Obituary

Sheryl Flowers, 42, talk show producer

Sheryl Flowers Published in Current, June 22, 2009
By Dru Sefton

Sheryl Flowers, longtime executive producer of public radio’s Tavis Smiley Show, described by Smiley as “the creative force, the genius most responsible for making me sound a whole lot smarter than I am,” died June 8. She was 42.

For two years, Flowers had battled triple negative breast cancer, a disease that can be especially aggressive and often recurs and metastasizes, according to the Triple Negative Breast Cancer Foundation.

Flowers worked with Smiley as the former commercial radio talk personality established a daily show at NPR seven years ago and after he moved to a weekly program distributed by Public Radio International. She was a senior supervising producer for the NPR show from 2002 through his public break with the network in 2004, and became e.p. of the PRI program.

Flowers was instrumental in building the NPR program, Smiley said in an audio statement on his online tribute page (tavistalks.com/Sheryl-flowers).

“The success we had at NPR as the first show ever dedicated to truly expanding the diversity of NPR’s audience was and still is unparalleled,” he said. “It opened the doors for other shows at NPR to now be hosted by people of color. Thank Sheryl for that.”

Tell Me More producer Teshima Walker, a longtime friend, recalled Flowers pushing to give the program a unique voice – for instance, adding a comedy segment that initially made staffers and the network nervous. They thought the humor “might not fit into the NPR model,” Walker said. “Sheryl was also getting a lot of pushback from the staff. It wasn’t funny to us; we wanted to be very serious.”

Flowers told them to think about the African American community, the listeners the show was trying to serve, and how to draw them to the network. That community valued laughter, Flowers said, and she urged naysayers to give the experiment time. “And that turned into Tavis’s signature segment,” Walker said.

When Smiley left NPR in December 2004, Flowers moved with him Public Radio International—the only staffer Smiley took along.

Flowers’ decision to stick with Smiley was wrenching for both of them.

Smiley said in an e-mail message to stations that month that leaving NPR is “the most painful decision I have ever made.” He said he quit out of frustration with its efforts to reach underserved audiences and hire more people of color. “I just felt like the pace of progress at which they are comfortable moving is too slow,” he wrote. “The audience can handle a quickened pace, and the country can’t afford a slower pace.”

At the time Flowers had a sure-thing option to join the staff of a bigger NPR talk show, Talk of the Nation. Leaving with Smiley was leaping into the unknown. Smiley’s show had been carried on more than 90 NPR stations, but following him would mean completely starting over.

“Sheryl wanted him to stay, he wanted to go,” Walker recalled. “From what I understand, it was very tough, but she decided to go with Tavis. I could tell she was very torn. I’d never seen her get emotional, but the day she told the staff [at Smiley’s NPR studio] that she’d made the decision to help rebuild his show—she was emotional.”

They constructed the new PRI incarnation of the show, increasing carriage from two stations to about 90, which now assembles an audience of some 800,000. Walker credits the success to Flowers’ efforts.

“She was amazing with program directors—the outreach she did,” Walker said. “She was visiting station managers, on the phone with people who made decisions. She was charismatic. As charismatic as Tavis is on a daily basis, she was that behind the scenes. She could talk intelligently to programmers about what they were doing and how the show would fit in their lineups.”

Smiley acknowledged her great influence in his life and career, saying in his audio tribute that Flowers was his visionary, leader, teacher, barometer, protector—“and my abiding friend.”
A varied media career

Flowers was born Aug. 26,1966, in Chicago, to Henry and Carole Flowers. She grew up in the San Francisco area.

In 1985 Flowers began in radio as an on-air announcer for WOCG (now WJOU) in Huntsville, Ala., while she was a student at Oakwood University there. Over the next two decades in media work, she produced programs and voiced narration for Black Entertainment Television and reported for several Atlanta publications.

Flowers produced several Pacifica Radio shows including the investigative weekday public affairs program Flashpoints; a daily national show, Living Room; and the weekly About Health. She co-hosted The Morning Show on KPFA radio in Berkeley. In 1993 she completed a Public Affairs Fellowship at WGBH in Boston.

On the side, Flowers provided the voice for Mavis Beacon, the instructor of popular instructional software, Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing in the late 1990s.

She loved marathon running, was active in book clubs and collected art.

In 1999 Flowers moved to Washington, D.C., to help market and produce Justice Talking, NPR’s show on law and American life. She returned to California in 2001 to begin her work with Smiley.

Producer Julie Drizin, a colleague at Pacifica and now an advisor to AIR’s Public Radio Maker’s Quest, said she and Flowers began what grew into a close friendship in the late 1990s through nearly daily telephone conversations about production matters. At the time, Flowers was a producer for Pacifica’s Living Room, and Drizin was Pacifica’s e.p. for national programming.

“She had such a beautiful, bright, sparkly, warm voice that served her very well, since she spent a lot of time on the phone as a producer,” Drizin said.
Her final challenge

The two became colleagues at Justice Talking, based in Philadelphia. Drizin recalled that one production trip held a special thrill for Flowers. In 2000, Flowers traveled to London for a Justice Talking debate before a live audience. While there, she cheered for Tina Turner in concert at Wembley Stadium in Turner’s farewell tour. “It was a great experience for Sheryl to see her live at such an amazing venue,” Drizin said.

Flowers and colleagues also shared tense moments during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. They had completed a taping in Albuquerque, N.M., and Flowers was airborne, returning to Philadelphia, when her co-workers heard that airliners had been flown into the World Trade Center.

Drizin, producer Kara McGuirk and host Margot Adler “rushed to the airport, but it had already closed and she was up in the air,” Drizin said. “Her plane ended up circling St. Louis, and she got grounded and was stuck for four days before getting back to Philly.”

Soon after, “much to my regret,” Drizin said, Smiley and NPR “stole her away” to launch Smiley’s show. “But I knew her career was really taking off. and it was such a tremendous opportunity to help launch Tavis Smiley’s show.”

The two remained good friends and stayed in close touch, especially after Flowers’ diagnosis in January 2008. After months of chemotherapy, in May 2008, Flowers reported to close friends that her tumor hadn’t shrunk; it had doubled. She had decided to have a mastectomy and would soon have the surgery. But Flowers remained optimistic, signing off with: “Please start thinking about what you’re going to wear to my cancer victory party.”

Unfortunately, the cancer metastasized throughout her body.

Late last month, Drizin and Verna Avery Brown, Pacifica’s Washington bureau chief and another close friend of Flowers, arrived to stay a few days in “the gorgeous L.A. home she recently renovated,” as Drizin said.

Flowers “was fighting all the way to the end,” she added. Her family was with Flowers when she died at Cedar’s Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

Flowers is survived by her parents, Carole Flowers-Clement and Henry Flowers; stepfather, Alvin Clement; grandmother, Ruby Lewis; aunt Diva Hudson; uncle Ricardo Lewis and his wife, Vonya; sister Lori Flowers; stepbrother, Durban Clement; and many members of her extended family.

Former coworkers and friends in public radio gathered at NPR headquarters June 15 to remember Flowers. There will be no funeral, but friends will hold a memorial service at 11 a.m. July 8 at the Nate Holden Performing Arts Center in Los Angeles.

In lieu of flowers, the family and The Smiley Group request donations supporting research on triple negative breast cancer. More information on the disease is at tnbcfoundation.org.