Niki Bishop is the program director at Metropolitan Ministries. Bishop manages the grocery store program, which provides food to anyone in need.
Niki Bishop is the Program Director at Metropolitan Ministries’ Impact Hub on Rossville Boulevard. The Impact Hub is a conglomerate for many different community resources all under one roof, giving help to those in need.
Bishop manages the grocery store program at MetMin. Funded through a grant from the Lyndhurst Foundation, the store provides a wide variety of fresh food and essentials once a month to anyone who needs it, no questions asked.
Frances McDonald shows off a self portrait made by a participant in the Mark Making program. Chattanooga, TN. Wednesday October 25th, 2023. Photo by Caleb McCool.
For inmates housed at Hamilton County Jail, previously named Silverdale Detention Center, one small mark drawn on a page can be the key to improving mental health during incarceration and lowering the rate of reoffense. Mark Making, founded by local artist Frances McDonald, is one of many organizations that work hard to reduce the recidivism among inmates.
Hayden Morgan (left) plays shortstop alongside Luca Hyde (right). Saturday, October 28, 2023. (Photo by Noah Camacho)
Cheering and laughter fill the baseball field as smells of burgers on the grill cloud the air. The athletes excitedly make their way to the diamond with smiles stretching across their faces as their loved ones watch from the stands.
The Miracle League of Chattanooga is an organization providing those with disabilities the unique opportunity to play the game of baseball and build connections while experiencing the thrill of competition.
“The community needs to know that the Miracle League is out there, because there are people out there who need the Miracle League,” said Kim Chapman Whitfield, president and co-founder of the Miracle League of Chattanooga.
“The Miracle League is joy,” Chapman Whitfield said. “The ‘Miracle’ part about it is getting to see those kids play and not feel inhibited, picked on, [or] bullied.”
Originating in Atlanta and now consisting of 200 leagues in three different countries, the Miracle League is an organization open to people of all ages with any kind of disability. The Chattanooga league was formed in September of 2017.
“Miracle League is my heart,” Chapman Whitfield said.
After walking around campus, Becky Grose scratches Blue’s ears. Blue was a shelter dog at the time of this photo. Grose introduced him to many other students on campus. Wednesday, April 12, 2023. (Photo by Ali Lemmons).
Becky Grose, a senior at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, did not know her day would be filled with walks, car rides, and belly rubs—that is, until she found herself checking out a dog named Blue at the McKamey Animal Center.
Blue is just one of more than 100 dogs at the McKamey Animal Center patiently waiting for their forever home. The shelter is so overcrowded that they are currently operating over their maximum capacity, according to the center’s website.
While they wait, dogs can quickly become stressed and overwhelmed in the crowded shelters. Luckily, the staff at McKamey provide a great solution—the Trailblazer program.
The Coolidge Park Carousel makes rounds with its 52 hand-carved animals daily. Monday, April 17, 2023. (Photo by Caroline Colvin)
Settled in the heart of Chattanooga’s Northshore neighborhood is Coolidge Park’s antique carousel. For $1, those of all ages can ride the carousel, taking in its unique design.
The carousel’s journey to Coolidge park began in Pennsylvania where it was constructed in 1894. Shortly after, it was transported to New York state. Many years later, following an unclear path of transportation, the carousel pieces were brought to Chattanooga by Bud Ellis to be restored.
The Coolidge carousel is a Dentzel model, thus it follows much of the vintage designs of the famous German carousel builder, Gustav Dentzel.
Bud Ellis was the owner of Chattanooga’s Horsin’ Around woodcarving school, which is now owned and operated by Larry Ridge. Ridge carves many animals himself, and also has a team and students that he teaches at the school.
Valdemar Ibarra and Carmen Torres prepare the grill and prep area for a customers order. The couple has cooked to order upon request since their restaurant’s inception in 2012. Wednesday April 19, 2023. (Photo by Cassandra Castillo)
Natives of Michoacan, Mexico, Carmen Torres and Valdemar Ibarra have been living their American Dream cooped up inside their small orange-painted restaurant nestled within the busy Amnicola Highway.
“All the people from Chattanooga, from Hixson, Redbank, Dunlap, Dayton who are all customers, many of them friends because we were eager to have family, eager to have friends, so we have many friendships now,” Ibarra said.
He was a businessman from his days in Mexico, but left that behind when he arrived in the U.S. as an immigrant in 1992. Ibarra began working in California but found no steady income, so he moved to the Chattanooga area, where his cousin resided, not long after.
For kids, adults and seniors alike, there’s no substitute for the wonder and delight of winding through a model railroad’s path of track and town. The Tennessee Valley Model Railroaders, inc., (TVMRi) hand-painted eight real settlements along their custom-made track, which runs passengers and cargo from the rolling hills of eastern Kentucky to its riverside stop near Lookout Mountain.
The group’s president, Nick Giordano, personally connected miles of wires and assembled dozens of houses.
“Well, like most kids, as a little boy I was into model trains,” Giordano joked. “And then you get a little older, and you discover girls and cars and model trains go away.”
A Little Bookish is a portable library truck that’s promoting the benefits of reading to people around the Chattanooga area. Once an elementary school teacher from Michigan, owner Miranda Atkins, is now making a difference in her own unique way—one page at a time.
Often sitting in the driver seat of her white step van, Miranda Atkins flips through the pages of her latest novel, waiting for a customer to walk onto her teal steps in search of a new read.
Atkins, the owner of A Little Bookish, thrives on selling books simply out of her love for reading.
Joe “Dixie” Fuller prepares his peach cobbler for his family restaurant Zarzour’s. Sunday, November 20, 2022. (Photo by Hannah Blair Hurt)
Walking through the door of Zarzour’s Cafe on Chattanooga’s Southside feels a bit like walking into a time capsule containing four generations of Zarzour family history, owners of the small brick building for over 100 years. The shelves and walls are adorned with an array of heirlooms and memorabilia, from family photos, celebrity autographs and newspaper clippings to Charles Zarzour’s naturalization papers from 1946, signed in Arabic.
Sadie McElrath fills her jar of beans while holding her baby Zion as her two daughters Jubilee and Shalom help her collect groceries in the process. Thursday, November 10, 2022. (Photo by Kylee Boone).
The average American throws out approximately 4.9 pounds of trash per day, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency. For nearly half a decade, married couple Sadie and Zach McElrath have striven to defy this statistic through a journey toward producing zero waste within their family of five.
The journey began when the two were listening to the radio and heard of someone who was working toward that same goal.
“I heard this college student can fit all her trash for our whole year into a single jar,” Sadie McElrath said.
