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THURSDAY, FEB. 3, 2022 VOLUME 96 ■ ISSUE 19

LA VIDA

NEWS

Students share growing interest in the meanings behind astrology and zodiac signs.

Before the Tech versus Texas game, people donated money and supplies to students camping out. Read about how donors felt.

International mission trips can create cultural problems and controversy.

OPINIONS

HOUSING GUIDE Check out the Housing Guide insert in this week’s edition to help you navigate finding a home in Lubbock.

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B SECTION

INDEX LA VIDA NEWS OPINIONS CROSSWORD CLASSIFIEDS SUDOKU

Black History at Texas Tech 27th anniversary of Harris’s time in space Editor’s Note: In celebration of Black History Month, The Daily Toreador will highlight a notable local person or event in each week’s print edition.

CHERRY ON TOP Trook scoops up local retro ice cream shop By TANA THOMPSON la vida editor

H

e grew up eating ice cream at a small shop in Lubbock. In March of 2020, the beginning of the pandemic, he began looking for a job. When he was hired, he had no idea that one day he would own the place. On Nov. 29, 2021, the third-year communications student from Lubbock, Wesley Trook, purchased Holly Hop Ice Cream Shoppe, changing his life for the better. “I grew up in Lubbock, knowing about the history of Holly Hop and then at that location for 11 years and in existence for 13,” Trook said. “So I knew I loved their ice cream and knew it was homemade.” When he began working, Trook said there were two shift managers, both of which still work at Holly Hop today. One night, Trook told the shift manager he believed he someday would buy the place. “It was kind of joking but kind of serious and that I saw the potential for it being a really good opportunity,” Trook said. “Fast forward through all 2020, through the end of 2021. I have worked my way up to becoming a general manager.” Since he has taken over Holly Hop, Trook said he has struggled learning how to balance life while still being a college student. “There’s no balance between school and work. You’re never going to be able to find that center balance and that’s something that I’ve

really noticed and taken to heart,” Trook said. “There are some weeks where I am very behind in school. So something that I will say has helped me is people around me. The support that I’ve gotten from people at Texas Tech, people that are in the community that are regulars at Holly Hop, and it’s very encouraging.” The past owners of Holly Hop were Darryl and Stephanie Holland, Trook said, and he approached them when he was ready to buy the business. “I said, look, I’m already running this place. I want to buy it— and this is the title of if I ever write a book, this is what the title will be­­— I­ am 19 years old and with no credit, which was the big problem,” Trook said. “I couldn’t get a loan or anything. So I worked with Stephanie Harrell and we kind of figured out a way to get a purchase agreement.” Emilee Jackson, the morning manager at Holly Hop, said things have changed since Trook took over the business. “It’s been overall I feel like a lot more open-minded, a lot more peppy,” Trook said. “There’s just a lot more steps being taken to make this place overall a better, more efficient place for both customers and workers.” Jackson was a manager before the owners changed, so she experienced the entire process. “That would just include things like washing the aprons, making the brownies and even just making the schedule for the next week. It all just kind of slowly happens,” Jackson said. “Then there was a day that

they announced it to everybody. And that is when the real shift happened. He’s just got a lot of big plans for Holly Hop, and that includes really big expansion plans.” Jackson said the fact that Trook is in college has astounded her because he has done so much for Holly Hop since he took over. “So he has to go to his classes, make sure he’s getting his work in on time, and then he still comes here does the paperwork for here and, like I said, he’s making all those big expansion plans. He has so many ideas for this place, and he’s balancing it all, and from what I can tell balancing it all really well,” Jackson said. Gavin Lathan, Holly Hop’s assistant manager, said he noticed Trook’s work ethic as well. “It’s encouraging for me. I mean, I’m only in high school. And so seeing him do that right out of high school is really encouraging,” Lathan said. “There was a lot of risk that he had to take a tremendous amount. I mean, as a 19-year-old owning a very popular, growing, locally owned business.” Lathan said that he has noticed that Trook barely sleeps or eats when he gets obsessed with a store issue. “I’ve been very excited for Wesley, you know, him taking ownership of his business. And I can see the potential and I can see that it’s already growing,” Lathan said. “It’s really exciting. I’ve seen, you know, how it’s come. All the changes that he’s made. And I’ve just, I’m very proud of him coming and seeing where he’s come from.” @TanaThompsonDT

AMBER COOPER/The Daily Toreador

The Holly Hop Ice Cream Shoppe located at 3303 34th St., has a new owner, Wesley Trook, a third-year communciation studies student. When Trook started working at the shop in March 2020, he joked with the shift manager that he would someday buy the store, sp he did in November.

Born on June 26, 1956, in Temple, Bernard A. Harris Jr. made history as a pioneer both in this world and in space. According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Harris earned his doctorate in medicine from Texas Tech University School of Medicine in 1982. Harris’s time as a Red Raider did not end at education. In 1993, he was appointed to the Board of Regents for the Texas Tech Health Sciences Center by then Gov. Ann Richards. His inclusion to the list of regents also made Tech history as the first Black man to serve on the board.

On Feb. 3, 1995, in NASA mission STS-63, Harris became the first Black man to perform a spacewalk. During his career as an astronaut, Harris clocked 438 hours and 7.2 million miles in space, according to a Texas Tech University news release. According to The Harris Foundation, founded by Harris in 1998 in Houston the organization has a main goal to “giving support to kids and students of all backgrounds who find it hard to integrate in a quality educational environment and become permanent members of it.

Art professor creates sculpture for Hobby airport By TÉA MCGILVRAY

Digital Content Manager Hanging from cable wire, levitating above, soft clouds reflect light from a ceiling-high window. At first glance, these clouds resemble balloons with billows and shine, but upon further inspection these clouds are handcrafted sculptures made of firm industrial steel. Artist and associate professor of sculpture at Texas Tech William Cannings was chosen to incorporate his art into the William P. Hobby Airport in Houston in May. Cannings was chosen for this project out of 350 submissions from Texas artists varying from sculptors to painters to photographers. Curator of public art for the Houston Airports Alton DuLaney said the panel of art experts chose Cannings’ piece because it felt uplifting, inspiring, peaceful and perfect for an airport. “William Cannings’ piece was part of a multi-project call for art that we started about a year and a half or two years ago, and in that we bought 74 works of portable works of art, which are small paintings and sculptures and things that are movable. We commissioned 10 site-specific works. He was one of the 10 artists chosen to create the site specific works,” DuLaney said. Cannings’ sculptures focus on taking rough industrial materials, inflating them and molding them into softer shapes. While working at Texas Tech, he developed the technique. He first asked himself the question, “What if I could inflate steel like a balloon?” He said he enjoyed watching metals transform in a way people hadn’t considered. Born in Manchester, England, Cannings said he spent his life torn between three passions: engineering, art and cycling. He understood mechanic work, was an accomplished cyclist and had a passion for art. He said he considered all of these to be potential career paths. “I was a big pain in the butt and my mum did not want to deal with me, so my dad would take me to work with him when I was young on the weekend,” Cannings said. His father, a woodworker, owned a construction company where Cannings began his journey as an artist. It was in that space he said he learned many of the technical skills that he implements into his art today. “I never wanted to be employed or work within that realm. It seemed too tight to my mind. I like to paint and draw and collage and, so I went off to art school and we had a workshop with a sculptor from Manchester,” Cannings said. “That workshop with the sculptor really kind of bridged two different worlds for me, that kind of the vocational world that my father lived in, and the fine art world that I wanted to exist in, and it kind of set me off on a path that I knew sculpture were what I wanted to do.” He began his educational journey with fine art locally with an undergraduate program at Loughborough University so he could continue pursuing cycling. Cannings said he was a well accomplished second-category racer, which is one category below professional. During his undergraduate years, Cannings discovered an exchange program with Virginia Commonwealth University in the United States. Though he could have pursued cycling as a career, the timing of the exchange program on top of a couple injuries veered Cannings’ career fully in pursuit of art, he said. “I’m a leaper, not a looker. I could not plan my life because every time I’ve tried to plan things, you know the best laid plans of mice and men and something messes up and seems

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