Clark County celebs to dance for charity - Springfield News Sun

By Tom Stafford, Staff Writer 10:40 PM Saturday, March 20, 2010

Glass slippers will not be the footwear of choice April 16 at the second annual Dancing with the Clark County Celebrities benefit.

But when Lisa Holmes takes to the floor of the Champions Center at the Clark County Fairgrounds, she’ll add a chapter to what she calls “my little Cinderella story” involving the Warder Literacy Center.

Now chairman of the board she’ll represent in the contest to raise money for nonprofit agencies, she said walking in its door was “one of the hardest things I did in my life.”

At age 32, after her second child was born and at her husband’s urging, Holmes went to get help with her reading.

“I have a double dose of dyslexia,” said Holmes. “I was diagnosed about 5 and then put in the special classes. I also had ADHD.”

As so often happens, once the weight of stigma was piled on heartbreak of repeated school failure, “I really got bored and embarrassed and ashamed,” she said.

Only the love of family and friends kept her from the difficult path walked by so many who are rejected as failures.

Said Holmes, “It could have been pretty ugly.”

“I was handed a high school diploma,” she said, but once in the real world, “I found out I was in big trouble.

Discouraged by what she describes as “the big hole” in her education, she became a hair stylist, a job “I really loved” because of the stories from her “really loyal, wonderful, amazing clientele.”

Then she walked through the Literacy Center’s doors.

“First of all, what helped was knowing I’m not alone,” she said. “And then what really worked was the Stevenson Method,” a tutoring approach for dyslexic children.

It helped her as a student. Then when tutoring another struggling reader, she said, “the light bulbs were going off for her and for me.”

“She’s a very teachable person,” said David Smiddy, executive director of the Literacy Center, attributes he said “go a long way” in making progress.

So did an observation her mother made, Holmes said.

“She told me, 'You’re not a writer. You know what you are, Lisa? A storyteller.’ ”

Holmes then learned storytelling, which she now does with the Clark County Waste Management District and at Young’s Jersey Dairy during the Halloween season.

“She’s found her niche in literacy,” Smiddy said.

She’s found a niche, too, telling her own story to students. After doing so to a fourth grade class, she said, “Four girls came up to me and said they have the same problem.”

“I said, 'This is where I need to be and this is what I need to be doing,’” she said.

Which is why she’ll be dancing come April 16.

Arlin Par Roliver

To Arlin Par Tolliver, music and drama are forms of communication and expression, methods for channeling anger and other energy, vehicles for connecting people and “a family building tool as well.”

For those reasons, Tolliver is dancing for Musicka, the music, theater, photography and art program he founded that provides after-school enrichment programs for students and adults.

“I feel like a lot has been taken out of the schools in those areas,” he said. “This is a way we’re able to be an outreach organization but an arm of the schools.”

At 51, Tolliver sees it as a another art form he can enjoy.

Debbie Finkes

Debbie Finkes isn’t thinking of herself as a comedy act. But the superintendent of the Clark-Shawnee Schools said her daughter, Angie, plans to fly in from North Carolina to watch her because “she thinks it’s absolutely hilarious that her mother is dancing.”

Finkes will represent Think Tank, Inc., the anti-poverty organization that has provided workshops for her staff “to heighten our awareness of inter-generational poverty. I really respect the organization.”

Although she’s paired with D. Scot Davidge, the director of the Ohio Performing Arts Institute, “I am seriously panicked” about the dancing, Finkes said.

Rob Kampman

A good father dances to the music of his children’s lives. For that reason, Rob Kampman will dance for the Ohio Performing Arts Institute.

“Lauren, my oldest, has taken ballet and voice here since she was 4,” he said. That led her to roles in “The Nutcracker,” “Seussical” and “Music Man.”

Now in her second year of ballet, the Kampman’s 5-year-old daughter, Emily, appears to be following in her sister’s dancing shoes.

“When my wife said ‘yes’ for me, I was apprehensive to say the least,” Kampman said about dancing. “Now that we’re here and I know I don’t have two left feet (even though they’re size 13) I feel more comfortable.”

“I’m a funeral director, so this is a little out of my comfort zone,” said Kampman, who is 47.

Alison North

Alison North says she has “no ballroom experience.”

But as a teacher of Zumba and Masla Bhangra, forms of Spanish and Indian dance, she brings a sense of rhythm and movement to the event â€" along with a sense of dedication to her agency, the Children’s Rescue Center.

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