Dr. Oz Makes a Houston House Call, Promoting Mental Healthcare for Teens at Memorial Schmooze

Henry Clark
Dr. Oz Makes a Houston House Call, Promoting Mental Healthcare for Teens at Memorial Schmooze

MaryCharles Bennett, Dr. Oz & Jennifer Ducote

DR. OZ, ERSTWHILE U.S. Senate candidate and TV star, was the guest of honor at a cocktail party promoting HealthCorps’ mental health initiatives for teens, held at the home of CityBook Executive Publisher Lisa Holthouse and husband Michael.


A few dozen Holthouse friends gathered in the Memorial manse, readied for springtime with beautiful soft-colored florals, to rub shoulders with the good doctor, who was a renowned heart surgeon long before Oprah helped him become a household name.

As Lisa noted in her recent essay on HealthCorps, Mehmet Oz founded HealthCorps in 2003 to address health inequities in at-risk communities by empowering teens to take ownership of their health and well-being, “encouraging them to become change agents within their family, their school and their neighborhood.”

HealthCorps has programs in place in Houston at Jack Yates High School, Worthing High School, Wheatley High School, Welch Middle School, Wisdom High School, YES Prep Public Schools’ Eisenhower High School and Varnett Northeast.

Amy Braun and Lisa Holthouse

Kelli Weinzierl, Mary Kay Bowden, Andrea Eastham

Lyle Eastham

Dr. Nita White and Dr. Toron Wooldridge

John Weinzierl, Garry Tanner, Dr. Oz, Michael Holthouse

Charles & Tiffany Masterson

Dr. Oz, Martha & Richard Finger

Rosangela & David Capobianco

Dr. Oz, Aynesly & Palmer Letzerich, Amy Braun

Carolyn Tanner

Melissa Parigi, Dr. Oz, Palmer Letzerich

Tama & John Klosek, Amy Braun

Doug & Melissa Schnitzer

Palmer & Aynsley Letzerich, Jennifer & Doak Brown

Alonso, inset, and her acrylic-on-canvas painting 'Birds'

BASED IN HOUSTON, Cuban-American painter Erika Alonso is a self-taught, self-described “painterly painter,” with a playful and very idiosyncratic take on abstract expressionism, mark making, and automatism, where the artist works quickly and intuitively, relying upon the subconscious to guide the artistic process. Her work can be found in numerous private collections across the United States and Europe, including that of beloved Houston collector and art fanatic Lester Marks. On Friday, Sept 8., from 7-9pm at Lanecia Rouse Tinsley Gallery, Alise Art Group's Art House presents Alonso’s solo exhibition Birds Are People Too (And Other Thoughts . . . ).

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Nik Parr and The Selfless Lovers

THE WORD “FUNK” has been around a long, long time. In the mid-1950s, New Orleans drummer Earl Palmer popularized the word as a musical term when he instructed musicians on recording dates to “play a little funkier.” In his book Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy, historian Robert Farris Thompson goes back even further, and traces the origin of the word “funky” to the Ki-Kongo word lu-fuki, meaning “positive sweat,” an olfactory term used to praise an individual for the integrity of their art.

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