•Residence: Houston
•Birthday: Oct. 19.
•Occupation: Texas County community wellness coordinator for Healthy Schools Healthy Communities.
•Family members: Son Devin Stoops (and wife Autumn, son Noah and daughter Adaleigh) of Houston; daughter Marley Stoops of Houston; brothers Keith, Joe, Tom, Larry and the late Robert Mainer, all of Texas County; late husband David Stoops; late parents Earl and Margie Mainer.
•Education: Graduate of Houston High School.
•Pets: 16-year-old schnauzer named Chainsaw. “His name came from when we were putting up a Christmas tree not long after we got him. He grabbed hold of the butt of the tree and started growling like a chainsaw. We got him away and we went to do it again and he did the same thing. My son said, ‘that sounds just like a chainsaw.’ We hadn’t named him yet, and that’s how he got his name.”
•Favorite food: Fried pork chops, sweet slaw and fried potatoes. “My family originated in the South. We’re a meat-and-potatoes people.”
•Favorite ice cream flavor: Pecan praline.
•Favorite thing to cook: Yeast rolls. “And I have a homemade barbecue sauce I put on meat loaf and things like that.”
•Least favorite food: Sauerkraut. “Because it’s sour.”
•Chinese food – fork or chopsticks: Fork. “I can use chopsticks, but it takes me forever and I want to eat fast.”
•Best place I ever ate at: “Koi Roll” in Rolla. “They cook right in front of you. That was probably my best eating experience – and the food was really good.”
•My favorite activity: Sitting by a fire pit at night and talking with people. “That is absolutely my favorite thing to do. Social aspects are so getting away from us.”
•Number of states I’ve set foot in: Seven.
•Places I’d most like to visit: Wyoming, Montana and Italy.
•Favorite kind of music: The Blues. “If there was Christian blues, that would probably be my favorite.”
•Favorite musical artists: Jason Crabb, The Eagles. “I loved the Eagles when I was growing up. They’re my all-time favorite group. I don’t think their harmonies or their music have ever been duplicated. I never saw them live, but I would love to have gone to one of their concerts.”
•Favorite movie: “When Harry Met Sally.” “It’s just an all-time great love story about two people, and it’s not blown so out of proportion that you can’t believe it.”
•Favorite TV show: “Andy Griffith.” “It shows a life everybody kind of wishes we actually lived. And everybody wants a Barney Fife in their life.”
•Favorite actor or actress: Nicolas Cage. “He’s an outstanding actor and I’ve love everything I’ve ever seen him in. Going by looks, it would be Jean-Claude Van Damme back in the day.”
•Favorite animal park animal: “Any one that doesn’t stick its head in the window and try to eat my face off.”
•Least favorite animal: Poodle. “The only reason being they don’t like me for some reason. I would love them if they like me. When I was younger, one tried to eat my leg off and I hadn’t done anything wrong. Another time, I was working at Doc Keeney’s grooming animals, and this poodle had to be 50 years old and only one tooth. I was grooming it and it bit me with its one tooth. That dog was lethal. I told Doc Keeney, ‘you’re either going to have to sedate this dog, or me or both of us.’ He just about died laughing, but he gave the dog just enough sedation that I could finish. I think I quit a couple of weeks later, probably the next time someone got an appointment for a poodle.”
•Favorite plant: Peony.
•Favorite tree: Dogwood. “It’s so neat to look in the leaf of a dogwood and see the cross and what looks like a little spot of blood.”
•Favorite school subjects: Math and biology.
•Least favorite school subject: English and history. “Now I want to know about history, but back then it bored me to tears.”
•A big pet peeve: Rude and selfish people. “It’s really hard to watch people think of nothing but themselves. I know we all can be somewhat selfish at times, but I’m talking about people who are really all about themselves.”
•Influential people in my life (other than parents): Maurice Allen. “He was a preacher at Central Baptist Church, just up from my house. I went to that church for about 17 years.” Laura Ford. “She was a preacher’s wife and was totally a Proverbs 31 woman. She told it like it was and she taught me that a woman’s role is very important.”
•A memorable moment: “If there ever was a bump in the night, my husband David always knew what it was. I’d say, ‘what was that?’ He’d say, ‘the cat jumped off the counter,’ or ‘the house is creaking,’ or ‘the hot water heater.’ But one night, I heard the strange, awesome noise – one of those that brings you straight up out of bed. I said ‘honey, what was that?’ He said, ‘I don’t know.’ I was like, ‘you don’t know?’ Go find out what it was!’ He said, ‘no.’ He had never told me no. I was like, ‘are you kidding? Fine!’ I threw back the covers and went to see what it was. I got to the bedroom door and behind me I hear this indescribable laughter – the kind where you know he was crying he was laughing so hard. It turned out he had farted. It was incredible – this huge, loud noise and I was like, ‘what makes a noise like that?’ I was so mad. I came back to the bed and was smacking him.”
•A surprising fact about me: “I take things really personal, and I’m not as strong as I put out that I am. I really do probably care too much about what people think.”
JUST SAYIN’…
•Regarding what Healthy Schools Healthy Communities does: “Even though HSHC has been in Texas County for several years and is in its second year in Houston, I realize a lot of people still don’t know what it’s about. The main goal of HSHC is to reduce the childhood obesity rate by 5-percent over a five-year period. What HSHC is about is trying to bring children to a healthy weight and help teach them how to stay there. The way to do that is to provide them ways to become active, whether it’s playground equipment, activities, events, programs or ergonomic change. If you’re a kid who lives in a place where there’s nothing fun to do like play on a piece of playground equipment or workout equipment, or go skating or bowling or whatver it might be, whose fault is that? The parents? No, it’s the community because there’s nothing like that available outside of school. For years, if a child is overweight the parents have taken all the blame, But it’s not necessarily all the parents’ fault if a community doesn’t offer any way for that child to be active.
We also are going to offer nutrition classes, because if a child doesn’t know how to eat right and what not eating right can do to their bodies, then I’m concerend that they’ll going to leave home and eat fast-food for breakfast, lunch and dinner because it’s so cheap and easy. That’s not a good thing to be doing.”
•What Houston will be like in five years: “I hope we will be more interested in our youth. I feel like we’ve put our youth on the back burner and kind of forgotten them. It’s time for that to change. They have nothing to do here; we had a chance to get a youth center here in the early 2000s and it went bye-bye and I still don’t understand why. That’s something we really need to consider, and we’re surrounded by Cabool, Licking, Success, Evening Shade and Summersville, and I think if we built something nice, they would come from those places, too. If we could get everybody on the same page and get maybe get several grant writers together, we might be able to get five grants together and pull that off.”