5/19 - Paige Hemmis, Ken Davis, Wes Moore,

Paige Hemmis - "Extreme Makeover Home Edition"

Paige Hemmis, part of ABC-TV's design dream team on "Extreme Makeover Home Edition," is a familiar face on construction site, as she's a skilled carpenter, designer and home builder. Now, Paige is picking up her hammer again to join in the National Heroes at Home program, which responds to the urgent need to help military families. The program provides renovations to the homes of active soldiers and American vets who are unable to repair their own homes, due to injuries resulting from service or income challenges.  Heroes at Home is a joint effort between Sears Holdings and Rebuilding Together, the nation's leading non-profit working to preserveaffordable home ownership by providing free home rehabilitation. The mission of Heroes at Home is to ensure that military families are living in safe, warm and comfortable homes - a dream come true for many veterans.  Paige Hemmis will tell  how they can donate to the organization as well as nominate local veterans for the Heroes at Home program. In May, Sears will be kicking-off its national fund-raising effort for the program, encouraging customers to contribute to the cause.  The Heroes at Home program was established in 2007 to provide support to military service members, veterans and their families through joint efforts with various non-profit organizations. Since then, Heroes at Home has raised more than $21 million, and supported the extensive rehabilitation of 505 homes for our nation's deserving military families. The Heroes at Home program was honored in March of this year, with The Peter Glen Award, given annually to a company who gives back to their community in a unique and impactful way.


Wes Moore - "THE OTHER WES MOORE"
THE OTHER WES MOORE is the dramatic, true story of two boys with the same name―one boy becomes the first African-American Rhodes Scholar ever from Johns Hopkins University while the other boy serves a life sentence in prison. In late 2000, the Baltimore Sun published an article with the headline “Local Graduate Named Rhodes Scholar.” That article was about Wes Moore, the author of this book. At the same time, the same newspaper ran a series of articles about a jewelry store robbery that ended in the tragic murder of a police officer. These articles were about another Wes Moore―just two years older and living in the same neighborhood―who would spend his life in prison. For years, as his life took him around the world, from Oxford to a tour of duty in Afghanistan to the White House and Wall Street, the author of this book couldn’t shake the memory of the other man with his name, who was destined to spend the rest of his days in a prison cell. Wes was haunted by a simple question—how could two boys who had so much in common have such radically different futures? Wes Moore decided to write to the other Wes Moore in prison. The two began a deepening relationship consisting of letters and visits, during which both men grappled with the experiences that had shaped their fates. Violence, drugs, single mothers, uninformed choices, mentors, and simple luck all played critical roles in their development.

Ken Davis  "A NATION RISING"

People magazine has written, “Reading ( Davis ) is like returning to the classroom of the best teacher you ever had.” A self-made scholar – he coasted through high school and never finished college – Davis is not your typical historian. When his first book Don’t Know Much About History was published 20 years ago, few would have predicted that a little volume promising to teach you, “everything you need to know but never learned” would spend 35 consecutive weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, rack up more than 1.6-million in sales and become the cornerstone in a twenty-book franchise that adults, children and educators have come to embrace. Amazon.com has called him “The King of Knowing” and The Orlando Sentinel has written, “Kenneth C. Davis may have done more to educate our young people, and the general public, on the topics of history, geography, and science than all of the certified teachers in the country.”  In the new book A NATION RISING, the New York Times bestselling historian Kenneth C. Davis explores six little-known, but monumental moments of America ’s history during this turbulent time – and offers a fresh and illuminating look at how America grew from a tiny, newborn nation to a near-empire stretching from “sea to shining sea.”