Cye Jones is grateful for a sorority providing him with housekeeping items and educational supplies so that he won’t have to worry about paying for them on his first day as a college student.
“I’m just blessed,” Jones, 18, said after the local chapter of Tau Gamma Delta Sorority’s Trunks for Success, a yearly event to help people who are entering a college or a university. Jones is a graduate of Southern Nash High School and plans to attend Barton College.
The event was held Sunday in the family life center at Thornes Chapel Missionary Baptist Church, which is in the eastern part of Rocky Mount, and Edgecombe County Sheriff Clee Atkinson was the featured speaker.
Jones’ mother, Kelly McDaniel, said that she cried when she found out that the sorority was going to help her son.
“We’re not in a position financially to be able to just do this,” McDaniel said. “It would have been a sacrifice to get all the things for Cye for college.”
Other recipients who received help from the local sorority were equally upbeat.
Angel Sharpe, 18, said that she grew up poor and that her home was destroyed by fire when she was in the seventh grade.
“So, I appreciate everything,” Sharpe said of the Trunks for Success event.
Sharpe is a graduate of North Edgecombe High School in Leggett and plans to attend the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.
Sharpe said she particularly appreciates the fact that one of the items she received from the sorority is an umbrella. When she went to UNC-Pembroke for orientation, she encountered rainy weather and wasn’t as prepared.
“I love this program,” said Sharpe’s mother, Lashonda Richardson. “It does help you with a fresh start.”
In addition to Sharpe, Richardson has two other children attending universities. One is at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and the other is at East Carolina University in Greenville.
All three of Richardson’s children secured scholarships.
“So, that was a blessing also,” Richardson said.
Cameron Fenner, 17, said that he feels good about the fact that the supplies provided at Sunday’s event are not going to have to come out of his pocket.
“So, I’m just thankful,” Fenner said.
Fenner is a graduate of Rocky Mount Preparatory School and plans to attend Winston-Salem State University.
Briar Scott, 18, said that her family struggles a bit financially.
“And, so, it’s just really great that there’s people out there that will support us,” Scott said.
Scott is a graduate of North East Carolina Preparatory School, which is west of Tarboro, and plans to attend the University of Mount Olive.
During Sunday’s event, Atkinson provided the recent high school graduates a list of recommendations, with the first being, “Stop telling people everything.”
More specifically, he advised the soon-to-be college students not to tell everybody their dreams, what they want to be or what businesses they want to open because there are those who want to see young people fail.
He also advised the attendees to “choose your friends wisely” and “surround yourself with good people.”
Atkinson had more advice for attendees, including that they should do their best, stay on the grind, trust the process and that the harder one works, the luckier one gets.
The Trunks for Success program can be traced to the national Tau Gamma Delta sorority at a 2008 meeting in Chicago. That was when a charitable award was presented to a woman who had started an organization after knowing about a young man who was going to college with nothing to take with him other than a trash bag full of clothes.
The local Tau Gamma Delta started the program the next year and went a step further.
The local sorority contacts guidance counselors at high schools in the Twin Counties in advance to find out which graduates need an extra boost to help them upon entering a college or a university.
Some of the items are donated by people in the community but most of the items are paid for by the sorority members.
Edgecombe County Commissioner Evelyn Powell, who leads the local Tau Gamma Delta, said after Sunday’s event that she believes things went wonderfully.
This year, the sorority was able to help 18 graduates, 17 of whom were present for the event. Powell noted that in the past the number of graduates served usually had been anywhere from six to seven.
“And we feel good about that,” Powell said of the record year.
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