By LESLIE GIBSON
From the laughter and voices spilling out from the “Blue Room” of City Hall Saturday, the first Royse City Health Fair sounded healthy indeed.
Inside, sugar packets dangled from a fruit yogurt carton, scents uplifted an area where the local lavender farmers sold items, a youngster tossed bean bags through holes, and representatives of services from dentistry to weight loss offered trinkets and brief summaries.
Friendliness was the common denominator.
Brittany McWhorter, lifelong resident, with Paul’s Chiropractic, said her favorite thing about working in the business of 15 years is helping people. “I love seeing people come in and get better,” she said.
TOPS (Take Off Pounds Sensibly), was described as a family, by new member Cathy Deathridge, who worked the non-profit organization’s booth Saturday, along with area captain Willie Bird, and fellow member Peggy Barker.
“If some didn’t lose weight, we just say, ‘I’m glad you’re here’. We don’t judge,” Deathridge said. The companionship helps each individual follow their own weight loss program, the three said.
Bird joined in 1962 in North Carolina and lost 100 pounds. For 23 years she has kept the weight off. “Losing weight is hard work,” she said. “It is frustrating at times but with TOPS you get the support that you need,” she said.
Support for the elderly is one thing noticed by June Hand, who with her family, started Purple Ranch, a lavender farm.
She and her husband are faithful attendees at the Royse City Senior Center lunches and she said Royse City people take care of each other, especially the older folks.
Sharing her table Saturday was Margie Verhagen, executive director of Rockwall County Committee on Aging.
Verhagen said she had just been thanked by the Emergency Medical Services personnel of Rockwall County, for a new program: “Vial of Life.” In the program, a red sticker is affixed to the front door of an elderly person, and that same sticker is attached to the refrigerator with a plastic sleeve containing that resident’s pertinent medical information. EMS had just used the information Saturday morning in a call, she said. About 100 county wide are signed up, half of those in Royse City.
Meals on wheels, support services, and, information and help on the upcoming changes in benefits are other services the group provides Rockwall County.
Hand said she loves Royse CIty, and wouldn’t live anywhere else, she tells everyone.
That is a lot of telling. She, her husband Cliff, and daughter Brenda, along with other family members are out many weekends of the year all over state setting up their Purple Ranch booth at festivals and also as a charter member of the newly created Texas Lavender Association.
The association will work with the Texas Department of Agriculture to recognize lavender farming as a real farm, and the farmers can cooperate for grant money. Lavender farming is labor-intensive, they noted, much by hand. The children pitched in to harvest lavender in July, after they surprised their parents with an anniversary trip to France to see the “miles and miles” of lavender fields.
“They don’t make equipment to do the work,” Brenda noted. She and her father and her husband have put together by hand literally thousands of little burlap bags containing lavender plant pieces which June grinds up.
That number is in response to their rodent repellent “Pest-A-Away” being featured in the May issue of “Health” magazine.
“God had really blessed us,” Brenda said.
Another scented area was that of She Saponifies. Jessie Rodriguez of Royse City sells homemade soaps and bamboo cloth diapers. Her 15-year-old son Dane, visited with Jana Hebron, one of the event’s organizers, and owner of Jana’s Jym in Royse City.
They talked about the fat content in a hamburger — 26 grams. “Some hamburgers are 1,000 calories,” Hebron said.
Shapes of typical fast-food items were made of a gel-like substance, as a tactile way to indicate that those foods have a lot of fat. “It’s so grosse, but it’s what most people base their entire diet off of,” said 16-year-old Rae Heid, who works at Jana’s Jym.
Ellie and Logan Weir were learning nutrition as well; their mother Jennifer brought them out just for that.
“I learned there are nine packets of sugar in an 8-oz. yogurt,” she said as she looked through a display of every-day products, to which were attached streamers of sugar packets to indicate their sugar content. Don and Joan Criswell, sellers of Juice Plus, had the display out.
Attached to the Gatorade bottle were 10 packets; to the Hershey bar, seven.
“I put two packages in my tea,” Ellie said.
