My wife and I are frequent contributors to Make-A-Wish Foundation driven by the fact that they were helpful to my wife and her family when her niece had inoperable surgery which eventually took her very short life.
Every time I make our annual donation I do use my wife's name as although we both believe in the incredible works they do, it impacted her the most.
This morning, we got a request to donate and the celebrity involved with that request was former Atlanta Braves star, Chipper Jones.
For those of us old enough to remember, in 1997/98, Chipper had some large personal issues involving substances and infidelity, the latter resulting in the birth of a child. He strayed with a Hooters waitress and the rest is history. He didn't have a great reputation when all of this happened and opposing and some home fans were merciless around the ballpark.
So my surprise this morning was a personalized email to my wife from Chipper (yes, it's just mail merge, but hey, my brain works in very different, ADHD ways).
If this were the late 90s, I'd be wondering what's going on here with this guy hitting on my wife who definitely didn't work at Hooters at that time. But it's a great lesson in that people get healthier, address their demons and move on with life. The fact that he's volunteering and providing his name, image and likeness to Make-A-Wish to help raise money is fantastic and a sign that he's in a good place.
But as someone in Market Research/Brand Equity, there's still a bunch of us out here who "remember when" (I know, that's Pepperidge Farms) Chipper wasn't a good guy.
Oh well, off to make a donation!!
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