by Kelly Petryszyn and Sharon Best and photos by Tylar Sutton
Whether it’s setting the Global standard for wound care or breaking gender and racial barriers on city council, these pioneers are paving the way for a better tomorrow.
Tylar Sutton
ANNALISA S. WILLIAMS
Judge of the first Mental Health Court in Ohio
Each time a Mental Health Court participant steps before Judge Annalisa S. Williams, she says, “Tell me something good.”
Participants mutter out forced celebratory reports: Bills got paid, I got my meds and simply, I’m here.
Like an approving parent, Williams praises their progress: “I’m very proud of you. You are working hard,” and then points them to a prize box where they can take candy, books and other rewards for meeting court requirements.
These are small yet significant victories, as both parties know the gravity of what’s at stake: Each benchmark is one step closer to graduating the program and getting criminal charges dropped and one step further away from the alternative — jail.
Williams developed empathy for the mentally ill during her 12 years as a criminal defense lawyer when she often saw the mentally ill get stuck in jail. “Jails became the de facto mental health hospital, and jails were never designed to be mental health centers,” says the 61-year-old Akron resident and mother of two.
In 2005, Williams took over this 18-month-to-two-year Akron Municipal Court program, which was the first in Ohio when it started in 2001 and aims to divert from jail those with severe mental health diagnoses (bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder) who’ve been charged with misdemeanors. The program holistically equips participants with a treatment team of specialists to teach them how to manage their mental health and keep accountable to staying employed, taking medicine, repairing relationships and kicking addictions.
To help those who don’t fit in the main program, Williams added a program for individuals with psychosis and extensive criminal histories, and another program for women with trauma issues and criminal charges. Williams wants to relate to her participants personally, so for the women’s program she takes off her robe and has tea with them in plainclothes to discuss relationships and other issues relating to their charges.
“I want them to view their life as being very positive, that people care about them and there is support out there,” Williams says.
Her efforts with the Mental Health Court are working. The success rate for completing the program is estimated to be 65 to 70 percent. And as one of five learning sites designated by the Bureau of Justice and Assistance and the Council of State Governments, Williams’ court trains others to start mental health court programs. Now there are 44 other Ohio Supreme Court-certified programs.
Williams works overtime to do Mental Health Court in addition to her regular OVI, criminal and civil dockets. But she does so gladly, as Mental Health Court is her mission field, where she is rewarded by seeing people get their life on track.
“When you have an opportunity to see them grow and blossom and take responsibility for their own health, it’s wonderful,” she says.
Tylar Sutton
CHERYL CARVER
First Wound Care Certified Licensed Practical Nurse in the U.S.
When Cheryl Carver was 8 years old, she sat at the kitchen table filling syringes for her diabetic mother. At 15, she was accompanying her home health aide mother on patient visits. “She was an excellent home health aide: She taught me Caregiver 101,” Carver says.
Still her road to becoming one of the most highly respected wound care nurses in the country was a circuitous one. She joined the U.S. Army right out of high school and became a cook.
Stationed in Germany at the age of 20, just married and pregnant with her first child, Carver’s life seemed to be on track for a storybook future. Then her mother had a stroke. “I got the phone call, and it changed everything,” she says.
An only child, Carver applied for a compassionate discharge, and she came home to become her mother’s full-time caregiver. Helping change her mother’s bepan and noticing bedsores and diabetic wounds sparked a new career possibility in Carver’s mind. “I miss her, but I feel like I have a purpose now, and it’s all because of her,” she says.
After her mother died at age 47 — from complications connected to amputations and pressure ulcers due to diabetes — Carver enrolled in the Akron School of Practical Nursing, graduating in 2000 as a licensed practical nurse. Her passion for wound care led her in a direction no one else had taken.
“When I first started wound care, I felt so alone,” she says. Researching options for LPNs and wound care, Carver found few resources until she contacted the Wound Care Education Institute, who said they were starting a new certification program that would admit those like her without a full bachelor’s degree. She got into the very first class and became the first LPN in the United States to become Wound Care Certified in 2003.
Since then, some 30,000 other nurses have obtained the certification, often with help from the educational materials and classes she has developed. Carver has since amassed other credentials, including national preceptor for the National Alliance of Wound Care and Ostomy. From her very first job at Cuyahoga Falls Country Place nursing home, where she voluntarily instituted a wound care program for the facility, she has helped others find the best way to treat wounds.
But it wasn’t until she was hired by a national company as a program director that she was able to really affect change in her industry. “It is unheard of for an LPN to be a program director; you usually have to have a bachelor’s degree,” she says.
“I trained 53 physicians across the United States from here to Beverly Hills.”
With only one year of formal schooling, Carver knows the power balance of training nurses and doctors could be an issue, but she meets that challenge as she has so many others. “I respect them and [I] validate my expertise,” she says. “[Physicians] only get two percent education in their residency on wound care. There’s so much more to this than just slapping a bandage on something; there’s over 6,000 dressings.”
Now as the full-time clinical specialist for American Medical Technologies, Carver continues to accompany doctors and nurses on rounds at 42 regional locations, educating them on the latest wound care methodologies. In her part-time weekend gig as a medical writer for WoundSource — the leading clinically reviewed resource guide for wound care products and procedures — she writes blogs and other educational materials that are disseminated worldwide.
With this combination, Carver says she has found the right outlet for her passion. “I finally feel complete,” she says. “I’ve made a mark for LPNs; this is my calling. I’m ready to hustle Monday morning every time. If I can heal another wound or educate another person, it’s so rewarding.”
Tylar Sutton
RENEE POWELL
First African-American female member of the PGA of America
Renee Powell had her first experience with racism in third grade. She had played with two girls every day on the playground, and then suddenly, they saw the color of her skin.
They told her they couldn’t play with her anymore because their parents said she was “colored.” She cried and began to understand that as an African-American child growing up in the segregated ‘50s, others would discriminate against her. Yet there was one place they couldn’t get to her: the green.
“Golf was something I could play and nobody bothered me. I didn’t have anybody saying nasty things because it was just me, the golf club and the golf ball out with nature,” says Powell, who would hit 500 to 1,000 golf balls a day as a teenager to perfect her skills.
Golf was not just a diversion. It was in her blood. Her father, Bill Powell, is in history books for being the only African-American — ever — to design, build, own and operate a golf course, Clearview Golf Club in East Canton. In the mid-1940s when Bill returned from World War II, he was barred from the PGA and denied access to many Ohio golf courses because the PGA had a “Caucasian-only” clause until 1961. So he hand-seeded an old dairy farm and turned it into “America’s Course,” a National Register of Historic Places landmark where everyone could play, and Powell’s home.
At just 3, Powell learned golf from her father, and at 16 she was the first black girl to play in the U.S. Girls’ Junior Golf Championship, which she calls “the U.S. Open for girls.”
“Golf is not a minority-oriented sport. My parents had to fight to get me into tournaments. My family made sacrifices so that I could do things,” she says.
In 1967, she became the second African-American to play on the LPGA tour and then competed in more than 250 global tournaments over 13 years. Her travels were unnerving, as racial tensions flared. Hotels “lost” her reservations, restaurants refused to serve her and colleagues had to vouch for her to get in locker rooms. She even got death threat letters. Calls to her parents kept her going.
“My dad said, ‘Everybody has obstacles they run into in life. You can’t give up,’ ” she says.
Like her dad, her perseverance through discrimination turned her into a historymaker. She swung through barriers, becoming the first woman to be named head pro at a golf course in the United Kingdom and, with her father, becoming the only father-daughter pair to be inducted into the PGA of America Hall of Fame.
The current head LPGA/PGA pro at Clearview is grateful her father paved the way for her, so she works tirelessly to continue his legacy of diversifying golf.
“We all stand on the shoulders of those who came before us,” she says.
She’s taught golf to inner-city youth, students at black colleges, seniors in adult day care centers, has done a USO trip to Vietnam and has hosted 25-plus golf clinics in Africa. Still, at 72, she focuses on girls’ programs and women’s leagues at Clearview, especially her Clearview H.O.P.E. program. It’s the only cost-free program of its kind that uses golf as therapy for women veterans in the U.S.
“I remember one of the first times one of the ladies hit the ball and got it airborne,” Powell recalls. “She goes, ‘That was so empowering.’ Because she did it.”
Of the many milestones that Powell has scored, being honored in St. Andrews, Scotland — the 600-year-old birthplace of golf — has been most sacred. Becoming the first African-American female golfer to receive an honorary doctorate from the University of St. Andrews, having a dorm at the University of St. Andrews named Powell Hall, and being one of the first seven female members of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club has cemented her worldwide legacy as a golf pioneer. In the end, she’s thankful she found solace on the links.
“I look back on the 8-year-old child who was absolutely crushed,” she says, “and then I look at where my life has gone and what it has become just because my dad taught me very well how to hit a little golf ball — wow.”
Tylar Sutton
LISA KOHLER
First Female Medical Examiner in Ohio
Recently, Dr. Lisa Kohler spoke on the phone with a father whose adult son had died. The father wanted to know what had taken his son and whether he could have done anything. As the Summit County Medical Examiner, Kohler had done the autopsy.
“I was able to explain to him what happened and that it was unlikely that it would have been caught had he sought medical treatment,” she says. “That helped [him] understand what exactly happened and why all of a sudden he’s going through funeral arrangements instead of planning to go to the ballgame. Having at least that one piece of the puzzle in place helped him move forward through the grieving process.”
Solving puzzles was what drew Kohler to study forensics at a young age. Her mother was a nurse, so she was familiar with the medical field and planned to study biology in college. After reaching out to Dr. William Cox, the Summit County coroner at the time, and completing two summer internships in his office, Kohler switched her major to pre-med and embarked on the path to becoming the first female medical examiner in Ohio.
Voters in the 1995 general election approved Summit County’s change from an elected coroner to an appointed medical examiner, with Kohler the second to fill the role in 2001 at age 34.
Now a mother of three, Kohler has seen changes in her field over 17 years. The opioid crisis has been a particularly challenging puzzle for her and her colleagues. Deaths from overdose began to increase in 2013 and peaked in 2016, just as her toxicologist developed an assay to identify the presence of carfentanil. “The constant onslaught of overdose deaths can wear you down,” Kohler says. “Thankfully the cases that get under my skin are few and far between.”
One such case involved a teenager who died in a drag racing accident right after obtaining his driver’s license. Kohler’s oldest son was 10 or 11 at the time. “I remember going home that night and talking to my son,” she says. “I didn’t elaborate, just that the child made a bad decision and because of that, he is dead and now his mom and dad can’t tuck him in and give him a kiss goodnight. Then we talked about making good choices.”
Despite its macabre aspects, Kohler takes every opportunity to encourage other women to consider the field she has pioneered. “I let women know especially that this is a good field to be in if you want to have a family,” she says. “The hours are pretty regular, [and] we are readily accepted in the field. Others took time to keep me moving in this direction, and I try to pay it forward.”
Tylar Sutton
MARGO SOMMERVILLE
First African-American female president of Akron City Council
Just a few years shy of the city’s bicentennial, Akron has its first female African-American president of City Council. Margo Sommerville took over the Ward 3 seat in 2013 when her father, Marco — who had held the position for some 30 years — became planning director. She began her two-year term as president in January 2018 after a unanimous vote from the council.
Though it sounds like a dynastic takeover, neither father nor daughter expected her to pursue the seat. “I knew the sacrifice, the passion and the sweat equity that he had put into that district, and I couldn’t think of anyone else who could appreciate that and not only maintain that but take it to the next level,” she says.
Sommerville was taught the importance of service as a child. The eldest of four children, she remembers packing up toys to give to needy families, serving Christmas meals at Haven of Rest Ministries and being in political parades and community events with her family.
She got her first taste of public service when she sat on the board of the East Akron Community House.
“That was my first opportunity to see the dynamics of communities planning strategies to address the needs that neighborhoods were facing,” she says.
Also the vice president and funeral director of her family’s business, Sommerville Funeral Services, Sommerville sees crossover between these two parts of her life. “We talk at City Council about the importance not only of gun safety but of getting guns off the street,” she says. “Then you actually have to meet with that mother who now has to bury their 17-year-old son due to gun violence.”
This direct contact with constituents and their lives keeps Sommerville focused on the importance of her position and the legacy it entails. “I’m trying to follow in my dad’s footsteps. His feet are pretty big, but I’m doing it in stilettos,” she says. As president, she plans to focus on equality by making sure people’s voices are heard, keeping neighborhoods in the discussion and bringing the Council together to serve the whole city.
Sommerville is excited to be a part of “the year of the woman” and to be a role model for all girls and young women — but there’s one 3-year-old she is particularly proud to mentor: her daughter. “My parents never tried to push me in one direction or the other, but they always supported whatever decision I made,” she says. “I want to do the same exact thing for Peyton. Whatever it is that she wants to do in life, I want to be there to support her.”
