WAN 11/03/2022

Admirals Club Fall Party

The Admirals Club of Austin held their annual Fall Party on October 17th, at Tarry House in West Austin. This year’s reception was hosted by Chief of Naval Operations, Mark Auler, and his wife, Clary, to honor 2nd-Vice Chief of Naval Operations, Bryan Teeple, and his wife, Delaine, who will lead the Admirals Club operations in 2024-2025.

Members gathered at Tarry House for an intimate cocktail reception to honor the new leaders. The Admirals Club will gather again in the spring to celebrate new members and look forward to the sixtysecond annual coronation weekend in August. The Admirals Club has supported various charities in Austin throughout the years.

Alissa Ziemianski

BY FORREST PREECE

training young people ages 1724, so it will be second nature to them after that. She moved to Seattle for her second year and then to Boston, where she spent the next six years (with brief stints in Philadelphia, Chicago, Washington DC, Detroit, San Jose, South Carolina and Louisiana). By then, Alissa had shown so much leadership skill that she became one of the point people who were sent out to other areas when they were facing difficulties in training and motivating volunteers.

When she was doing her first corps year, they provided in-school support for academics, and afterschool programs. Then there were projects for community improvements, like transforming empty lots into playgrounds.

For a while, she worked as a child advocate in a high security domestic violence shelter, which was intense. The kids in these shelters weren’t allowed to leave for school, so they had onsite tutors. Alissa and her colleagues did their best to provide backup services for the teachers. She adds that since the kids were often shifted in and out of the shelter, it was hard to build relationships with them. It was almost like witness protection. “But kids are so amazing. It was inspiring to see how children in this traumatic situation could find some little piece of joy and hold onto it,” Alissa says.

Fielding

a phone call from a basketball legend, who pledged $5 million to Katrina relief efforts. Setting up an event to convince Sen. John McCain that more funding for national service programs would be advantageous for the country.

Being in the thick of the 2018 Northern California wildfires, providing food, water, and other resources to people in distress. Alissa Ziemianski has lived a life dedicated to helping others, sometimes in dramatic circumstances.

Looking back on it all, she remembers an Easter egg hunt her grandfather’s Knights of Columbus group was sponsoring as being a turning point for her, when she was four years old. While holding her basket, she asked her grandfather, “Why are we here?” Meaning, why are people on the earth? His answer: “To make other people’s lives better. You are here for others.” She replied, “Oh! OK!” and then ran off, while mentally filing those words.

When she turned 10, her family vacationed in Los Angeles. One day, her parents took her to a Denny’s for lunch and she saw a man holding a “Will Work for Food” sign while sitting outside on the curb. In her former neighborhood in Dallas, she had never seen unhoused people. Alissa asked her parents why he was doing that, and they told her that some people don’t have homes,

they have to live on the street, and they get hungry. She started crying, got up, took her food out to the curb, gave it to him, sat down, and asked about his story. (Trust me, knowing Alissa, it really happened that way.) It seems that his parents had kicked him out and he was struggling with how to cope. That was another milestone in setting the path for her life’s work.

On a recent Sunday morning, Linda and I visited with Alissa over bagels and talked about her life. These days she is the Community Engagement Manager for the Central Texas Food Bank, a natural outcome for the path her grandfather outlined.

She started with a straightforward path towards her future. When she turned twenty Alissa joined City Year, an AmeriCorps program, where she spent the first eight years of her career working in various capacities to improve other peoples’ lives.

Those years with City Year were an adventure. Her first corps year was spent in Cleveland, learning the skill set that she would need. She says that the group focuses on

She also wrote environmental curricula for the Cleveland public schools, which were underperforming and offering no health or environmental classes. They partnered with a local agency that could provide instruction about how to make recycling happen, how to make their communities cleaner, the effects of climate change, and so on.

Her senior corps year in Seattle, there was a lack of public transportation, so she would drive her team members around, doing things like ridding trails of invasive species plants. Those first two years were where she gained her leadership experience, learning how to organize people into teams and have them working as a unit, advocating for a mission.

Alissa helped plan an event in 2001 at the City Year annual convention in Chicago where Sen. John McCain was honored for his lifetime commitment to serving the country. His idea was of national service focused mainly on the military. But after he heard a panel of young people in City Year talk about their experiences and achievements in communities around the country, he was inspired to take action.

Joining with Sen. Evan Bayh, a Democrat from Indiana (remember when bi-partisan efforts happened?) they fostered legislation to expand the scope of the Corporation for National and Community Service, the federal umbrella that housed AmeriCorps.

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina gave her an opportunity to put all her training to use, in a hurry and on a big stage. After some circuitous journeying, she found herself in Reliant Park, where refugees from Louisiana were being housed. She was moving donated items around, waiting to be assigned to a role, when someone heard she was in AmeriCorps and had leadership and organizing experience. They immediately took her upstairs and she found herself sitting with Houston’s police chief, the city’s fire chief, and Mark Sloan, who was the head of Harris County volunteer services at the time. “I was down at the end of this long, intimidating table, among all these men in uniforms.”

They saw that she was a takecharge person and assigned her to oversee the donations area. And yes, when that (he asked to be anonymous) NBA all-star called to donate $5 million, Alissa answered the phone. All told, they brought in $40 million.

As soon as she was assigned this monumental task, Alissa

area with washers, dryers, and soap. The Tide team dubbed the operation “Loads of Hope” which has since served more than 90,000 people impacted by natural disasters.

Her ability to think big and take leadership roles has served her well. When an Austin consultancy group called Greenlights heard about her, they brought her to town. Then Austin Film Festival hired her to be their volunteer coordinator, and after a few months, she became marketing and youth program director for the festival. (That is when Linda and I met her.)

But then, a food co-op manager job opened up in Chico, California. Alissa had friends there who had been after her to come try out the area. Getting back into a foodoriented, somewhat public service position really appealed to her. When the co-op offered her a job as front-end manager, she packed up her car and headed west. “I’d loved co-ops since I had my first carob cookie in the Cleveland Co-op when I was 12,” Alissa says. Several years after she got there, Chico was in the midst of the huge Northern California “campfire” that destroyed the neighboring town of Paradise.

commitment to strengthening community, inspiring, mobilizing, and empowering others.

In 2019, the store manager job at Wheatsville Co-Op on Guadalupe had opened up and she applied for that position. Soon, she was moving back to Austin. After 2.5 years at Wheatsville, Alissa felt her nonprofit heart calling out to her again and she took her current position at the Food Bank. “I loved working at Wheatsville, but my spirit was with the people on the street who are unhoused and facing food insecurity.”

This community engagement position really suits her because she loves to tell the food bank’s story. For every dollar they bring in, the Food Bank can provide four meals to families in need. Alissa adds that during the pandemic, the Food Bank pivoted and actually doubled the amount of aid they provided. Alissa says that somehow, her life all goes back to that incident with the man outside the Denny’s in California, and she is very satisfied with her job situation.

saw that computer systems for keeping track of donations were not in place, and she helped bring in volunteers from IBM to design an easily updated data base and get it up and running. “I’m proud that the system they designed was adopted by FEMA for use in other disasters,” Alissa says.

When the leadership noticed that survivors being housed in the center were just throwing away clothes because there was no way to wash them, Alissa and her colleagues contacted Procter & Gamble, and set up a special

The Co-op, where Alissa was now the operations director, made a Herculean effort to provide food, water, other essential resources and funds and help to people who had lost their homes and were in danger. Everyone’s stress level was off of the chart, and it went on for many weeks. “It was harrowing, and I didn’t get much sleep,” Alissa says. Those efforts were recognized by her former colleagues in City Year, and she was awarded the prestigious Comcast NBCUniversal Leadership Award that recognizes outstanding City Year/AmeriCorps alumni who are continuing their

One other subject that needs to be in any story about Alissa – soccer. She has been obsessed with the sport since she started playing it as a kid. She joined Austin Coed Soccer Association back in 2006 -and is now its president. To her, soccer is the international language. “No matter where you go in the world, you can play it with people who don’t speak your native tongue,” she says. She is also on the board of the Austin Soccer Foundation which works with disadvantaged communities to provide equipment, referee training, academic scholarships, and money to support sport inclusiveness. On top of that, she is an adviser for Austin’s new women’s semi-pro team—Austin Rise FC. “They are creating an inspiring player-run club. I believe that this club will change soccer in Austin,” Alissa says.

I wonder how Alissa’s career would have turned out if she had gone into the fray of corporate America. She’s intelligent and articulate, grasps situations immediately, and is stone-cold fearless about arguing her points and taking action. But she chose a different path. In her words, “I want to elevate everyone around me and help them thrive!”

Mother and Daughter Receive Same Surgery 10 Years Apart

By Anne DeVries

In 2012 a 10-year-old girl named Kelly Diaz was brought to the United States from Nicaragua to have her congenital heart defect repaired by HeartGift, an Austin-based organization. When Kelly arrived with her mother, she was very ill. She could not walk more than a few steps at a time and had lips and fingernails that were turning blue.

Kelly was diagnosed at three months old with a rare heart condition called, Tetralogy of Fallot. The condition affects normal blood flow through the heart and causes poor oxygen blood flow out of the heart and into the rest of the body. In the United States, this condition is generally corrected within the first year of life. Kelly could not receive corrective surgery in Nicaragua due to a lack of specialized medical care.

The skilled medical team from HeartGift provided surgical repair of Kelly’s heart defect.

Due to the life-saving procedure, she was able to have a healthy, normal childhood and grow into an adult, becoming a wife and mother to two daughters, now four years and 11 months old.

Kelly’s second child, Sofia, was born in November 2021 and was diagnosed with the same congenital heart defect shortly after birth. Following a review by HeartGift’s medical team, led by Dr. Karen Wright, a pediatric cardiologist and Medical Director for HeartGift, Sofia was invited for corrective surgery by the program, which is in partnership with Dell

Children’s Medical Center.

On October 11, surgery was performed at Dell Children’s Medical Center by Dr. Charles Fraser, a pediatric cardiothoracic surgeon and contributing skilled surgeon to HeartGift.

Mom and daughter arrived in Austin in early October. They were warmly received by the same family that had hosted Kelly and her mother ten years earlier. Pavel and Esmerelda Rangel of Elgin, Texas, generously opened their home to Kelly and Sophia, providing them with a comfortable, loving, and familiar support system.

“We are a family blessed by God. We have an obligation to open our home to others in need”. Said Esmerelda Rangel.

As far as the experience of hosting first Kelly and then Sophia 10 years later, Mrs. Rangel added, “It was something that I did not expect, but it is still a blessing now to be able to see Sofia healthy. Recovered with a new life to live, and now she

can play and eat, and it gives my family and me a lot of joy to be part of this blessing in the lives of Kelly and Sofia.”

Around the world, one in 100 babies is born each year with a congenital heart defect, making it the most common birth defect. Over 90% of the cases do not have access to much-needed specialized pediatric cardiac care. HeartGift was founded in 2000 by Dr. Chip Oswalt and Ray Wilkerson to address this disparity. Since its inception, it has served over 600 children from 35 countries, with chapters in Austin, Houston, San Antonio, and New Orleans.

Just like her mother did ten years ago, Baby Sofia is recovering well from the procedure. Her blood oxygen stats were in the 60% range before surgery and now are 97%. Her incision is healing well, and the blueish lips she arrived with are plump and pink. Kelly and her daughter are expected to return home in early November.

For more information about HeartGift, visit HeartGift.org.

Support is needed to provide continued access for children outside of the US with the diagnosis and surgical treatment of congenital heart defects.

Highland Park Elementary celebrates with picnic

By Alana Moehring Mallard

Highland Park Elementary School families celebrated a new school year in September with its annual Back to School Picnic. Students, parents, teachers, neighbors, families enjoyed picnic baskets of food or fajitas from Fajita Pete’s, a grade-level dance off deejayed music, and a bigger than life Scottie dog.

“The kids had fun dancing, grabbing popsicles, and playing with their new and old friends,” said HP mom Katie Moran. “What a great way to celebrate our amazing HP community.”

Moran gave props to PE Coach Harrison Gay for his work as the DJ/ MC and to Jen Dipasquale’s daughter Carson for wearing the Scottie mascot suit.

Organizers for the Back to School Picnic were Jessica Rensimer, Chelsea Buckler, and Carrie Kilpatrick. Sponsors included Rambler Water, Ninja Bus, Fajita Pete’s, and Odd Pop.

PHOTOS BY KATIE MORAN

Golden Shovel Awards Given at Party For The Parks Fundraiser

OnWednesday, October 12th, the Austin Parks Foundation hosted its 8th annual Party for the Parks event on the ACL Music Festival grounds at Zilker Park. Spoon was the headliner for the evening with a private performance under the stars. Alongside their performance, Party for the Parks included locally sourced food and beverages.

APF hands out their Golden Shovel awards annually at Party for the Parks, celebrating the people and organizations who help APF fulfill its mission, and this year they recognized: Moreland Properties as Partner of the Year; Zilker Brewing Company as Park Champion of the Year; Al and Nancy Morgan and Deanna Dossey as Volunteers of the Year; Ulises Jimenez with Unity Contractors for The Above and Beyond Award; and Raul Alvarez, representing Amigos de Parque Zaragoza with the Park Adopter Award. Funds raised during this year’s event will help APF continue their mission of partnering with the community to make Austin’s public parks, trails and green spaces better through volunteerism, innovative programming, advocacy and financial support. For more information on Austin Parks Foundation, visit www. austinparks.org.

Glow In The Park Event Benefits Waterloo Greenway Conservancy

By Alana Moehring Mallard

The recent NAMI Walks

Your Way Central Texas raised nearly $300,000 for education and services for Austin’s chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Hundreds of work groups, congregations, social groups, families, and individuals gathered at the Palmer Events Center and walked through downtown Austin to the Capitol and back to send the message that Mental Health Matters.

“Everyone has a different story,” said Kate Hix, NAMI Central Texas director, as walkers gathered before the 5K walk. “We are grateful to each and every one of you for your advocacy, your funding,

your support, and your walking today. We need each of you.”

Kate announced that after nearly three years of virtual programming, NAMI Central Texas would begin in-person courses and groups this winter.

NAMI services include recovery support groups, 8-week peer group programs, programs for family members, school presentations, workshops for congregations, and community presentations,

as well as guidance and help accessing our mental health care system. NAMI programs and services are free.

Other speakers at the

HELPS KEEP WATERLOO

PARK AND COMMUNITY EVENTS FLOURISHING

OnThursday, October 13th, local nonprofit Waterloo Greenway Conservancy hosted over 700 guests for its annual fundraiser Glow in the Park, raising $1.9M and counting.

These vital funds help keep Waterloo Park, and future phases of the growing 35-acre park system, flourishing and activated with free cultural events and environmental education programs that benefit nearly 500,000 community members annually.

From cocktails on the Meredith Heritage Tree Deck to a delicious dinner provided by MML Hospitality and an intimate musical performance by Grammy Award-winning Marcus Mumford, this event was inspired by event chairs Sabrina Brown and Jamie Chandlee and created with the help of dozens on the organization’s host committee.

Capital campaign co-chairs Chris Mattsson and Gary Farmer were also recognized for their leadership and dedication to the Waterloo Greenway project.

Located in the heart of downtown Austin along a restored Waller Creek, Waterloo Park is a central

hub of activity featuring more than 1.5 miles of scenic trails, thousands of native plants, imaginative playscapes, and the 5,000-capacity Moody Amphitheater. The 11-acre greenspace is a public park, restored in partnership with the City of Austin, and is open daily from 5 a.m.-10 p.m. for everyone to explore and enjoy.

The public is invited to enjoy Waterloo Greenway’s free upcoming events including its weekly health and wellness classes presented by Ascension Seton as well as the organization’s annual celebration of light-based art, Creek Show 2022 from November 11-20. At Creek Show, visitors will immerse themselves in 10 nights of free luminous art created by local artists and designers, live music, and much more for the whole family.

For a schedule of live music at Moody Amphitheater at Waterloo Park and other event information, visit www. waterloogreenway.org.

walk’s kickoff, including U.S. health and human services representative Sima Ladjevardian and Travis County Sheriff Sally

Hernandez, emphasized the importance of ensuring mental health services access for everyone in our health care system.

The Regents Knights varsity football team secured its 8th straight District Championship by defeating San Antonio TMI on October 28, 45-7. It is Regents’ 17th title out of 22 years of playing varsity football.

Defense and Special Teams dictated play on Friday as the Knights held the Panthers to just 130 yards of offense and a late 4th quarter score. The Regents Defensive unit gave its Offense positive field position all night long, and the Offense took advantage, scoring on 5 of 6 first-half possessions. Regents’ Special Teams lit up the scoreboard to open the game on a 48-yard punt return for a touchdown by Regents Senior Jackson Smith. This was Regents’ third punt return for a touchdown this year. The Knight’s kickoff coverage unit pinned TMI deep in its own territory most of the night.

Regents’ offense is averaging 46 points per game this season. Quarterback Quinn Murphy has connected on 64% of his throws for 1,722 yards and 23 touchdowns with only three interceptions. The rushing attack, which is averaging 150 yards and three touchdowns per game, is led by Junior Chili Sayre and Sophomore Jack Buerkle. Seniors Jackson Smith and Tyler Kuo together lead the Receiving Corp with over 900 yards and 16 touchdown receptions.

Regents’ defense, led by Senior Linebacker Ledger Rice and Junior Linebacker Jacob Wilburn, has given up only 9 points per game, including three shutouts this season. Senior Defensive End Whitefield Powell, a Colorado State commit, leads the team in sacks (7) and tackles for loss (12).

Regents will close out their regular season Friday night, November 4, at 7:30 pm when

they take on St. Michael’s Catholic Academy.

Regents School of Austin is a K-12 classical Christian school located in Southwest Austin. Regents equips students for life, college, and

beyond, using the time-tested tools of a classical model taught through the lens of a Christian worldview. For more information on Regents School of Austin visit: www. regentsaustin.org

PHOTO BY MERRICK ALE