Women of Mercy Educating Neighbors (WOMEN)

 

story and photos by Linda Kaufenberg

Sharon Evans Bale believes one of the greatest pleasures in life is being a woman and shared this belief with an audience of women at a Saturday luncheon, part of Women of Mercy Educating Neighbors (WOMEN) held in St. Edward Mercy Medical Centers of Excellence and the Hennessy Center.

Before the luncheon, visitors toured an information fair and attended seminars. “The Person is You” seminar was given by Dr. Ann Passmore, Certified American Board of Plastic Surgery. In answer to questions, she said she does a lot of nose cancer reproduction and is able to give good results depending on the area involved. Passmore also talked about surgery for dropping eyelids that interfere with sight.

Lisa Gillespie, Registered and Licensed Dietitian, talked about “Using Super Foods in Your Diet.” A hand-out listed the foods as sweet potatoes, grape tomatoes, fat-free skim milk, blueberries, wild salmon, crispbreads, brown rice, watermelon, diced butternut squash and pre-washed or pre-cut bags of greens. Gillespie said she would have added soy foods.

“There is no approved list,” Gillespie said. “These items provide lots of nutrition calorie for calorie. They tend to have a lot of color.”

She demonstrated making a blueberry smoothie and brought edamenes and a salad using quinoa (keen-wa) which contains all eight essential amino acids. Recipes for the smoothie and the salad were given to each participant.

BALE SPEECH
Growing up in a railroad family and living along the Missouri Pacific Railroad tracks from North Little Rock to Texarkana to Hope to North Little Rock, Bale is a culmination of the women who walked with her along the way. When asked for a description of these women she said: "They were all Renaissance women. They excelled in a wide variety of subjects and fields and did what was necessary!"

She described her heroes as her birth mother who let her go because she was not in a position to take care of her and her mom and dad who loved her, bigmama, aunts and all the incredible women in her life.

They gave her the following rules to live by:
• I must use what I have;
• If it is working, keep it;
• Modify and adjust (attitude and/or actions);
• Use the past as a rudder to guide your attitude into the future;
• Learn who you are and what makes us best; and,
• God is not Santa Claus.

She recalled a story about her high school graduation. Bale wanted a white pearl and black pearl ring from service Merchandise and taped the picture throughout the house. But, she received a Browning 16 rifle from her father (she was his son) and learned how to clean it. At Ouachita Baptist University, because of her experience with rifles she won a spot on the rifle team and received a scholarship.

While at OBU, she won Miss Ouachita Baptist University title and then went on to win Miss Arkansas. Bale said it was all a fluke. It seems some ROTC guys asked her to be their nominee and when she asked them why, Bale said their response was: “Well, everyone else we have asked had already been asked. And anyway, you will dance for your talent and nobody else has ever danced in a pageant at OBU.”

Bale also told the story of her grandson who was born three years ago with multiple problems, including his stomach and esophagus not being attached.

“More than anything, I wanted to be a grandmother. I even wrote a paper back in the third grade about how I wanted to be like my bigmama,” she said. “But everything I planned to do did not happen. I did not get to feed him his bottle. He was in Children’s Hospital the first month of his life and did not get to lay in the cradle because of the way he had to be propped up while sleeping.”

Bale used the story to explain that change is as necessary as the air we breathe.