The Bailey Blog

Ladies and Gentlemen:  Have you seen or heard about the movie starring Sandra Bullock entitled, “The Blind Side?”  It features a woman and family who “rescue” a young high school boy from living in the streets.  They welcome him into their family and home, help him get his grades up, get into college and graduate college.  The boy happened to be a great football player as well and now is a starting offensive lineman in the National Football League (NFL) for the Baltimore Ravens. 

What a great story, and we have a similar story right here in Michigan.

Gayle Joseph of Sterling Heights helped young Nick McDonald, a high school football player who was about to become homeless for various reasons.  Nick’s mom had died and his dad had moved away.  Gayle brought Nick into her family and home and gave him the support he needed to turn himself around. 

Nick went on to Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids and starred as an offensive lineman there.  He received his degree and now has the potential to be drafted in the NFL.  Nick just may make it too as a 6 foot 5 inch, 310 pound All American player.  Nick is very appreciative for his successes and he gives a lot of the credit to his surrogate mom, Gayle. 

Now, I’ve known Gayle for a long time and I’m so proud of her for this totally unselfish move.  As we begin this New Year, may we all learn from these two wonderful stories and feel good about them as well.   

By the way, if Nick does not make the NFL, his degree is in Criminal Justice and plenty of people will be saying, “yes sir” to him as a law enforcement officer in the years ahead.  Congratulations Nick and Gayle. 

This entry was posted on Monday, January 4th, 2010 at 6:12 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.