Los Angeles Angels OF Torii Hunter continues to inspire hope in hometown of Pine Bluff, Arkansas
From the New York Daily News:
BY Wayne Coffey
With 11 full years in the big leagues behind him, the 34-year-old Hunter is renowned for his electrifying defensive play and his ebullient personality, but back home in Pine Bluff, and elsewhere, he’s known much more for philanthropy that doesn’t stop, under an initiative called The Torii Hunter Project.
Hunter and his wife, Katrina, who was also born and raised here, have officially donated more than $1 million to their various causes, though close friends are sure the total is much more than that, because of all Hunter does without fanfare.
Hunter is intimately involved with an acclaimed character-development program called Heart Of A Champion, an in-school curriculum that is used in 23 states. He is underwriting college scholarships for a hundred students over five years through a program called Hunter’s 100, and built a youth baseball field in California in an effort to encourage inner-city kids to play the game. He’s also put money into a food-distribution network here, and, according to Skip Perkins Jr., the athletic director at the University of Arkansas-Pine Bluff, is by far the biggest contributor to the $5 million Torii Hunter Baseball, Softball and Little League Complex on a 15.5-acre parcel that is being built adjacent to the campus.
"You can’t meet a better person than Torii Hunter. He’s one in a billion," Perkins says.
I like to point out the athletes who are doing positive things especially when they give back to the communities they come from, because the media will always give these type of activities as back page press in favor of misconduct by a few others.
To let them say it there all hyper-sexual criminally leaning, thugs, which is that is what they think of the community at large.
That type of reporting has to be checked, and Torii's story is a good way to do it.
