Brittany Elizabeth Tew is a 16 year-old Honors Student at Carroll High School in Southlake, Texas. Brittany is the oldest of 5 daughters of Kristi and Todd Tew. Outside of school, Brittany is an avid reader and writer, plays piano and is an accomplished ventriloquist. She has been a local title holder in the Miss America's Outstanding Teen Organization for several years. She is involved in National Charity League and is a member at First Baptist Church, Dallas. She plans to be a 4th generation Baylor Bear, and wants to become a Pediatrician to help children. Tragedy has been a frequent experience in Brittany's life. In 2001, her two-year-old sister, Caroline, died after her two-year long battle with a rare degenerative brain disease. She had a Leukodystrophy (which is a group of disorders that center around problems with the white matter in the brain); her brain began to die and to calcify, which caused her to be blind, deaf, mute, unable to control any part of her body from her neck down, and to make it worse- she had seizures all of the time. Doctors explained that there is no known cause and no known cure for the disease. Despite all of her medical problems, Caroline smiled and laughed every day- what a lesson her family learned from her!! In 2006, her grandfather died of Lou Gehrig's disease; she watched her sweet granddad "DonDon" deteriorate for several years before his passing. In 2008, another one of her four sisters, Alexandria, died after a three and a half year degenerative battle with the same rare brain disease that had taken her sister Caroline, leaving another huge loss in her life. Then in 2009, her ventriloquism coach and role model, Amy Jones, lost her battle with an aggressive form of Renal Cell Carcinoma cancer. Brittany's life has been marked with several heart breaking losses, and because of this, she became passionate about sharing her story of triumph to inspire and impart hope to those facing their own adversity.
