Not long ago I was out for a walk in the beautiful Westwood Village neighborhood of Los Angeles when I came upon something that stopped me in my tracks. It was a telephone booth. With a working pay phone! What was such a familiar necessity during my teenage and young adult years now seemed like an antique. But there it was, mounted on a wall next to the sidewalk. My first reaction was to take photos of it…with my cell phone. Then I started remembering…all the times I stayed out too late … [Read more...]
Joint Forces Journal
Joint Forces Journal Book Review: After years of battling addiction and depression, and coping with the tragic death of her father at a very early age, Tyra's worst fear had come true. Tyra learned that her husband had been killed in the Vietnam War from her psychiatrist at the Menninger Clinic, where she had been hospitalized for depression. Larry had been shot down over the Laotian jungle while flying a top-secret mission, just two weeks before their daughter's second … [Read more...]
Tyra in the News
By Dan Haley, Editor & Publisher Near the end of April, Tyra Manning will return to Oak Park and River Forest. She will be the keynote at the annual benefit for Thrive Counseling Center. Back in the 1990s, while she was the school superintendent in River Forest District 90 elementary schools, she served on the board of Thrive, which in those days was known as Family Service and Mental Health Center. It will be full circle, back to two towns that, though now retired home to Texas, Manning … [Read more...]
Book Review: JanetteFuller.com
By Janette Fuller This memoir is remarkable for many reasons. I started reading this book and couldn't put it down until I read the last page. The author is a survivor. Tyra Manning is as much of a hero as her husband who lost his life in Vietnam. She would not give up, no matter how difficult her life circumstances were. Here are some of the challenges that Dr. Manning overcame. Click here to read more. … [Read more...]
Van Gogh’s Irises
I saw many breathtaking works of art on a recent visit to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, but I was most moved by the haunting beauty of Vincent Van Gogh’s Irises. I was drawn toward the energy of his vivid colors, but even more toward the angelic aura of a single white iris on the left side of the painting. Reading on the label that Van Gogh painted this while in a mental hospital at Saint-Remy, France, a shiver ran down my spine. Since I was a child, the iris has been for me a symbol of … [Read more...]
