Flip my life: Couple helps former prisoners
Marybeth Conley and Rick Woodall spoke to students at Oak Ridge High School about their show “Flip my Life.” (photo:Ben Pounds )
He gave a presentation with his wife, former Memphis news anchor Marybeth Conley, who began her career at WBIR-TV in Knoxville.
The class teaches life and study skills. The couple spent 2023 living in a camper in Memphis while renovating a blighted house in an impoverished neighborhood into a transition home for men rebuilding their lives after prison.
The series “Flip My Life,” available to watch on YouTube, weaves the renovation and redemption stories into a show about second chances, an ORHS news release stated.
“I learned the hard way that we never know what we might do in a moment of desperation, and I’m honored to use my story to help young people,” Woodall said in the release. He served a sentence for robbing a bank in Knoxville in 2008, and on the show “Flip my Life” is helping others who fell similarly.
“Something made them do what they did,” he told the students. “I never thought I was going to rob a bank, but one day it happened.
“You can come out and redeem yourself,” he added. “There are people out there doing good things that are felons.”
Conley agreed.
“Do any of us want to be identified by what we’ve done and not who we are?” she asked.
Like Woodall, she spoke to the students about changes in life.
“You don’t know where life’s going to go,” she said. “We just feel people deserve second chances,” she said.
“The stories we share in the show illustrate how important it is to give all kids a good education, a strong sense of self, and a love for their community,” Conley said.
“We’ve seen the data proving the success of the Wildcat Scholars program, and we think it needs to be in schools everywhere,” Conley said of the program about which she and her husband spoke.
“We want our students to see examples of people who, no matter what, get back up and overcome challenges,” said Elizabeth Denisar, lead teacher of Wildcat Scholars, which teaches study and life skills.
“The stories in ‘Flip My Life’ are inspiring, and it’s also inspiring that people right here in Oak Ridge care enough to spend a year traveling across the state to lift others up and help them out of their situation with grace.”
The couple’s YouTube channel is available at youtube.com/@flipmylifetelevision. For more information go to https://flipmylifetv.com/.