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THURSDAY, AUGUST 10, 2023
Sloss Family Members To Be Inducted into Kiwanis Business Hall of Fame
From left, Walker, Webber, David, Virginia and Camilla Moss.
One Family’s Journey of Hope Moss Family Finds Lifechanging Success With Son’s Disability at United Ability
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ometimes a journey of hope is a 3-year-old boy with Down syndrome walking with the aid of a gait trainer to his new preschool class. A friendly group of grown-ups – later identified as teachers – are standing at the door, cheering him on. “Welcome, David!” they cry out.
A journey of hope is also his mommy walking alongside him with tears in her eyes because she knows her son will be accepted here for who he is – knows this is where he can get the help he needs; this is where he can thrive. “Being part of United Ability has changed our lives,” said Camilla Moss of Mountain Brook. “The love and care that the teachers and staff feel for their children is incredible. I can-
See FAMILY, page 7
Journey of Hope 2023 Celebrates 75 Years of United Ability By June Mathews An exciting evening of celebration is in store during United Ability’s annual Journey of Hope event on Aug. 19 at UAB’s Alys Stephens Center. And what an evening it will be. After all, it’s been 75 years in the making.
See HOPE, page 7
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By June Matthews
Alie B. Gorrie is cohosting Journey of Hope on Aug. 19.
In 1871, the squalid jumble of tents, shanties and boxcars that eventually became the Magic City sat at one end of a 67-mile railroad gap in North Central Alabama between Birmingham and Decatur. That’s until a North Alabama railroad man, Col. James W. Sloss, struck a deal with the Louisville and Nashville Railroad to close that gap with rail construction that led to an explosion of development and the birth of the Sloss Furnace Company mining and steel founder Col. James W. Sloss. industry that earned Birmingham another soubriquet, Pittsburgh of the South. Sloss, who 10 years later founded Sloss Furnace Company and began construction of the city’s first blast furnace, and two of his descendants, Birmingham real estate developers A. Page Sloss Sr. and Arthur Page “Pete” Sloss Jr., will be honored Aug. 24 when they are inducted into the Kiwanis Club of Birmingham’s Business Hall of Fame. The event, the Kiwanis Club’s 25th induction, will be from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Harbert Center. Three other Hall of Famers to be honored that evening are retired UAB Health System CEO Dr. Will Ferniany, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute’s Odessa Woolfolk and the late Carrie Tuggle, who in the early 20th century See KIWANIS, page 8
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Journal photo by Jordan Wald
By Anne Ruisi