26—Cleveland Daily Banner—Wednesday, January 6, 2016
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Your Best Shot
Recent photos — within the last year — may be submitted for Your Best Shot by emailing
gwen.swiger@cleveland banner.com, mailing good quality photos to Your Best Shot, P.O. Box 3600,
Cleveland, TN 37320-3600 or dropping them off at 1505 25th St.
DEBRA HICKEY shared some photos, above and below, she took at the Island in Pigeon Forge during
the holidays.
DONNA HOPPER provided this photo of sandhill cranes as they fly over the community.
Your Friends and Neighbors at
would like to invite you to...
Meet Our Pharmacists
Bradenton man giving at-risk
youths the confidence to lead
BRADENTON, Fla. (AP) —
When Neil Phillips’ parents left
their native Jamaica to come to
America, their hope was no different than most immigrants’ —
that they and their children
might find a better life.
“They were really enamored by
the American dream,” says
Phillips, whose radiant smile
softens an intimidating 6-foot-4inch frame. “My parents were
eager to provide us with the
opportunities to discover who we
were.”
Now Phillips is doing the same
for children born in this land of
opportunity, but often without
the privileges he enjoyed — a stable home, supportive parents and
adequate resources. After stints
as a professional basketball player, an entrepreneur and an
administrator at an elite private
school,
the
founder
of
Bradenton’s
Visible
Men
Academy has discovered his passion: instilling in young boys of
color from at-risk communities
the high standards and confidence that will allow them to
become “visible” leaders.
“The expectations of boys from
this demographic turns at an
early age from ‘Aren’t they cute!’
to strife and trouble,” says
Phillips, 49, who started the allboys charter school three years
ago. “That’s what we’re trying to
combat. We know how much
greatness and potential they
have.”
To look for the source of
Phillips’ beliefs, you have to go
back to his earliest years, growing up with two sisters outside
Washington, D.C. in a home
where values like selflessness,
honesty, integrity and excellence
were expected and what mattered
most was how you treated people.
“Our’s was a home where the
currency was kindness,” he says.
“That’s what everything revolved
around and I’ve never forgotten
that.”
Eager to see if their son was
“someone who didn’t want to settle for ‘fine,’” Phillips’ parents
enrolled him at Landon, an elite
prep school in Bethesda,
Maryland, in the eighth grade. He
flourished in the rigorous academic environment but like many
a gifted young black athlete, his
eyes were on the National
Basketball Association.
In a move he hoped would get
him both an exceptional education and more playing time than
he might have in a bigger athletic
conference, he accepted an offer
to play at Harvard, where he
majored in English and American
Literature and was on both the
football and basketball teams.
But the most important lesson he
learned there was one that would
come in handy later on.
“I realized I could have an
opinion that differed from someone who was a genius or had
written a book,” he says. “I had a
voice and I could express with it.”
When the NBA didn’t draft him
after graduation, he signed a
contract to play in Australia. A
guilty feeling that he should “get
a real job” —not from his parents, but entirely self-imposed —
led him to quit after a year, something he now regrets.
“Maybe I’d use the word ‘mistake’ now,” he says. “I stopped
sooner than I needed to.”
He returned to the U.S. and
joined a sports marketing firm,
where he got a crash course in
business — and a wife. (Shannon
Rohrer-Phillips, a former social
worker, is now Visible Men’s family services director.) But after
two years, he turned to founding
a basketball instruction company
for children based on the thennovel idea of individual coaching
within a team sport. The concept
was a success — a partner still
runs One-on-One Basketball
today — but Phillips found himself more drawn to the children
than the court.
“My bigger interest was in helping them understand how their
passion for athletics could contribute to their character development and their success off the
court,” he says. “That started to
command all my attention.”
He moved briefly to California
to help launch an organization
aimed at using youth sports to
develop character, then returned
to his alma mater, Landon, first
as athletic director, then as an
administrator. It was there he
began to notice a disturbing
trend of underachievement
among the school’s minority students that did not relate to their
abilities.
THAD HUFF D.ph
JASON MOSS
GINA MOSER
Located inside
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Fresh ‘N Low
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116 Whitewater Drive 2010 Broomfield Rd.
Ocoee, Tennessee
423-599-7053
423-216-0050
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Located inside
Cooke’s Food Store
Keith Street
423-479-5416
Locally Owned & Operated
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Meet Our
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SKIN CANCER & COSMETIC
DERMATOLOGY CENTER
John Chung MD, FAAD
Board Certified Dermatologist
Fellowship Trained Mohs Surgeon
Natasha Ballard, MD
Board Certified Physician
Eli Kim, MD
Board Certified Physician
Victor Czerkasij, APRN, BC, FNP
Board Certified Family Nurse Practitioner
Amanda Cook, FNP-C
Board Certified Family Nurse Practitioner
Ashley Thurman, FNP-C
Board Certified Family Nurse Practitioner
Catherine Ramsey
Licensed Medical Aesthetician
2253 Chambliss Ave. NW - Suite 300 • 423-472-3332
Bradley Professional Building • Cleveland, TN • Accepting New Patients and Most Insurances
“Your hearing is our priority”
“I would like to welcome my
former and new patients to
Cooke’s Pharmacy. I look
forward to serving you with care
and respect at my new
pharmacy home inside Cooke’s
Food Store.
My goal is to provide you
with the best possible care at a
level of service you expect and
deserve.
Tiffany Ahlberg,
Au.D., CCC-A
423-641-0956
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APPOINTMENT TODAY!
2401 North Ocoee Street,
Suite 201
Cleveland, TN 37311
(Directly behind Medical Center Pharmacy)
Pharmacy is more than a
career for me, it is my heart.
Thank you for the last 15 years,
I look forward to many, many
more!”
–Gina Moser, Cooke’s Head
Pharmacist