‘I am Houston. Houston is me’
PACKERS’ BENNETT STEPS UP TO HELP WITH TEXAN RELIEF EFFORTS
At some point, the general public will stop caring about Houston. The coverage will simmer down, the #HoustonStrong related hashtags won’t be as active and the NFL won’t promote Hurricane Harvey relief funds during its games.
Eventually, most of us will move on. But Martellus Bennett won’t. He simply can’t. Houston is his home, no matter what jersey he puts on every Sunday, or how much water covers Space City. He has a Houston Astros tattoo. The Swishahouse mix tapes remain in rotation.
“I am Houston. Houston is me,” said Bennett after rapping Mike Jones’ phone number off the tip of his tongue.
While the Green Bay Packers tight end was preparing to face the Seattle Seahawks — and his brother, Seahawks defensive end Michael Bennett — in Sunday’s season opener at Lambeau Field, Martellus Bennett has sought different ways to help support the city that shaped him some 1,300 miles away.
With his desire to inspire and help kids, Bennett teamed up with Donors Choose, a non- profit that allows public school teachers to receive funding for classroom projects. Bennett is looking to provide school supplies, art supplies and school uniforms for his school district, Alief, which will reopen on Monday, along with neighbouring school districts in need, like Fort Bend.
“I feel like, right now, with everything that’s going on in homes and everything, the schools should be a safe haven,” Bennett said. “Parents shouldn’t have to worry about t heir kids. When they’re at home having to take care of grown- up stuff and their kids go to school, that should almost be a safe haven right now. Kids should go to school and feel normal because things aren’t going to be normal at home for an extended period of time.”
Bennett, 30, can’t relate to what the people in the greater Houston area have dealt with over the last two weeks, where at least 70 people have died. While he accounted for the tangible items people lost in the hurricane and subsequent flooding, Bennett also noted the mental, spiritual and emotional toll the experience places on people, families and children.
He has often emphasized the power of learning, particularly through art and a child’s imagination, and he said he wanted to make sure kids from his school district could still dream in the midst of a traumatic experience.
The program allows teachers to post specific needs they have in their classrooms, from laptop computers, books and stools, while donors can pick and choose where they want their money to go. Bennett intends to make donations to projects posted under his Uncle Smarty Foundation page.
“Kids should still have the opportunity to do that without worrying about do I have the supplies I need to compete at school and participate on a level where I don’t have to ask my mom for a new colour pencil set because I know that we’re still trying to get another refrigerator,” Bennett said.
While school supplies and uniforms may seem insignificant to the destruction caused by Harvey, Bennett’s mom begs to differ. Pennie Bennett, who works with 7 th and 8th graders in the special needs department at Albright Middle School, said something as simple as school uniforms can impact a way a student performs in the classroom. She said that students, just like adults, can feel more comfortable and accepted in their environ- ment based on their attire.
At the moment, she said there’s a shortage on school uniforms. Alief students started school Aug. 16 and attended class f or eight days before the district shut down for two weeks because of Harvey. Although families had purchased school clothes before the hurricane, in many places they’ve since been washed away. It makes it difficult for parents to provide these items, she said, without a car to get them to work.
“For some of us, if we’re not in education, then we don’t see how the small things impact kids,” said Bennett, who has been in education for 20 years and worked in Alief ISD f or nearly 14 years. “We will never truly understand how just meeting the students’ needs at school will make a huge difference when they sit down in the classroom academically. It changes the behaviour, and when you change the behaviour, obviously you’re going to see a difference in the academics of the students.”
It’s been an odd dynamic over the last few weeks, Martellus Bennett recalled, as he prepared for the regular season while the people he cared about in Houston had their lives altered by a natural disaster. He kept trying to put himself in their shoes, while displaying a level of empathy, but it proved challenging.
“In this situation, you don’t really want to put yourself in someone else’s shoes,” Bennett said. “The idea of like, ‘ Damn, what if I lost my home? Or if a family member drowned?’ Whatever it may be, there’s devastation that you can’t even speak on because it’s not happening to you. You can only hope that a smile or a hug can bring joy to someone. As far as like emotions, you can’t really tie into losing everything if you lost nothing. You can’t really speak on that experience if you’ve never experienced (it).”
Bennett hopes his efforts, along with an online art gallery that will soon be unveiled, will give kids a place that can “provide colour, and joy, and fun so you get out of everything that’s going wrong for a couple hours, at least.”
And while he said that donating toward Harvey relief funds has been “the cool thing to do,” Bennett wanted those to be aware that the situation won’t be resolved in two weeks.
“It’s going to take an extended period of time,” Bennett said. “We’re preparing to be in Houston forever. We’re always going to be giving back and working in the city of Houston, even when everybody else is gone and moved on wherever it may be.”
YOU CAN ONLY HOPE A SMILE OR A HUG CAN BRING JOY.