WSSU student gives big through Angel Tree
There were dozens of packages with bows and pretty wrappings under the Winston-Salem State University’s Student Affairs Angel Tree this year. But, in the back of the tree was one gift that was too big to wrap. The gift, however, may have the biggest impact this Christmas, making sure that a 7-year-old boy has a bed to sleep on this Christmas.
Candace Robinson, a sophomore pre-nursing major from Greenville, says she was looking at the angels on the tree and found a card for 7-year-old boy.
“I saw on the card that this little boy was sleeping on the floor,” she says. “That’s why I chose him.”
The card indicated the boy needed a sleeping bag or bed.
“I’m not in need like that. I wanted to do anything I could to help,” she says.
Robinson went to a furniture store near campus just after Thanksgiving and purchased a twin mattress set. She says the sales clerk at the store helped her rope the bed to the top of her SUV. She then got her friends to help her carry the mattress set up to the third floor of the Thompson Center, where Angel Tree donations were being collected.
She says originally wanted to purchase a bed frame as well, but the mattress set was more expensive than she thought.
Heather Fant and Venus Love-Hairston, housekeepers at WSSU, noticed the mattress being brought into the office, and wanted to help. Fant donated a bed frame, and Love-Hairston brought in a pillow, blanket and sheet set. LaVon Gray, enrollment management, also wanted to help. She brought a set of sheets.
“By that time, the whole bed had come together,” says Angela Blue, executive assistant to the vice chancellor of student affairs, who helps facilitate WSSU’s Angel Tree.
A full bed set was delivered on Monday, Dec. 12, to the Big Brothers Big Sisters in Winston-Salem among a room full of other holiday gifts for some 52 Triad Angels this year, all sponsored by WSSU students, faculty and staff.
“John 3:16 tells us that God loved us so much that he gave his only son,” Robinson explains. “So I give in response to the greater gift of love that has been given to me.”
