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Forty years ago, my father died of a heart attack at the age of 52. I was 12, so as time goes by I remember less and less about him. But one vivid memory is of him always coming to my baseball games. And so when I had children, I promised myself that I would do the same — not just to be in the stands cheering for them, but on the sidelines coaching them.

Virtually all commentators are critical of an organization engaging in political activities without publicly identifying the organization’s donors. The entire vocabulary of the discussion (e.g., “dark money,” “secretive” practices, and “shadowy” organizations) manifests this perspective.

Every five minutes, a woman in the United States is diagnosed with lung cancer, including nearly 2,000 this year from Arizona. Half of these women will not be alive a year later, and two-thirds of women diagnosed never smoked or are former smokers. The American Lung Association is racing against the clock to save women’s lives, and to raise awareness of the facts that lung cancer is the number one cancer killer of women, and that every woman is at risk for the disease.

I have served on the Arizona Ecumenical Council Earth Care Commission as both a committee member and as chairperson for about 15 years. Recently, I was asked to comment on the Environmental Protection Agency’s new carbon rule to curb the growing threat of greenhouse gases that contribute to global climate change.

The primary election season is here and community members need to be involved in electing candidates who will continue moving Arizona forward.

I write regarding media reports that the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is transporting hundreds, and potentially thousands, of illegal aliens from the south Texas border and releasing them at bus stations in Tucson and Phoenix.

For the League of Women Voters, election time is an exciting and busy time of year. The election ballot will include more candidate races and ballot measures. Take your time voting to ensure you vote for all races and ballot measures.

A few years back, Douglas J. Sylvester, dean of the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University, toured the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, and he returned with a vision on how to stem the obturations facing recent graduates entering the legal fraternity: a shrinking pool of job offers, increased debt burdens, and lawyer skill preparedness for firms. The concept was in his words: “A teaching hospital for law school graduates,” with its direction and management to provide affordable legal services to underserved members of the community as my responsibility and charge.

This week, Gov. Jan Brewer called a special session of the Arizona Legislature to consider much-needed reform to our child welfare system.

An international research team led by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) recently found the cause of a rare type of ovarian cancer that most often strikes girls and young women.