darlene Dezso, a therapist with Brightleaf Counseling and Recovery, said the girls' friends and classmates will need time to talk about their feelings of grief and loss. There may even be some guilt and fear, she said.
"They're going to need trauma in-briefing, because they're going to have tremendous shock on top of the impact of the trauma," Dezso said. "They need to keep talking about it with someone who can help de-brief them and separate them from what's happened, how they feel, what they're thinking and how to externalize that.
"It's so much different than your normal grief, although they have to deal with that, too."
Dezso said parents and teachers should look for signs of depression, anxiety, sadness, not being able to function normally, not being able to concentrate, isolation, fear of what's going to happen to them and even survivor guilt.
Within 20 minutes after hearing the latest distressing news Sunday night, Northview band director Tim Gilley was still trying to make sense of the tragedy. Hawlett was a second-year majorette at Northview.
"Of course, your first thoughts go out to the family and what they're going through, their feelings about the tragedy and the loss," Gilley said.
"When you think about tragedies we've suffered at the school in the past, you think it will definitely hit home with our students."
Gilley did not know Beasley, but remembers Hawlett as an "extremely pleasant girl.
"She always had a smile. She had a great sense of humor and was very fun to be around. I think all the students really liked her because of that. I never knew her to be in a bad mood.
"She always seemed happy to see you."
Saturday, May 17, 2014
Wiregrass' Longest Surviving Heart Recipient Loses Her Fight
When thinking of Vicky Love, those closest to her remember the young woman lovingly caressing her miniature Pomeranian B.B., the one who tirelessly spoke out for organ donation, and who enjoyed her last Christmas with her family in Dothan.
And when you think of her many health problems, don’t forget about her courage.
Love, the longest-living heart recipient in the Wiregrass, died in her Dothan home early Thursday morning. She was 38.
Her father Gerald likes to think about that courage and the relationship with his daughter that grew into a close friendship.
“This kid didn’t have a whole lot of fear about her,” he said. “After she got cancer, I told her that her brother Steve said she was the most courageous person he’d ever known.
“She looked at me and said, ‘Daddy, courage is when you go on and do what you know absolutely has to be done without any doubt when you’re absolutely scared to death.’
“And she would do things when she was so scared she’d be shaking, but she’d do it anyhow. Vicky just had tremendous will and faith.”
Visitation is scheduled for 6-9 tonight at Byrd Funeral Home, and the service will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday at the funeral home.
After a seven-year battle with cardiomyopathy, Love received her heart transplant at the age of 25 in Marcy 1985 at Stanford Medical Center in Palo Alto, Calif. Cardiomyopathy is an enlargement of the heart muscle caused by an infection.
Love was initially given a 20 percent chance to live 10 years. She lived almost 14 years, surviving bouts with tumor skin cancer, a ruptured disk, and other problems until she contracted the extremely rare merkle cell cancer. Love was one of only two Alabamians diagnosed with merkle cell.
The longest-living heart transplant recipients at the University of Alabama Medical Center have survived for 17 years, said April Crosswy, a clinical research analyst in the UAB Cardiac Transplant Research Office.
“I’ve known her since she was a child,” said Gloria Stapler, who has worked with Love’s father at Southeast Alabama Youth Services for more than 25 years. “She was always a very happy child – artistic, creative and caring. Even in the midst of all she’s been through, she was such a courageous person and an inspiration to many people.
“I saw her as early as last week at (Flowers Hospital), and she knew it was only a matter of time. But she was talking about heaven and what she would do when she got there, about having a party and the people up there she would invite. That’s what I’m picturing: her having a big party today.”
Teresa Culpepper, a close friend since she met Love in 1991 at Premier Athletic Club, likes to remember some of the many times they just had fun together.
They planned to write a book together, and Culpepper said she still plans to combine her notes with what the poems and other writings Love left behind on her computer.
“We were kind of like partners in crime,” Culpepper said. “I’m an only child, and she was pretty much a sister to me. The first time we were partners in crime, we went down to the beach and talked about girl things, reminisced about when we were kids and wish we had known each other when we were growing up.
“I took her to Birmingham for a biopsy, and doctors suggested that she drink one beer before the biopsy, and we bought some liquor and had a little more fun than what they had requested. It was not hard for them to take that biopsy.
“Anytime we were in the dumps, we’d call each other and hop in the car and start driving.”
Even in the pain of her last days, Love was still thinking of the people she loved. Her father said she asked that her friends be told to get their own lives straightened out, so she’d see them in heaven. Somehow, she found the strength to write one last message on her laptop computer in the last week of her life.
In the past year, Love spent much of her time on the Internet with her home page, “Victoria’s Veil.” On her site, which can be accessed at www.angelfire.com/md/prayerMat, Love left a message that could serve as the legacy of her life when she explained how she came up with the title of her page.
“That I will have fought for what was right and fair, that I will have risked for that which mattered, that I will have given help to those who were in need, and that I will have left the earth a better place for what I’ve done and who I’ve been.
“I truly had the meaning of the veil of love as my heritage name, but also as a veil that God has surrounded and engulfed me in to love, protect, strengthen and guide, also. . . He in His grace and love has carried me when I could not walk and led me when I could not choose.
“Once again, I have been brought to His table and kneel at His feet and ask, ‘Lord, where do I go?’”
And when you think of her many health problems, don’t forget about her courage.
Love, the longest-living heart recipient in the Wiregrass, died in her Dothan home early Thursday morning. She was 38.
Her father Gerald likes to think about that courage and the relationship with his daughter that grew into a close friendship.
“This kid didn’t have a whole lot of fear about her,” he said. “After she got cancer, I told her that her brother Steve said she was the most courageous person he’d ever known.
“She looked at me and said, ‘Daddy, courage is when you go on and do what you know absolutely has to be done without any doubt when you’re absolutely scared to death.’
“And she would do things when she was so scared she’d be shaking, but she’d do it anyhow. Vicky just had tremendous will and faith.”
Visitation is scheduled for 6-9 tonight at Byrd Funeral Home, and the service will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday at the funeral home.
After a seven-year battle with cardiomyopathy, Love received her heart transplant at the age of 25 in Marcy 1985 at Stanford Medical Center in Palo Alto, Calif. Cardiomyopathy is an enlargement of the heart muscle caused by an infection.
Love was initially given a 20 percent chance to live 10 years. She lived almost 14 years, surviving bouts with tumor skin cancer, a ruptured disk, and other problems until she contracted the extremely rare merkle cell cancer. Love was one of only two Alabamians diagnosed with merkle cell.
The longest-living heart transplant recipients at the University of Alabama Medical Center have survived for 17 years, said April Crosswy, a clinical research analyst in the UAB Cardiac Transplant Research Office.
“I’ve known her since she was a child,” said Gloria Stapler, who has worked with Love’s father at Southeast Alabama Youth Services for more than 25 years. “She was always a very happy child – artistic, creative and caring. Even in the midst of all she’s been through, she was such a courageous person and an inspiration to many people.
“I saw her as early as last week at (Flowers Hospital), and she knew it was only a matter of time. But she was talking about heaven and what she would do when she got there, about having a party and the people up there she would invite. That’s what I’m picturing: her having a big party today.”
Teresa Culpepper, a close friend since she met Love in 1991 at Premier Athletic Club, likes to remember some of the many times they just had fun together.
They planned to write a book together, and Culpepper said she still plans to combine her notes with what the poems and other writings Love left behind on her computer.
“We were kind of like partners in crime,” Culpepper said. “I’m an only child, and she was pretty much a sister to me. The first time we were partners in crime, we went down to the beach and talked about girl things, reminisced about when we were kids and wish we had known each other when we were growing up.
“I took her to Birmingham for a biopsy, and doctors suggested that she drink one beer before the biopsy, and we bought some liquor and had a little more fun than what they had requested. It was not hard for them to take that biopsy.
“Anytime we were in the dumps, we’d call each other and hop in the car and start driving.”
Even in the pain of her last days, Love was still thinking of the people she loved. Her father said she asked that her friends be told to get their own lives straightened out, so she’d see them in heaven. Somehow, she found the strength to write one last message on her laptop computer in the last week of her life.
In the past year, Love spent much of her time on the Internet with her home page, “Victoria’s Veil.” On her site, which can be accessed at www.angelfire.com/md/prayerMat, Love left a message that could serve as the legacy of her life when she explained how she came up with the title of her page.
“That I will have fought for what was right and fair, that I will have risked for that which mattered, that I will have given help to those who were in need, and that I will have left the earth a better place for what I’ve done and who I’ve been.
“I truly had the meaning of the veil of love as my heritage name, but also as a veil that God has surrounded and engulfed me in to love, protect, strengthen and guide, also. . . He in His grace and love has carried me when I could not walk and led me when I could not choose.
“Once again, I have been brought to His table and kneel at His feet and ask, ‘Lord, where do I go?’”
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