Leslie Thompson, a study hall teacher at Confier High School in Colorado couldn’t get the words her student RJ Sampson said to her out of her head. RJ is visually impaired and he never got to read the yearbook.
So when he asked her “When are you going to make me a braille yearbook?” she knew she had to do her best in order for this wish of his to become a reality.
RJ wanted his own yearbook from the time he was only a freshman, and now as a senior, he was finally going to get it thanks to his teacher and his classmates who loves him very much.
All the students loved the idea of helping make RJ’s dream come true. Everyone got engaged in the process of making the braille yearbook. RJ, of course, had no idea what the school’s staff and the students were up to.
However, this wasn’t an easy task to do. Leslie, the vision team, and the yearbook committee spent more than 1,500 hours making it. But they didn’t mind that. The only thing they cared for was RJ’s smile when he gets to hold it in his hands.
Take a look at the video below to see the heartwarming moment the surprise is revealed in front of the students gathered at the school hall. This is truly amazing and shows how loving the people from this education facility really are.
Although he always believed he would pursue a career in sports, Garth Brooks ended up becoming one of the most famous country singers of all time thanks to his music talent.
It was during his years at the Oklahoma State University that Brooks became aware of his love for singing and performing. He and his friends experimented with music in their dorm rooms and soon after, Brooks decided to take his guitar to a local salon named Willie’s and ask if he could perform. Once on stage, with all those people listening to him playing and singing, Brooks knew music was his calling.
“One night turned into two nights, three nights, and pretty soon I was playing Monday through Friday all over town,” Brooks recalled to Colbert. “The great thing was, it wasn’t working … I could feed myself and somebody I loved doing something that isn’t a job!”
Shutterstock/Kathy Hutchins
Next, he formed his band Santa Fe, which performed music covers.
“The greatest thing about clubs is there’s no one in between you and the people you’re playing for,” he told PBS.
“There is no “yes men” between you and them; it’s just honesty. They’re going to let you know. And they’re going to let you know right away. So you learn quick what works and what doesn’t.”
What felt like the right thing to do at the time was moving to Nashville, where Brooks believed he could make a career. But things didn’t turn as expected and he soon returned to Stillwater, a bit disappointed from the pace with which his career was moving.
Shutterstock/ Paul Smith / Featureflash
Then, one night changed it all for Brooks. He took part in a writer’s round at the famous Bluebird Café. The person who was supposed to perform second didn’t show up and Brooks took the stage instead. He sang If Tomorrow Never Comes, not aware that among the crowd there was the Capitol Records label head Lynn Shults.
Shults was mesmerized by Brooks’ performance and told him to stop by his office the following day. On June 17, 1988, Capital Records signed Brooks for an advance of $10,000. The following year, he released his first single, Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old), which reached No. 8 in the charts.
Terry Wyatt/Getty Images
At the time his career took off and he rose to stardom, Brooks was married to wife Sandy with whom he has three children. She was his greatest support and was always by his side, but eventually, Brooks’ many tours, promotions, and performances, which required from him to be away from home, were too much to handle for Sandy. The two filed for divorce, which was finalized in 2001.
“Sandy is kind of doing my job and her job with the girls. If Sandy is doing her job, she’s telling them, ‘Hey, your dad loves you to death. He’s just working, and he’ll be home soon.’ Well, I didn’t have anybody to do that anymore,” he said about the divorce, shortly after he announced he wanted to retire from music in order to be able to spend more time with his daughters.
Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images
The divorce of Brooks and Sandy became a much-talked-about topic, especially because of the hefty settlement worth $125 million, which she received.
The former partners maintained a co-parenting schedule for 14 years. Despite the divorce, their daughters were seeing both parents every morning and every evening. “That’s how we ran it because we knew it was right for those kids. If you did what was right for the kids, you were going to do what was right for you. It was simple,” Brooks said.
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In 2005, Brooks married his second wife, Trisha Yearwood, a very famous singer on her own right. Speaking to USWeekley, Brooks said that Trisha became an active participant in raising his daughters. He, Sandy, and Trisha often attend the girls’ many sporting events together.
“I will say, I’d never wished divorce on anybody, but [for us,] three children and three parents worked really well, especially since the three girls were all tomboys. So they were all at soccer, track and field, softball, and never ever did one of those kids take the field where at least one parent wasn’t in the stands,” Brooks told US Magazine.
Shutterstock/Kathy Hutchins
Brooks has won 23 Academy of Country Music Awards over the course of his career, and was nominated for two Primetime Emmys in 1999 for Outstanding Performance in a Variety or Music Program and Outstanding Variety, Music, or Comedy Special for his Garth Live From Central Park special. He has a net worth of $400 million.
Few child actors have ever reached the fame of incredible Shirley Temple who was considered the cutest and most talented young actress during the 1930’s. She starred in a number of movies, including Curly Top and Heidi, which brought her plenty of awards, among which a special Juvenile Academy Award for her outstanding contribution as a juvenile performer in motion pictures during 1934.
What’s most, Shirley capitalized on licensed merchandise, such as dolls, dishes, and clothing, that featured her wholesome image.
In the midst of her popularity, Shirley retired from acting at the age of just 22. Some years later, however, she returned to acting, making guest appearances on television shows in the early 1960s.
Wikipedia Commons / Harry Warnecke
Besides her acting career, Shirley was also a very successful business woman who sat on the boards of corporations and organizations, including The Walt Disney Company, Del Monte Foods, and the National Wildlife Federation.
At the same time, this versatile woman was a diplomat as well, serving as the United States ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia and becoming the first female Chief of Protocol.
Shirley led quite a life. She was married twice and had three children. Sadly, she passed away in 2014 at the age of 85 due to a chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Wikipedia
From her first marriage to husband John Agar, Shirley welcomed daughter Linda Susan Agar. While married to her second husband, Charles Alden Black, Shirley gave birth to son Charles Alden Black Jr. and daughter Lori Black.
Lori was the child who gave Shirley much trouble. Namely, Lori was a musician who played bass for the bands “Clown Alley” and the “Melvins.” During the 80’s, she got involved with drugs and struggled to overcome the addiction. During that time, her mother was always by her side.
1948: Family headshot portrait of married actors Shirley Temple and John Agar (1921 – 2002) smiling as they pose with their three-month baby daughter, Linda Susan, on a cushion at home. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
On what was supposed to be Shirley’s 90th birthday, her children gathered together to pay tribute to their mother. Her son Charles shared what it was like growing up with a famous mother. “The only time I noticed her star quality was when someone else would ask for her autograph. She was an amazing person. She was wonderful — and normal. We had dinner at the table every night all together.”
Her daughter, Linda added: “She was devoted and generous, and she could be a little stern if we didn’t behave. But she was also a lot of fun. Very inventive and imaginative. She was all about her children and her husband.
“We had a lot of fun decorating the dining room. Being a wife and mom is the greatest of her achievements. We were shopping and travel buddies. We went many places together. She was one of my very best friends…”
The ongoing pandemic changed the way we live and socialize with one another. Sadly, it affected young children as well. In the past, typical 11-year-old kids would spend their days hanging out, playing games, and engaging in a number of extracurricular activities. These days, they tend to spend their time at home, making sure they stay safe and sound.
Lauren Nelson, 11, decided to spend her days doing something incredibly inspiring. She, as many young girls her age, wanted the newest toy camper of American Girl which cost $650. When she asked her dad to buy it for her, he said, “That’s ridiculous, you could buy your own camper for that price.”
And that’s how the idea for a real camper was born.
Source: YouTube/ WKBW TV | Buffalo, NY
Lauren had some money on her own, and she was determined to spend it on a vehicle that she would later turn into a home.
Speaking to NY Post, her mom, Aimee, explained, “Lauren really does have an envelope where she saves money. And it’s just a little bit here and there from things, like $5 at Easter or Tooth Fairy money. It just added up.”
Source: YouTube/ WKBW TV | Buffalo, NY
The great thing was that Lauren didn’t need to look far as one of their neighbors was selling his camper for $500. The thing was that Lauren only had $400 so she negotiated and managed to get the camper for the suitable price.
“He said $500 and I said $400 because that was the money I had in my bank account and he said sold,” the girl explained.
Source: YouTube/ WKBW TV | Buffalo, NY
Once she got the camper, she needed to save more money in order to renovate it. At the end, she ended up spending additional $400 for the furnishings and accessories for her boho-styled hideout.
She used the HGTV show Tiny House Hunters and Pinterest for inspiration.
The final result is mesmerizing to say the least. Lauren’s camper has everything a cozy home needs, and that’s a nice living space, a four-bed bedroom, a bathroom, and a kitchen. It also has a number of cool decorations such as plants, decorative pillows, and a bunch of cupboards.
Source: YouTube/ WKBW TV | Buffalo, NY
Lauren is a creative young lady. However, it wouldn’t be possible for her project to turn into reality if it wasn’t for her parents who let their daughter stretch her creative wings.
For more on the story and a tour inside this beautiful home go to the video below. You’re going to love it!
With the temperatures getting higher and higher, we should all have in mind the consequences of leaving young children and pets locked inside hot vehicles. Many adults believe that their children being left alone inside the car for a short period of time would do them no harm, but the reality is that it sometimes takes a moment for a tragedy to take place.
Back in 2019, the Charles County Sheriff’s Office got a call from a 4-year-old boy who told them that he and six other children were all alone inside a hot car. They boy said that they all had troubles breathing and were sweating. His voice was trembling and the officers could tell he was terrified and fearing for his life.
Charles County Sheriff’s Office is currently investigating after authorities say seven toddlers from ages 2 to 4 years old were left in a hot car in a parking lot of the St. Charles Towne Center in Waldorf. https://t.co/Z4gjFmepZD
Unfortunately, he was way too young to be able to tell where they were parked. The officers, however, managed to track the call down and arrived at the parking lot of the shopping center in Waldorf, Maryland just in time. The boy’s mother came some 10 minutes later and claimed that she was only gone for 20 minutes.
Two of the children, who were all aged 2 to 4, were her kids, and she was babysitting the rest. She was later charged with confinement of children inside a motor vehicle.
People seem to be more and more into reality shows nowadays than ever before. Why we love these shows so much is that they show real people doing real things. One of the shows that is on air for over a decade and is as popular today as it was back in the day is Pawn Stars.
It started with Richard Harrison, known as The Old Man, and his sons running their Gold & Silver Pawn Shop in Las Vegas, Nevada. Over the years, they purchased, sold, and evaluated a huge number of artifacts with incredible background stories.
Sadly, The Old Man passed away in 2018, at the age of 77, and his son Rick Harrison took charge of the famous shop which resembles a history museum and brings a lot of cash.
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After Richard’s death, Rick paid a tribute to his father with a touching message.
“He will be tremendously missed by our family, the team at Gold & Silver Pawn and his many fans the world over,” Rick wrote on Instagram. “He was my hero and I was fortunate to get a very cool ‘Old Man’ as my dad. That I got to share him with so many others and they got to see what a great family man he was is something I am grateful to have experienced with him.
“I think about him every day. I had a different relationship with him,” Rick said.
“Most people, when they turn 18, they go off to school, get a job and move out. I worked with my father from the time I was a kid. He stayed in the Navy for years because of me. Otherwise, it would have been really difficult with my medical expenses. But despite my epilepsy, he never treated me differently.”
Youtube/PawnStars
In fact, in order to be able to work alongside his father, Rick dropped out of high school and learned how the business was done. Speaking of his childhood, he says he started buying and selling stuff from young age, and soon after, he expanded from dealing with coins and gold, to vintage cars, firearms and a huge number of different antiques.
Speaking to Review Journal, rick recalled how his dad found the idea of doing a show “the craziest, stupidest thing he’d ever heard.” The great thing is that he later changed his mind and that’s how Pawn Stars was born.
“I remember telling him, ‘Dad, you’ve got to come in Saturday for the sizzle reel.’ And he looks at me and says, ‘Rick, you’re never getting a bleeping TV show. It’s just not going to happen.’ I begged him to come in that Saturday. But we had to have him. He was the grumpy old man that everyone loves,” Rick said.
“At first, I just thought a season or two would be good for business,” he added. “It’s really bizarre. I’m just a fat pawn broker, and now I’m known all over the world.”
Instagram/RickHarrison
Today, Rick runs the shop with his son Corey and his friend Austin “Chumlee” Russell. The pandemic affected the income and Rick confessed that before it, the shop made $4,000 a day and now it went down to less than $400.
Over the years, Rick managed to accumulate a net worth of around $9 million all thanks to his business, the reality show, and his restaurant.
He’s giving a significant amount of money to different charities and is on the board of the Epilepsy Foundation. Having epilepsy himself, Rick is hoping to raise awareness about the condition. Speaking to Fox, he said: “If you have a seizure, you’re going to know it,” he explained. “There are some people, you have, like they’ll have small seizures when they sleep and they don’t even know it. It’s a disease that I think just a lot more people need to know about or maybe need some more awareness about it, and hopefully I’m going to find a cure for it one day, well, not me, the Epilepsy Foundation, not me.”
Pawn Stars airs in over 100 countries, and people can’t have enough of Rick. “First off, most reality shows are pretty much scripted. Mine is not,” Rick said of his show. “And it’s truly different every week. You can have a show about motorcycles or cars, but there’s only the only so much you can do with a motorcycle or a car every week. And people want to learn, but they don’t want to feel like they’re sitting around with a professor. I give all the history lessons and I make learning entertaining on the show.”
He says he is a real celebrity and people not only from America but basically from all around the world recognize him. The show aired in France recently and although a great portion of it had to be filmed there, Rick says he doesn’t mind traveling around.
“Seventy-five percent of TV shows in France have to be made in France, so it was very difficult to be on there,” he told Review Journal. “They are watching the very beginning of the show right now, so I’m like a rock star there and before the lockdown 15 percent of my business was French.
“I went to Buenos Aires and was mobbed. Last season, when we were filming in Rome, everyone’s running up to me. In Kuala Lampur, they know who I am.”
A lot has been said for the sacrifice the veterans made for this country, and no matter what we do for them, we can never thank them enough for keeping us safe.
Sadly, as time passes by and these brave people reach their old age, not many are around them. Although this should never be the case, it does happen and many elderly veterans are left on their own.
Nick Morales is a veteran himself. He and his fellow biker friends show appreciation for those who fought for this country whenever possible. In fact, they have started a project through which they honor the life of veterans who passed away and no one to claimed their bodies. This group’s motto is Vets helping Vets.
Youtube / FoxNews
Recently, they learned of the death of Mr. Robert Krause who served as a Marine in the 1950s. He was living all by himself, with no friends of relatives who could organize a decent funeral for him. That’s when Nick Morales and his crew stepped in.
”I’ve heard it said that a veteran dies twice: once on the battlefield and the second time when people stop saying his name,” Morales told Fox 13 News. ”If there’s anything we can do to prevent the latter, so be it.”
The kind volunteers escorted Mr. Krause’s casket from the James A. Haley Veterans’ Hospital to the Florida National Cemetery and that way they paid tribute to his service.
“We’re not going to let any vet go to their final resting place by themselves. We all have a common bond of service – our service, what we’ve done for our country. And regardless of what we’ve done after our service, we still have that bond,” Morales said.
Youtube / FoxNews
We are very thankful for everything these bikers do for the fallen veterans. You are our heroes, may God bless you all.
Take a look at the touching story in the video below and don’t forget to share it with your friends because these people deserve all the praise in this world.
Dubbed one of the most beautiful actresses that have ever walked this Earth, Elizabeth Taylor was a true diva. Her unique appearance, her double row of lashes due to a condition known as distichiasis, and her incredible eyes which were purple-colored only added to her gorgeousness.
Her beauty, along with her raw talent, were a reason enough for her mother to “push” her into the world of film. Well, it wasn’t that young Elizabeth didn’t like to act, although she would confess later in life that she was sorry she missed having an ordinary chidhood.
She signed her first contract with Universal Studios when she was still very young, and at 10 years of age, she already had her debut in the film There’s One Born Every Minute. What followed were the films Lassie Come Home (1943) and The White Cliffs of Dover (1944). Her big breakthrough, however, came with the film National Velvet in which she played a tomboy. At that point, she already had her contract with MGM because apparently, she was fired by Universal Studios before that for reasons unknown. Some magazines reported that the casting director believed “her eyes were too old,” and that “she didn’t have the face of a child.”
Over the years, she appeared in a number of movies and received plenty of attention and awards, including two Academy Awards for Best Actress in a Leading Role for Butterfield 8 (1961) and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1967), as well as the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, awarded to individuals for “outstanding contributions to humanitarian causes.”
Elizabeth’s private life was as exciting as her very successful career which spanned almost her entire life. Her eight marriages placed her name in a number of gossip and celebrity news headlines, but despite that, she never stopped looking for love.
The Cleopatra star was married eight times, twice to the same man, actor Richard Burton.
Youtube/Astrotema
Her first marriage, to hotel heir Nicky Hilton, didn’t last long because according to the actress herself, she was too young and probably expected a lot. He second husband, Michael Wilding, was twenty years her senior. They had two children together, Michael Jr., born in 1953, and Christopher, born in 1955.
Elizabeth married movie producer Mike Todd in 1957. The two welcomed daughter Lizz, but just a year later, he died in a plane crash. During the time of grieving, she got really close to her late husband’s best friend Eddie Fisher, who was married to actress Debbie Reynolds at the time. One thing led to another and the two decided to marry. Only after their divorce did Elizabeth and Debbie smoothed things between them.
One of her most controversial relationships was that with actor Richard Burton. They married twice and divorced that many times. They adopted a daughter from Germany named Maria together.
In 1967, Elizabeth married her seventh husband, John Warner, a Republican politician from Virginia.
Youtube/TheNewYorkTimes
Her last husband, Larry Fortensky, was 20 years younger than her. The two met at the Betty Ford Clinic in 1988. According to him, she was there for pills and he for beer.
Their relationship continued even after they left the clinic and tied the knot in 1991 in a ceremony held at Michael Jackson’s ranch Neverland. The wedding cost $1.6 million.
As their relationship was surrounded by plenty of rumors, Larry decided to speak up and reveal the truth. “Of course, she was very pretty, and I wasn’t too bad-looking in those days either. We had an instant physical attraction,” he said of the time they first met.
He spoke of her as of a very special person with a sense of humor and childish spirit. One of the most vibrant memories of her that he cherished was from their trip to Switzerland. “I chased her outside, and she fell in the snow and started waving her arms around giggling like a little girl. That is my favorite picture. I keep it by my bed,” he said. “That’s how I remember Elizabeth. She had a childishness about her. She was 20 years older than me, but I never felt she was old.”
Elizabeth was very passionate about their relationship and she would often shower him with expensive gifts. One time, she bought him a brand new Harley-Davidson motorbike, as well as a BMW for his birthday.
He, of course, couldn’t compete with her. “I knew I couldn’t compete with Elizabeth, so I didn’t try. When she gave me the bike, I gave her chocolate-covered roses. Another year I bought her a baby lop-eared bunny which she loved,” he said.
He added how she was used to being photographed all the time, but he had a hard time coping with paparazzi and cameras.
Even after their divorce, Elizabeth and Larry remained very close friends and that friendship was something they both nurtured until the end of her life.
When she passed away in 2011, from congestive heart failure, Elizabeth left Larry $500,000 in her will to “honor their friendship.”
Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images
The rest of her huge fortune was inherited by her children. As for her jewels and perfumes, they were auctioned off and the money went to TheElizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation, a cause she kept close to her heart her entire life.
