In the wake of the death of 37-year-old Kevin White, a beloved chorus teacher at E.T. Booth Middle School in Cherokee County, a few of his former students have started a fundraiser in his memory.
Delaney Stemmerman, Erin Walsh and Kristina Welch started selling memorial bracelets and T-shirts. All of the proceeds will go to White’s widowed wife and their daughter.
White died in a single-car accident on March 24 when his F-150 went off a 100-foot embankment on I-575 at Little River Bridge near Ridgewalk Parkway in Woodstock.
‘“I really love the family, so I wanted to do something to help them out,” Stemmerman said.
Stemmerman drew inspiration for the idea from a similar bracelet fundraiser a friend of hers did after her soccer coach died, which she said helped provide some closure for those who knew him.
“He was always really inspirational and kind of like one of my best friends.
“He’s the reason I wanted to go to school, and he’s … why I’m still singing and doing theater,” Stemmerman said. “He’s actually the reason I want to go to college for theater.”
The fundraiser initially started with just bracelets for sale for $3 each, and they expected to sell only a hundred or so of them. However, after Stemmerman’s mother’s post about the bracelets in Kevin White’s Facebook memorial page attracted lots of attention, including over 100 comments from interested supporters, that number quickly increased.
“At first, we were only going to get 200 (bracelets), but then we were like, ‘Whoa, maybe we need to get more,’” Walsh said. “So we’ve been kind of overwhelmed by how many people want to support it.”
So far, over 800 bracelets have been sold. The bracelets say “There is No Last Song” on them.
On top of that, Welch designed a T-shirt to also be sold as part of the fundraiser, and roughly 100 of them have been purchased for $20 each. As of Monday morning, around $3,500 had been raised from more than 80 donors, per the fundraiser's YouCaring.com website.
Welch said White was one of the first people she bonded with upon arriving at E.T. Booth.
“I had just moved into this distract — actually I got kicked out of school because I punched a girl in the face, but (we) definitely bonded,” Welch said. “It was one of those, ‘Oh, you’re a bad kid — let’s be friends.’”
She added that White acted as a father figure for her.
“My dad has never been in my life, so (White) kind of has taken me under his wing the past few years. Every day in eighth grade, I ate breakfast with him,” Welch said. “We stayed close throughout the years. I texted him the night before he got in the accident.”
The fundraiser's current goal is $5,000, and it closes on April 8. (See www.youcaring.com/thewhitefamily-786867.) Regardless of whether it reaches that goal or not, it'll no doubt help provide the grieving community with some much-needed closure.
