I first met Missouri in 1990 when she was a young struggling designer doing alterations on the side to support her family. She did a few alterations for me and we became good friends. She invited me to a fashion show that she was putting on and I decided to go.
I’ve been to many fashion shows but to a certain extent, they are basically all the same. There is usually lots of pretty clothes, pretty colors, pretty models, one down the runway, and one up the runway. As the show was about to begin, I settled in and straightened up in my chair so as to make sure I stayed alert.
Well all these years later, I would still have to advise anyone planning on attending a Missouri production, bring your seat belts. That’s right, bring your seat belts. I can still remember the excitement and applause in that room. The audience was on their feet after each and every scene. Yes, I said scene because it was so much more than pretty models parading up and down the runway. It was a theatrical performance. I, and everyone else in that room was blown away. It was breathtaking.
Through the years our paths kept crossing at various times and I followed much of her shows and her growth. But that is only a small part of the story. This is the kernel of my story that I will always remember.
I’ve been a “Go for your Dream” cheerleader all my life as I’ve made clear in my Day Dreams in Focus program. However with Missouri her DREAMS went so far beyond the probable, it totally amazed me. Back when I met her, she wasn’t just a single mother, she was a struggling single mother, but to my knowledge, she never, never, never once lost site of her Dreams.
NOT ONCE!
Not only was she determined and focused but she was tremendously talented and creative.
BIG TIME!
At one point she won Designer of the Year and she won a trip to Paris. However in spite of that life altering event, life also kept throwing her curve ball after curve ball! It was as though something was determined to crush and derail her DREAMS!
Through the years I followed her career more or less but as time went by, we drifted in and out of each other’s lives. At one point I had heard from her children and mutual friends about her having Breast cancer. I said prayers for her and sent messages of getting well, but we never actually got together around that time.
During her recuperation, we met briefly a couple of times, and she explained that she was having a another fashion show as part of a fund raiser and she asked me if I would write a speech for her.
She explained that because of what she had gone through during her own cancer battle, she was trying to raise money to start construction on a building that would be a safe haven for other woman struggling with Breast Cancer. A place they could go for support, comfort, resources, and services and she wanted to call it…
“A Place Called Home” (APCH)
By this time her fashion shows were slowly becoming legendary and she was even more determined to make them successful in order to finance this new DREAM. I have this thing about trying to describe people by using a minimum of two to three words. In Missouri’s case, “creative, passionate tenacity” comes to mind, and even that only touches the tip of who she is. She has this Magnolia Steel strength, a quiet strength but forceful.
So I wrote her a speech called “6 Degrees of Separation.” The speech dealt with the fact that every person in that hall was only 6 Degrees away from cancer. All of them either knew someone, was related to someone, went to school with someone, worked for someone, taught someone, or they themselves were dealing with it.
As usual her show was excellent, the audience LOVED it. However, even though I had written the speech, I didn’t pay too much attention to it. I thought I had done a good job in trying to empathize with anyone dealing with TAZ, but at the time I was not emotionally attached to the words. You see my own cancer battle was not yet even on the horizon. Mine was to appear years later so although I tried to relate, I wasn’t even close.
So many of the people listening to the speech that night were or had been dealing with cancer on a very personal level. WOW, like they say, you have to “walk in someone’s shoes” before you can really relate. Today the words in that speech would ring different bells in my head than it did that night. You see, now that I’ve walked a “mile” with TAZ, the speech has an all new meaning. I plan to post the speech at a later date.
After the show Missouri and I drifted apart again. It wasn’t until late 2016 and something brought Missouri and I back together. Again we got together for lunch, and well to her credit, and no surprise to me, that pit bull “tenacity” has not wavered one single bit. Her quiet demeanor and fierce strength has a way of inspiring other people, and don’t let that “tenacity” get a hold of you, because then you’re done.
Today her determination is stronger than ever. Not only is she still determined to get “A Place Called Home” built, she has devised a method to come up with the initial financing.
During her long recuperation period, she reasoned that if the Lord had decided to keep her around a little longer, there had to be a good reason. So even before she was legitimately on her feet, she went to work with what she knows best. Fashion, Style and Entertainment and thus “Styletainment the Show” was born.
Using her God given, skills, talent, creativity and her best asset of all, “tenacity”, she decided to kick her shows up a notch to a completely new level. The result is phenonmenal.
But instead of my trying to explain in words the wonderment of her production, I suggest you log onto her site,
www.styletainmenttheshow.com and see for yourself.
For those of you in the NJ area, I think you should make any and all efforts to see the show live on Sunday November 5, 2017 at the South Orange Performing Arts Center. (SOPAC)
I guarantee you will leave wanting more.
Based on all this information, I believe we can safely say that
Missouri has earned the title of a……..
“THRIVING SURVIVOR!”
“When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this: you haven’t.
Thomas Edison