Gerald McCoy, Tampa Bay Buccaneer football player, came to Simmons Career Center with his wife, Ebony McCoy, and brought a U-Haul full of gifts for the girls in our teen parent program and their babies, Dec. 19.
Counselor Andrea Thurston is friends with Ebony, and the two of them organized this surprise for the girls. Ebony spoke to the girls and told them she was a teen mom and that people did not think she would graduate from high school, but she did. She told them it shouldn’t stop them from getting an education and doing what they wanted to in life.
Each girl got one bundles of toys, as well as diapers, $100 gift card for themselves and $100 gift card for the babies. One of the young moms burst into tears when she saw a baby bed for her child.
“The girls did not know they were getting this and were overwhelmed,” counselor Jama Hoffman said. “I heard more than one girl say, ‘I can’t believe this, I feel like I’m going to cry.’”
There were about 30 girls who received the gifts. Students and faculty came out to form an assembly line and even then, it took almost 40 minutes to unload everything. The McCoys brought their son and daughter with them to help unload and pass out the gifts.
“It was a beautiful picture of a family giving back and encouraging young women who were now where they had once been,” Hoffman said. “When Gerald spoke to the girls, he told them to remember they were all beautiful, they were all intelligent, and with God, as long as they were still breathing, anything was possible.”