Friday, February 22, 2008

Helping a Neighbor

My mom told me about this article and I wanted to share it with you.

Apparently, UK Men's Basketball coach Billy Gillespie was listening to the "General Store" radio program from a station in Stanford KY when a woman called in. The premise of the show is that people call in selling all kinds of things from prom dresses to chickens, to tailgates, according to the article. A woman called in wanting to sell her car for $600 immediately so she would have the money to attend her father's funeral in Ohio.

Gillespie called the station and identified himself as only "Billy" and offered to help the woman with her expenses so that she could keep her car. He and the host of the radio program talked after the show off air and confirmed that the woman's story was true and he sent a personal check overnight to the radio station to cover the cost of a new outfit for the funeral, transportation, food and a hotel for the woman. His identity was revealed only later, after the woman returned from the funeral, by the host of the show who had noticed that the caller ID was "Billy Gillespie." He never identified himself as the UK coach to the host. He states "I didn't do this for attention, I was just trying to help somebody out."

Regardless of whether he wins a lot of games this year or not, his stock just went up in my opinion.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very nice gesture--now let's just hope those rumors about womanizing and getting kicked out of bars in Lexington aren't true!

Allison said...

Mom also said he liked to drink, so who knows, maybe they are true. But come on...who of us hasn't been kicked out of a bar...oh yeah, I haven't.