Friday, January 29, 2010
2 women treated to makeovers
Have you heard?
JoAnne Poindexter
'Have you heard?'
Recent columns
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Two Roanoke women who have devoted their lives to helping others received makeovers from the Roanoke Chapter of Links Inc. during the recent holiday season.
Links is an international service-oriented organization of black women that focuses on youth services, international trends, national trends and the arts.
The organization's national trends facet selected Elizabeth Saunders, a mother of 10, and Wanda Buckner, a kidney transplant recipient, from 25 applicants for its "Looking Good, Feeling Good" makeover project.
Each woman received a new wardrobe and had hair, makeup and manicure sessions provided by Audrey Vernon, Perspectives Beauty Salon and Terri Richardson. Serenity Funeral Home donated limo service for the women who were luncheon guests of the Roanoke Links, which also showered them with gifts.
Saunders is 74 and has been married to Robert Saunders for 56 years. In addition to rearing her children, she is active in many organizations at First Baptist Church in Gainsboro.
Buckner, a 48-year-old endoscopy technician, lives with lupus and was caregiver to her mother who died of breast cancer in 2003 and her husband who died of muscular dystrophy in 2005.
She recently received a kidney transplant after three years of dialysis. She is an active member of Pilgrim Baptist Church.
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Army Reserve Spc. Lonnie W. Jones Jr., whose father lives in Roanoke, recently spent a few weeks in Kitgum, Uganda, in central Africa, supporting a military exercise that focused on humanitarian assistance to Ugandans.
Exercise Natural Fire 10 created friends and partners from the nations of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and the United States in a remote region of northern Uganda, just south of Sudan.
Jones is a military policeman with the 304th Military Police Company in Lewisburg, W.Va., and has been in the Army Reserve for six years. In Africa he was part of personnel security details for distinguished visitors in the area.
During the exercise, American doctors, nurses, pharmacists and dentists worked with African partner militaries and provided care to more than 12,000 Ugandans.
U.S. Navy construction specialists also completed two renovation and construction projects at two schools and a hospital.
In recent years, Uganda has been subjected to armed fighting among hostile ethnic groups, rebels, armed gangs, militias and various government forces that extend across its borders. Hundreds of thousands of refugees also have settled in Uganda.
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The Virginia Museum of Transportation is continuing efforts to document the services of black men on the Norfolk and Western Railway.
The museum -- in conjunction with Norfolk Southern Railway, formerly Norfolk and Western, and the African American Railroad Workers, a group of veteran railroad employees -- is seeking profiles of any black men who worked on the railroad from 1930 to now in jobs that included laborers, blacksmiths, dining car waiters, material handlers or conductors.
The goal is to gather information for a book, "From Cotton to Silk," a compilation of blacks' progress from lower level jobs to higher paying positions.
The book also will show how black railroad workers supported their families and educated their children.
To submit profiles or for more information, call Al Holland at 362-5578; Carl Tinsley, 362-2419, or Carroll Swain, 389-8788.
