UP AND COMING

Fundraiser chairman rarin’ to Take Steps

Correction: Katie Kirkpatrick Choate, the new executive director of the Ronald McDonald House, is a partner at Friday, Eldredge & Clark, LLP. This Up and Coming column incorrectly identified her firm.

I like underdogs, and the Arkansas Chapter of the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America is one. Why? For starters, it’s pretty new - just 5 years old. Its big fundraiser isn’t a dinner but a walk, May 17. Finally, Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis are painful disturbances of the lower alimentary canal. It’s messy and embarrassing and even the name Crohn’s is a branding disaster.

Kathy Churchill is logistics chairman for this year’s Take Steps for Crohn’s and Colitis. She’s the mother of the walk’s founder, Kristin Trulock, and the grandmother of a boy first diagnosed with Crohn’s at 2 ½ (he’s now 11and his ailment is in remission).

Churchill is remarkable because she has had diagnosed ulcerative colitis since high school. Shehas had colon cancer - twice. Yet, at 71, she still gets up so early in the morning it’s really the middle of the night to meet her workout partner Jane English (not the state senator) at the Cantrell Road 10 Fitness at 4:30 a.m.

“That time of the morning, only crazy people go.”

Crazy, as the oft-repeated saying goes, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Churchill does the same thing over and over - 30minutes on the treadmill; 30 minutes or more of “boot camp” (a potpourri of weightlifting, body weight-resistance and light equipment exercises) - and expects the same results, which is youthful vitality and more manageable colitis.

“You think of all the surgeries I’ve gone through, and it’s like, instead of getting older I get younger.”

(Churchill knows High Profile is no place for modesty.)

“And I keep thinking that God gave me an extra chance, and that there’s something for me to do, and that’s for other people. If we can find a cure

” ….

Lots of central Arkansas nonprofits are walking, running, racing for a cure. One, the American Lung Association, is climbing stairs for a cure. But the truth is, a cure in the conventional sense isn’t coming anytime soon.Unlike penicillin or the Salk vaccine, widespread chronic conditions like Crohn’s and colitis, cystic fibrosis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or cancer are more likely to have breakthroughs than panaceas.

Churchill says she’s good with that.

“Each period of time that passed before cancer came again brought me that much closer to another kind of a treatment, another kind of a medication. The medication they have now, none of that was available when I was growing up.”

Check-in for the walk is 2 p.m. The grounds of the Clinton Presidential Center will have bouncy houses, face painting and other carnival-type fun. For more information, call Cris Mammarelli at (501) 580-6672 or email her at cmammarelli@ccfa.org.

Incidentally, the local foundation office has just started support groups for children and adults affected by the diseases. They meet at the Hillary Rodham Clinton Children’s Library & Learning Center on the first Tuesday of every month at 5:30 p.m.

NO KIDDING IN THE CLOWN HOUSE

In the last few months, Carol Dyer departed as director of the local American Heart Association office (replaced by Joyce Taylor from Pulaski Technical College) and Easter Seals’ Sharon Moone-Jochums announced her impending retirement (Elaine Eubanks starts July 1).

At the time, talking to Karen Erren, I said, “You know these things always happen in threes.”

That gave her a shock. How could he know? she thought then. For Erren herself would be the third.

And if it will be hard to wave goodbye from these pages to “Sharon Moone-Jochums” - a name Lewis Carroll could have penned - we’ll certainly miss singsong Karen Erren, whose married name is Marin.

That’s right, the rhyming doyenne of the Ronald Mc-Donald House is skipping off to Florida, the Sunshine State. Her replacement is Rose LawFirm partner Katie Kirkpatrick Choate.

“My husband and I have an empty nest and we’re going on an adventure. How fun is that?” she says.

Erren leaves May 16 having overseen the lion’s share of fundraising for a $7 million capital campaign that aims to build a new house with capacity for 30 families a night.

She’s not retiring, and neither is Eduardo, her husband. They’re both looking for work. Work, sun, sand and surf - not necessarily in that order.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING, DAVE?

Well, we heard back from Shannon Boshears at Heifer International. The dream of that organization and Dave Matthews fans everywhere - um, everywhere in central Arkansas - is dead. Matthews will not be playing the May 17 Feast in the Fields fundraiser.

He’s starting his tour that same night in Big D. (As if to reinforce the things Dallas has that we don’t. Real skyscrapers. A Lamborghini dealership. The world’s most famous book depository. Now, Dave.)

Boshears told me they booked Jason D. Williams.

For more information or to buy tickets, go to: tinyurl.com/k74pn3g.

Pass along charity news or trends you’ve noticed at events, (501) 378-3574, or bampezzan@arkansasonline.com

High Profile, Pages 37 on 05/04/2014

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