By Billy Patterson

A local boutique owner’s desire to help a family obtain schools supplies leads to an incredible story of caring and giving for multiple families and schools.

Emily McGowan, owner of Tallulah Rey in Fairfield, learned of a family’s need who could not afford the required school supplies for their three children. When Emily looked at the list of needed items, she realized she could not afford to fund all three. She began thinking how best to get others involved in supporting perhaps other families also struggling with the cost. She decided to post on her social media account the actual list of school supplies surrounding school districts were requiring. She went one step farther and asked were other families in need of assistance?

To get started, Emily began putting videos together about the project, posted all the school supply lists on her social media account and built ‘Wish Lists’ to the specific products on Amazon. Within hours, people were getting on line and purchasing the needed items and had them shipped to the local boutique. Boxes of crayons, pencils, tissue, headphones, earbuds, glue sticks, composition notebooks, Lysol wipes, backpacks and numerous other items started arriving. Running out of room, more shipments came and were moved to her parents’ home for staging and getting ready to stuff into backpacks. The Freestone County Game Management Association donated the necessary funds to purchase 680 sets of headphones and 1200 sets of earbuds for the schools in Freestone County.

Supplies didn’t just come from shipments. One lady drove to Tallulah Rey with her car completely filled with school supplies she had purchased and wanted to donate. The project had overwhelmed the boutique owner and more help was needed. Emily’s mom, Medra Patterson and Emily’s daughter Fynlee Faith (at left with backpacks) jumped in and helped sort and then began packing all the items into specific-colored backpacks. When parents would call and request assistance with school supplies, Emily asked them what was their child’s favorite color? Nearly all backpacks were given in the colors requested.

Other children receiving assistance from this effort besides Fairfield students were some from Teague, Wortham, Mexia, Groesbeck, Corsicana and Leon. Once all the supplies were sorted, 135 backpacks were filled with all the items and parents were notified to pick them up at Talullah Rey in Fairfield.

“This was a tremendous amount of planning and work to accomplish, but when parents kept calling and telling me they needed help, we just had to continue on,” Emily stated. “Lots of people are struggling with things costing so much and hopefully these backpacks provided a little bit of relief in getting their kids back in school. I have to thank my mom Medra Patterson, my daughter Fynlee Faith, Jaime Knight and Kylie Lovelady for their help in completing this project the past four weeks.”

 

(Courtesy Photos)