IRMO, S.C. — Thanks to your generous donations, our Stuff-A-Bus campaign is able to help guarantee items under the tree for hundreds of Midlands families. We talked to an Irmo woman whose donation is one driven by purpose.
Cynthia Byrd's home and her garage are filled with toys, everything from bikes to games. It’s all to be a blessing and to remember her son: Brandon LaVar Byrd.
“It was a pain that I could not describe,” Cynthia remembers.
Brandon lost his life in a car accident at 20 years old in 2007. He was studying at Midlands Technical College with hopes of being a radiologist.
“Brandon, you would see him before you heard him because he was quiet in his own way. Loved to dress, everything had to be neat. No crinkles in his sneakers. He wore hats,” Byrd smiles. “Loved the Lord with all his heart and would always befriend someone. If there was a need, he would try to meet it for someone and not for show. He would just do something and there it is.”
Now, his mom is carrying on his legacy by hosting school supply drives, litter pick ups and holiday toy drives.
“There was something that I needed to do to learn how to live on earth without him,” Byrd explains.
Byrd has gotten hundreds of donations from her community.
“It has been a total blessing,” family friend Sharon Grant says. “When all this happened with Brandon, it was devastating and it took us a lot of time to recover from it. And Cynthia it means a lot to me because she's been my friend and Brandon has been a lovable young man and he was always giving, always trying to help people. And so this means a lot to keep his legacy going.”
With help from people like Grant, Byrd is sorting them into boxes decorated with wrapping paper and pictures of Brandon.
“Although I know they're going to the warehouse, they will be emptied, but someone's gonna see my baby's face,” Byrd shares. “His name lives on. People talk about him.”
“It's a true blessing just to see what people getting together, what you can do for a community and to bless other people,” Grant adds.
They’re working to gather as many toys as they can to organize and bring to the Harbison Walmart on Friday and donate to our Stuff-A-Bus campaign.
“We're gonna drive up with the truck and the cars and we're gonna bless the WLTX Stuff-A-Bus and help them while they're helping The Salvation Army who's doing the most! Sounds like a good deal to me.”
Byrd says when she’s wrapping up presents and shopping for gift donations, she thinks of her son the whole time.
“When I'm doing this, and I'll be talking to him like, ‘Oh Brandon we did this!” Byrd tells me. “Sixteen years ago someone gave me a lemon. I could have just taken it, stayed sour, stay depressed, just given up on life. But I really prayed and I give all the honor to God. I prayed, ‘I need I need you to help me to get through this.’ And when we found that cause: Brandon LaVar Byrd, blessing and remembering, I added some sugar to that lemon. Now we have lemonade. And now we have all of this.”
WLTX will be out there on Friday at different Walmart locations all across the Midlands from 6 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. collecting new toys, non-perishable food items and monetary donations.