Hurricanes give away Thanksgiving meals at schools

MIAMI — Getting in and out of the car wasn’t exactly comfortable. Neither was navigating the crowded school hallway or handling the heavy boxes full of frozen turkeys and canned goods he’d bought with the money his foundation had been raising for weeks.

But even a week removed from season-ending knee surgery, Miami Hurricanes defensive end Demetrius Jackson wasn’t about to break a promise he had made to his community.

And so, with help from his Miami teammates Chris Herndon, Kendrick Norton, Trent Harris, Pat Bethel and Chad Thomas — who also played alongside him at Miami’s Booker T. Washington High School — Jackson returned to Miami’s Phillis Wheatley Elementary. And just blocks from his childhood home in Overtown, Jackson handed out more than a dozen turkeys to students and their families.

When he finished there, Jackson headed up to his former middle school, Horace Mann in El Portal, to give out turkeys there, too. Meanwhile, friends and family working through Jackson’s Young Men of Tomorrow Foundation delivered additional turkeys to elementary schools in Coconut Grove.

All told, Jackson — who raised donations online through his foundation to purchase the turkeys and trimmings — says Young Men of Tomorrow provided between 65-70 meals to South Florida families ahead of Thanksgiving.

“I’m from this community. I’m from Overtown, so it feels great to be able to do this,” Jackson said. “When I was young, I didn’t have anybody come back and do this. … I know some families are in need at this time of year and you can’t tell. You wouldn’t even know. So it’s just a blessing to be able to give out a turkey per family, 15 of them here, to be able to help.”

While this was Jackson’s first turkey drive through his foundation, the redshirt junior has been working to give back in his community for years. The idea for Young Men of Tomorrow stemmed from conversations he had with teachers and coaches at Booker T. Washington.

Once he got his foundation off the ground, he and his teammates began speaking at local schools. There have been school-supply drives, too, to collect pencils, pens and book bags for children in need.

“You don’t really find really good people, nice people like this doing something like this,” said Staretha Hopkins, whose three children attend Phillis Wheatley Elementary. “For them to be giving us families a Thanksgiving meal, they have very good hearts.”