by Hunter Patterson | Aug 26, 2011 | News Slider
Early Friday morning inside Allen Arena, Lipscomb hosted the first Nashville Business Breakfast of the fall semester. Tennessee’s newest governor, Bill Haslam, was the featured speaker of the event. Others speaking at the event were SGA president Daniel Wakefield and Lipscomb president Randy Lowry. Amongst the numerous white collar businessmen and women were several members of the Lipscomb faculty. Walt Leaver, Jim Thomas, Tom Seals and Joe Ivey – to name a few. Several of those in the audience were present for the first time. This was pointed out during the introduction when it was announced that the crowd at Friday’s breakfast was twice the size of any other they had seen in the past. Wakefield officially started the event by offering an invocation. Following him was President Lowry who pointed out the audience’s only federally elected official, congressman Jim Cooper. Lowry highlighted the accomplishments of the university over the recent months and told a very light-hearted story about his predecessor, Steve Flatt. Turns out, when renovating Fanning over the summer, workers found several lost items behind the bookshelves in the rooms of the dormitory. One of the items was a letter written by Flatt. The letter was to a girl. A girl that, turns out, is not his wife. Lowry was quick to point out that it was not anything sinister, for Flatt had not yet met his wife. Lowry then introduced the day’s featured speaker, Gov. Haslam. Haslam was greeted with a standing ovation. He began in normal speaking fashion with a joke. “It’s great seeing everyone show up for something like this at the beginning of...
by Hunter Patterson | Aug 25, 2011 | News Slider, Sports
Hard nosed, honest, tough and a leader. All the words have been used to describe Coach Pat Summitt for over 30 years. Now, just days after she announced that she had been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, those words have never rang truer. Coach Summitt has been the head coach of the Lady Vols at the University of Tennessee since she was 22. Yes, some of her players were older than her. She drove the van to away games. She and her players slept in locker rooms because money was tight. Some ladies even made the team based on the fact that they owned a vehicle. For Coach Summitt, those were the tough times. Now, Lady Vol fans and admirers of the Basketball Hall of Fame coach are calling this a hard time. Summitt refuses to, though. “There will be no pity party,” Summitt told the Washington Post in an interview on Sunday. “I’ll be sure of that.” Summitt says she had felt that something was off for a while, saying she “just felt something different.” Once her Lady Vols were eliminated from the Regional final of the NCAA tournament she visited the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. seeking any sort of explanation to why she had these lapses of memory. Those lapses were everything from forgetting what time she needed to be at the gym, losing her car keys more than once per day and forgetting what type of scheme or play to run at a certain time during a game. “I think last year there was some adjustment in games,” Lipscomb’s women’s basketball coach Frank Bennett said....
by Cory Woodroof | Aug 22, 2011 | News Slider
On a nine-hour plane ride back to the United States of America, I had the displeasure of sitting in front of the world-wide toddler’s seat-kicking brigade. As I endured my forced back “massage”, I reflected on my time beforehand. I was on my way home from a life-changing trip to the historical city of London where I had just completed my first college class. Venture back to around March of this year. I remember sitting in Acuff Chapel (a part of the campus school) when a group of students from the college entered. They were dressed in rain gear with umbrellas in tow. They asked all of the applicants to the University to follow them to Shamblin for a “special program”. This special event turned out to be the unveiling of an exciting opportunity for campus school seniors. If Lipscomb was the final choice of your college, you would be invited to venture off to London, England at no expense to the traveler besides airfare. Also, three hours of credit would be granted after a small amount of academic work was completed. To be honest, the trip seemed like an opportunity that I could simply not pass up. After a few months of preparation (including two meetings at the home of the Lowry’s), the “Lipscomb in London” group departed from Nashville, made a quick stop in Dallas to change planes, and were off to England. Once we arrived, jet lag – my arch nemesis for most of the trip – began to set in. Pushing on through this horrible feeling, we spent the next few days immersing ourselves in...
by Hunter Patterson | Jul 11, 2011 | News Slider
According to the National Weather Service and everyone else in the mid-state, it’s hot. So hot, in fact, that the NWS has issued heat advisories for this week. With temperatures nearly reaching the century mark today and tomorrow, folks at the NWS in Memphis, Tenn. felt the need to issue the advisory. Natives of Tennessee know that the actual temperature is not the only thing to worry about, though. The heat index – how hot it actually feels – is the scary part. The NWS is reporting the heat index could reach up to 114 on Monday or Tuesday. Those on staff at Lipscomb have been told to take the warnings seriously, too. “While we haven’t been told anything directly about today, we have been told to take several precautions in the past,” said Steve Durham, an event operations worker at the university. “On days like this, [the university] tells us to drink fluids regularly, take breaks and to break up the amount of time spent outside.” In 2010 there were more than 20 heat-related deaths in the state. A majority of the deaths were a result of negligence towards the elderly or an infant. In one case, a resident at a Shelby County nursing home was left unattended for more than two hours. The Tennessee Highway patrol is adamant about the issue. It’s too often that one hears about a child being left inside a vehicle while the person in charge goes inside for “just a second.” The THP wants to remind motorists on the issue: “On a typical sunny, summer day, the temperature inside a car can...
by Hunter Patterson | Jul 2, 2011 | News Slider
Kicked off with an awakening period of worship, the finale of Lipscomb’s Summer Celebration was capped off by an inspiring message from Jeff Walling. First, though, there were a few areas of business that had to be taken care of. Randy Lowry introduced a familiar face to Nashville residents during the beginning of the evening, Daron Hall, sheriff of Davidson County. It was after that, when Hall introduced another man, Lytle Thomas. Thomas has a history of dealing with inner-city children all around the Nashville area. So, it was more than fitting to have all of those kids present at the event. And were they ever present. The children emerged from one of the Tunnels in Allen Arena in a school bus. Yes, a school bus. Almost overwhelmed, Lionel was then the proud recipient of the Kopio Award for his many years of service to the community. “I don’t want to say a whole lot, because I am afraid to say the wrong thing,” Thomas said. “On behalf of all of the people I’ve worked with and all the children, this is your award. Thank you all so much.” President Lowry then introduced someone that “has lead through his vision and his tremendous love for his church.” A coworker of Lowry’s at Pepperdine, Lynn Anderson was present to give an award that was originally supposed to given away at the Pepperdine Bible Lectures in May. How convenient that the recipients be none other than member’s of the Lipscomb family. A beautiful plaque with the words “Distinguished Christian Service Award” was then presented to Walt and Karen Leaver. Leaver is...
