McGrady barbecue feeds Harvey victims
Although all eyes are now focused on hurricane Irma developing off the coast of South Florida, those in Texas who were affected by Harvey are still trying to get used to their new normal. Enter Tracy McGrady.
The former Toronto Raptors star and Pro Basketball Hall of Famer, who now lives in the Houston suburbs, made things just a little better for people living in the city’s heavily flooded Third Ward and Sunnyside neighbourhoods when he and his wife, CleRenda, decided to host a Labour Day barbecue for them.
“We wanted to be able to give back,” CleRenda McGrady, who works as a youth life coach at Project P.U.S.H., told the Houston Chronicle on Monday.
The McGradys were lucky during the storm. Situated on a hill, their Sugar Land house was spared from flooding. Despite not experiencing the turmoil first hand, they saw enough on television to know they wanted to do something for the recovery effort.
“There are a lot of hurricane Harvey relief efforts. What was important to us was to serve an area that already needed an extra boost,” CleRenda McGrady continued. “That’s why we decided to come to this particular area: to show them some extra love. Labour Day is all about barbecue, so we wanted to bring the barbecue to them.”
“We put it together in less than 24 hours,” Tracy McGrady added of the event that reportedly fed 800 people at Lilly Grove Missionary Baptist Church on Monday. “The biggest thing is to get people away from the devastation to bring some happiness, some joyous times and some laughter. We all need that.”
McGrady is just one of several sports stars to participate in the Harvey recovery efforts.
Most famously, Houston Texans star J.J. Watt has managed to raise nearly $20 million (U.S.) online for the victims. Watt started the fund on the crowdsourcing website YouCa-
“The biggest thing is to get people away from the devastation to bring some happiness, some joyous times and some laughter.” TRACY MCGRADY
ring.com last week, calling the fund “a testament to how much good there is in the world.” He first set a goal of raising $200,000, but by Tuesday morning, the fund had raised $19.7 million thanks to 182,440 donors. Among the biggest donors were talk show host Ellen DeGeneres, rapper Drake and the Tennessee Titans.
The money is already being used to buy and distribute food to those in need.
Meanwhile, former baseball star Curt Schilling, who is now a podcast host with the conservative website Breitbart, organized a more modest, but just as labour-intensive way to help. He loaded up a trailer with diapers, food and cash donations near his home in Boston and helped drive it to Beaumont, Texas, where the goods were distributed Sunday and Monday.
Schilling indicated that, like much of the country, he’s not turned his eye toward Irma. He said if the hurricane does make landfall in South Florida, he doesn’t plan to wait until it’s over to help.