by Mark Smiley | May 25, 2018 | Feature Story Bottom Left
by Mark Smiley
Gold Medal: The Bull & Bush accepted the Gold Medal for their Big Ben Brown Ale at the 2018 World Beer Cup award ceremony on May 3, 2018. Photo © Brewers Association
Bragging Rights: Gabe Moline, Master Brewer at the Bull & Bush is proud of the recent Gold Medal for Big Ben Brown Ale. He now boasts the best brown ale in the world until the next competition in 2020.
The Bull & Bush Brewery, a staple in Glendale for 47 years, competed in the 2018 World Beer Cup in Nashville, Tenn., and brought home the Gold Medal in the English Brown Ale category at the May 3, 2018, ceremony. It is the fifth World Beer Cup Gold Medal the Bull & Bush has won since they started brewing beer in 1997.
“What’s really important is winning consistently,” said Erik Peterson, co-owner of the Bull & Bush. “Winning an award on a consistent basis is huge.”
“There are a lot of guys in that room just wanting to get something,” said Gabe Moline, Master Brewer at the Bull & Bush. “Everybody works hard on their beers.”
The World Beer Cup is sponsored by The Brewers Association (BA), the not-for-profit trade association dedicated to small and independent American craft brewers. The ceremony which is held every two years is the largest competition to date; the awards were presented at the conclusion of the Craft Brewers Conference & BrewExpo America® at Music City Center in Nashville.
Breweries from 15 countries received medals and the average number of beers entered per category was 82 (up from 69 in 2016). In 2018, 295 judges came from 33 countries and 72% of the judges came from outside the United States. 28% of the judges came from the U.S. On top of that, there were 101 categories of beer in the competition.
8,234 beers from 2,515 breweries entered the competition. Brewers were allowed to enter four beers. The Bull & Bush faced competition from over 90 other breweries and after not winning any medals for the other three beers entered, they knew they had one more chance at a medal before being annou
Best in the World: The Big Ben Brown Ale has been brewed at the Bull & Bush for almost 20 years. It picked up a Gold Medal at the 2018 World Beer Cup in Nashville.
nced the winner of the Gold Medal.
“The competition is getting so big and any kind of award is truly stunning anymore,” said Peterson. Since winning, requests have come in from tap houses to carry the gold medal beer. Big Ben Brown Ale is bottled and sold in local liquor stores.
For more information on the World Beer Cup, visit worldbeercup.org and for the Bull & Bush, visit bullandbush.com. Their brewery is located in the village of Glendale at 4700 Cherry Creek Drive South.
by Mark Smiley | May 25, 2018 | General Featured
Glendale Barnes & Noble Hosts Signing On June 16
The stories of three Colorado authors who found love in midlife when they least expected it are included in Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Miracle of Love that will be available in bookstores and online June 5. Cindy Charlton of Lakewood, Lisa Marlin of Denver, and Susan Mathis of Colorado Springs, are among the 101 authors featured in the latest release from the popular book series.
The new book is a compilation of true stories from women and men who have written openly about their adventures in dating and romance, proposals and weddings, lasting marriages and second chances at finding love.
Charlton had resigned herself to being content without a relationship. Her story “Romance Therapy” is about reconnecting with the physical therapist she’d met 20 years ago when she was adjusting to life as a triple amputee. Their midlife lunch date evolved into a new relationship. “When it happened, I couldn’t believe that this was my life,” she said. “When I gave him the story to read, before I even submitted it, he was a bit in awe I think.”
This is Charlton’s fifth time to be published in Chicken Soup for the Soul. “I wanted to share this unbelievable lov
Susan Mathis
e story with the masses,” she said.
Marlin said she’s enjoyed Chicken Soup for the Soul books for years and decided to see what it would be like to write for them. Scanning the lists of topics on their website last year, this one caught her eye. “I’d already written a love story as an anniversary gift to my partner about how I remember us meeting as teens but not getting together until 30 years later,” she said. “So I polished it up and sent it in.”
In March, she got word that her story “Haven’t We Met Somewhere Before?” had been selected. “After I got over the shock, it occurred to me that I should ask my partner if it would be okay to share our story with the world,” Marlin said. He did not hesitate when he told her, “Of course. We’re a good story.”
Mathis said that she too has always liked reading the inspirational books and was in fact published two years ago in Chicken Soup for the Soul: Spirit of America. For this new book she said, “I wanted to share our love story since it’s a story of commitment, hope and enduring love. In a world that throws away relationships far too easily, ‘for better or worse, in sickness and health’ is a much-needed vow.”
Mathis’ story “Live Without Regret” is about how they faced her husband’s health issues before and after they married. The couple has also co-authored relationship books, including The ReMarriage Adventure. Just days before his birthday in May, she surprised her husband with an advanced copy of the new book. “He, too, is happy to be part of sharing our ‘miracle of love,’” she said.
Lisa Marlin
Before the authors knew they had been selected, Amy Newmark, publisher and editor-in-chief of the Chicken Soup for the Soul book series, knew their stories would resonate with readers. “People tell us that they want to be able to offer hope,” she said. “They want to share this book with a 25-year-old daughter to encourage her as she waits for love or to let a widow or divorcee know that second chances at love are possible.”
With more than 150 books to her credit since she and her husband Bill Rouhana acquired Chicken Soup for the Soul in 2008, Newmark has a sense for what readers want. Sometimes she discovers that by what writers are submitting. That’s how this most recent book came about when a call for submissions for the topics “Step Outside Your Comfort Zone” and “Miracles and More” garnered a lot of love stories that fit into those categories but seemed to need a place of their own.
“As I got stories for the other books, there were all these fascinating ways people wrote that they found love,” Newmark said, adding that she approached her publishing team who all agreed when she suggested they do a book about finding love.
As with all Chicken Soup for the Soul books, this one delivers a message of hope. In this book, that hope comes from real life stories that prove love is possible at any age and often in the most unexpected ways because, after all, that’s the miracle of love.
Marlin and Mathis will sign copies of the book at Barnes & Noble, 960 S. Colorado Blvd., in Glendale, on Saturday, June 16, from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. Charlton is not available for the event.
by Mark Smiley | May 25, 2018 | Main Articles
Fired Principal And Accusers Seek To Be Millionaires
by Ruthy Wexler
Now Homeless: The notoriety that surrounded Ozell Williams as soon as the cheerleader video went viral, caused his income to shrink, his business, Mile High Tumblers, to diminish and job offers to disappear. Unable to continue paying rent, Williams now stores his belongings in a storage unit and sleeps in his car.
The East High Cheerleading scandal which erupted at the beginning of the 2017-18 school year, continues to roil the East High community, as the school year draws to a close. It was triggered August 2017 when a video of a young cheerleader screaming in pain went viral. Denver Public Schools (DPS) Superintendent Tom Boasberg immediately fired the coach Ozell Williams, who, the cheerleader claimed, forced her into a split. Boasberg removed East’s Athletic Director Lisa Porter and Principal Andy Mendelsberg when DPS’s own investigation deemed them responsible. East High families and staff remained divided about what really happened. Now, an impending lawsuit puts East cheerleaders back in the spotlight — and the Chronicle wonders: What happened to those at the center of the controversy?
Where Are They Now?
Andy Mendelsberg, forced out of his “dream job,” is negotiating, according to sources, a settlement in the million dollar range from DPS, in addition to his retirement package.
Lisa Porter could not be reached for comment.
Ally Wakefield, the cheerleader in the video, claims she suffered physical and emotional injuries under Williams’ coaching, as now do four other girls. Five families are represented by highly respected attorney Qusair Mohammedbhai, who, in a Draft Complaint, named Williams, Mendelsberg, Porter, two individuals from another school and DPS itself as defendants. Any settlements with DPS are expected to be in the multi-million-dollar range for each of the former cheerleader plaintiffs.
Tom Boasberg received a performance-based bonus of $18,000.
Ozell Williams i
Powerhouse: Qusair Mohammedbhai is the powerful and highly successful attorney for the punitive cheerleader plaintiffs in their actions against DPS and Ozell Williams. He has produced some of the highest judgements in the state for his clients.
s now living out of his car.
How’d That Happen?
Back in June 2017, Ozell Williams was a 29-year-old black man with an apartment, a savings account, a growing business (Mile High Tumblers) and a measure of local fame. Googling him produced a confident gymnast soaring through the air at a Nuggets game.
With the cheerleading video’s posting on August 22, 2017, Williams entered a new world. Used to accolades from tumbling students and parents, he now received torrents of angry emails, many racial. Googling him called
Supportive Parent: Ozell Williams with East cheerleader Rajha, her mother Shaunna and East student Mekaela at a Nuggets game in March 2018. Like the majority of East cheer parents, Shaunna does not believe that Williams harmed or intentionally hurt her daughter in any way.
up only the crying cheerleader. Gyms who’d welcomed Mile High Tumblers now refused. Publications uniformly condemned him, even those formerly full of praise.
In their Spring 2016 “Best Of” issue, Denver’s Westword applauded Mile High Tumblers’ community outreach. “Williams is changing Colorado for the better, one flip at a time.”
Three days after the video posted, on August 25, 2017, Westword denounced Williams’ actions as “torture.”
The notoriety now attached to Williams scared off clients. “He lost a lot of sponsors,” says accountant Natasha Jackson. “His business went down to a few loyal supporters.”
Savings depleted, Williams looked for tumbling, then other, work. But once employers, like a recent Comcast supervisor, googled him, jobs were no longer available.
“The media slandered me without doing research, Williams says. “The person they describe, that’s not who I am.”
Who Is Ozell Williams?
Supporters: On November 21, 2017, Inside Edition flew in from New York, to film Williams at Gymnastics Unlimited in Northglenn and tell “his side of the story.” About 45 supporters, including East cheerleaders, their parents, former tumbling students and assistant coaches, showed up. But the TV spot, sandwiched between Thanksgiving stories, lasted only five minutes and did not reach many people.
Raised in extreme poverty, Williams determined early on to perfect whatever talents he possessed. “Tumbling brought me out of where I came from.” He won prizes, performed with Team USA and one cold day in 2014, broke the Guinness World Record for back handsprings (47) by pushing himself to 57.
Williams reveled in the life he’d built from scratch, pride occasionally manifesting as an over-the-top claim; e.g., saying he’d been an Olympic athlete because he “considered Team USA on an Olympic level.” But his accomplishments were sufficiently solid for DPS to hire him on May 11, 2017, to lead iconic East High School’s cheer team into competition.
Hard Coach
“I’d heard East cheerleaders, under Terita Berry, had a huge reputation,” says cheer mom Shaunna Stribling, part of the Interviewing Committee that chose Williams, “but that went away with the next coach, under whom there were lots of injuries — and we realized why: those girls weren’t conditioned.
“We decided, among the things we cared about most in a new coach, conditioning was first … and Ozell did it, he conditioned the hell out of those girls. Had them running miles, they had arm muscles, six-packs … They were strong!
“Ozell’s what’s known as a hard coach.”
“Cheerleading is now a competitive sport,” says cheer mom Nikki Higgs. “Twenty-plus girls [on that team] wanted that push to become athletes. Only a few did not.”
“What I see when I look at my daughter’s video [of the stretch], is just hard work,” says one cheer mom. “That’s what athletics is.”
“The split stretch was not sudden,” explains Williams. “It was a culmination of all we’d worked on. I’d been conditioning [the team] for five weeks, including stretches preparatory to a split.
“Ally could have come out of [the split] at any time. Just like she did the first time, by dropping her hip.”
Mile High Tumblers: Williams at work doing what he loves best, coaching and teaching tumbling.
“Right before she did it,” recalls cheerleader Nyla Higgs, “Ally called to [a friend], ‘Take my phone and record me.’”
Several parents voiced their belief that the video was a setup.
Aftermath
On October 11, 2017, DA Beth McCann cited “two key reasons” she didn’t file charges against Williams: “Opinions differ [regarding the split stretch] and, there were differing accounts of what actually happened that day.”
Cheerleaders and parents who support Williams — a majority — say he prepared girls for the stretch and told them it was optional.
The families who are suing claim Williams forced girls into splits; when “they begged to stop, pushed them down even harder.” Included in their list of emotional injuries, many ways Williams “sexually harassed” the girls, including “dressing them in incredibly skimpy uniforms” — a claim other parents call “ridiculous.”
The team had forged friendships. Now the five whose families are suing say they’re bullied at school; teammates claim the opposite is true.
Williams continues to post videos and photos he says prove his innocence, to attorneys’ consternation.
“I need to clear my name,” says Williams. “What do I have to lose? They’ve already taken away my life.”
How Hard Is That?
Many parents question DPS’s handling of the controversy. “It feels like a cover-up,” observed one couple with two kids at East.
Another parent, an attorney, remains “… horrified at the money DPS has spent … Fees to an ‘outside law firm’ who were really their real estate lawyers. A PR firm. Paying Andy off … lowballing, I’ll still bet millions.”
“DPS is so busy burnishing its reputation and protecting powerful people, they simply weren’t paying attention,” says a disgusted cheer mom. “So they hang Ozell out to dry. Why didn’t they survey the situation — a talented coach, a young black man about to work with young girls — and realize someone experienced should also be there? How hard is that?”
A former East parent observes, “Everyone knows, it was either Boasberg’s or Mendelsberg’s head that had to roll. Boasberg has political aspirations, so …”
Mendelsberg, declining to talk for this article, wrote, “I truly appreciate your prior article in regard to the cheerleading incident [Chronicle, November 2017]. “It was nice to see the truth. I hope the truth in this latest situation comes out.”
