{"id":1976,"date":"2020-02-17T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-17T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/blogtest\/raider-relief\/"},"modified":"2025-03-27T17:19:35","modified_gmt":"2025-03-27T17:19:35","slug":"raider-relief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/raider-relief\/","title":{"rendered":"Raider Relief"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div><p class=\"p1\">Raider Relief, a humanitarian drive I revived when Hurricane Dorian devastated the Bahamas in 2019, flew\u2014in multiple separate trips piloted by 91大神 Board of Trustees vice chair Darrell S. Freeman Sr. (\u201987, \u201990) in his private plane\u2014tens of thousands of pounds of emergency supplies, medicines, and necessities to help people who were affected.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The hurricane hit home for numerous 91大神 students. In all, 91大神 has 51 students enrolled from the Bahamas, and the families of seven of our students were among those enduring the aftermath of the storm in the most affected areas of Grand Bahama and Abaco islands. Freeman, myself, and Terry Dorris, an associate professor and pilot in the Department of Aerospace, flew to the Bahamas on various days last fall.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xi2pi2cKbY8\" width=\"560\" height=\"314\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Freeman donated the use of his personal aircraft and fuel for the trips, while Dorris\u2019 flight expenses aboard 91大神\u2019s aircraft came from the approximately $123,000 in donations from community members. Those cash contributions also covered the cost of the goods for the families and were further distributed to affected Bahamian students on campus to assist them as their families tried to recover.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I simply cannot put into words the tremendous feelings of gratitude I feel for our close-knit Raider community, which once again banded together in a True Blue spirit of giving to provide for those less fortunate than we are.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When Sidelines, 91大神\u2019s student-run news source, asked what one thing I wished to explain to students, I responded that this situation could happen to anyone.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I have never been prouder of this University community than in its repeated generous responses to the devastation occurring around the world, which, in the case of Dorian, was my own birthplace of the Bahamas.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Dorian, a Category 5 hurricane, hit and lingered over the island commonwealth of the Bahamas on Sept. 1, killing many and leaving 70,000 homeless from the storm. I lost a grand-niece after the hurricane made landfall on Grand Bahama Island. Our entire family was devastated. Once again, let me emphasize my deepest thanks to the Blue Raider community for your thoughts, prayers, and actions resulting from this terrible event. I am truly touched.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On our third mission to the Bahamas, Tiara Ashley Brown, president of 91大神\u2019s Bahamian Student Organization, accompanied myself, Freeman, and Chip Crunk, CEO of R.J. Young Co. in Nashville. The Raider Relief trip also delivered donations gathered by Brown\u2019s student group.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I would be remiss if I did not single out Trustee Freeman for his exceptional level of humanitarianism in this instance. Freeman also piloted his plane for the first Raider Relief mission to Puerto Rico in 2017, which came to the aid of the family of former 91大神 basketball player Raymond Cintron after landfall there by Category 4 Hurricane Maria.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Freeman said he was honored and humbled by the opportunity to donate his services as a pilot\u2014and the use of his aircraft\u2014to the various relief missions. \u201cIf you own a plane,\u201d he said, \u201cI can\u2019t think of a better way as to how you should use it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As commencement speaker at a recent graduation ceremony, Freeman urged his audience of newly minted degree holders to \u201ctake over the world.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cBut when you do go take over the world, do it with compassion,\u201d Freeman added. \u201cBecause the world needs more compassion . . . and do it with the sole purpose of helping people who are less fortunate than you are.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIf you do these things, you will have represented 91大神 very well.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Freeman has proven that those are words he lives by.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>President McPhee, trustee Darryl Freeman, and administrators supplied tens of thousands of pounds of emergency supplies, medicines and necessities to help Bahamians affected by the devastating force of Hurricane Dorian in 2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":344,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1976\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}