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-It's an initiative that began i when Rusty Mac, a long-time local radio personal decided to get Christmas gifts for a teenager in need.

Hello, I'm Don McCorry.

On this edition of Tennessee is the topic is the Rusty Mac Adopt A Teen Program.

You have the power to help make holiday wishes of one or more of served by the Exchange Club and the Carl Perkins Center come Let the conversation begin.

[background conversations] -That's so cool.

-Then that's when I said that.

-The problem with that idea is-- -Wow.

That was amazing.

-Then I came up with a solution.

[music] -What was that about?

-Here's what I think about it.

-Now we're talking.

-West Tennessee PBS presents Tennessee is Talkin let the conversation begin.

-Thanks for joining the discussi on Tennessee is Talking.

Hello, I'm Don McCorry.

The Rusty Mac Adopt A Teen Progr was started in 1997 based on the idea by Rusty Mac that teens are the forgotten chi at Christmas.

Here to tell us more is Rita McC Thanks for joining us.

Part of the inspiration behind the Adopt A Teen Program was the death of Rusty's son.

Can you tell us about that?

-Yes, I can.

Thank you for having me.

Rusty was the father of one chil Unfortunately, his son was born with a heart de that they were not aware of.

At three days old, they found out about the heart d and what was going on and just a couple of days later, he had passed away.

When this was started, it was the year that his son would have turned 13 as a teenag That's how he decided to do this and try to buy gifts for teen that he could help, because he couldn't help his son at that point.

-He had to be in so much pain but was able to push through it to start this wonderful, wonderf -That's true, yes.

He really never got over that but he wanted to do something po in his memory.

That is how this got started in 1996 actually when he first bought that first teenager Christmas.

Then it continued the next year because his idea was if there's then there's got to be more.

He did not know at that time how many he would end up with, so he thought, "Let me find out about this, how many do they have at the Carl Perkins Center," which is something that he was already involved wit It turned out to be 18, which was more than he could take care of himself.

Since he had a microphone and a radio station, -he decided that he could do tha -He had a platform.

- Yes.

He started asking for help and the people in West Tennessee came through.

-That's great.

Will you share a little bit abou what your missions and goals of the organizations are?

-Sure.

Adopt A Teen is, unlike what it sounds like, you don't take that teenager hom with you.

A lot of people have thought, "Oh, do I take them home for Christmas?"

No.

What we do is we try to buy gifts for them for that they would not have otherwi Many of these children and the t that are served by the center would not have that opportunity to get gifts at Christmas.

Many of them are members of fami that have several children.

His thought was that in order to let these teens know that they are loved and supporte even though they may be in a bad situation, there are people out there that don't even know them -that are willing to help them.

-That are willing to help them.

That is the mission of that part of the program.

-Do they start at age 13?

-Yes.

-13 [?]

-That's when we start.

Typically, 18, 19-- The system says when you're 18 you're an adult but that doesn't always translat for every child.

We will cover them through the a if that's needed.

-How does your organization righ work with the community in terms of sharing the stories some of these teenagers and getting them more involved?

-Obviously, we cannot tell exact or exact names and information because these are teenagers that are in some way served by the Exchange Club Carl Center for the Prevention of Chi Many of these stories are-- Many of them will break your hea The success stories, we've got a few of those where these teenagers-- We've been doing this since 1996 as an actual program.

Many of these teenagers are grow and they have stories of their o We did have one that came back to the center after he was out of the system.

He had joined the military and he wanted to help.

He said, "I want to help because I was one of those teens -Oh, that's great.

-It does make a difference.

-He came back, shared his story to allow and give hope to severa other students and teenagers as That's great.

Do you have events that are comi for which the community can become involved in?

-We don't really have anything scheduled yet.

I try to go out and talk about i just as much as I can.

-That's why we're here.

-That's right.

We appreciate tha Get the word out.

We collect $100 per team.

That's our goal.

Anything that gets over and abov the number of teens that we have goes into a separate fund.

We can talk about that too, but we don't have a particular o that happens.

-As we said earlier, if a person wanted to adopt two they can do that as well.

-We've had companies that want t They do matching.

If their employees give so much, they match that.

Some companies we've had take 20 or more at a time.

That's wonderful.

When we starte it was $100 from individuals mai When you get up to 200, 300, 400 you can't do that individually as easily as you could.

It's a community-wide effort.

It's all over West Tennessee.

-How many teens have you helped since inception?

-I wish I could tell you that nu We've talked about this over the It's varied.

We started at 18.

We've had years that got up over 500 for one yea That's a lot.

Those are when you sweat bullets Rusty always said that, "If I can't get these teens cove I'm sweating bullets until I get them done."

I follow that same suit.

Really makes me nervous until we can get them all covere Last year, we had a little over It just depends on the year.

We've not seen a decline in the number of children that is served by the center but the ages do vary.

Sometimes you have more younger That's heartbreaking as well.

Then sometimes you have more tee It varies over the years.

I would think at this point we're probably 10, I'm just throwing out a number because I'm not really sure.

You think about 25 years plus of doing this, it's quite a lot.

-You shared the story of the for who had joined the military and and shared a little bit about the impact that the program had.

Are there other similar stories you'd like to share?

-That's the only one that I have personally heard.

I'm sure there are many others o that have done the same thing and maybe just don't tell it.

It's a difficult thing to talk a If you were in that situation, you might not want people to kno that you were in that situation.

We don't push it, but we do have some stories that we've heard over the years from people who don't mind telling their sto many multi-children families that have come out of the system and done really well in their li -What are some of the items that the children request on their wi -There's a lot.

It's really not what you might t Most of these teenagers realize that they're not going to get the expensive items.

They'll ask for simple needs like socks and underwear and school supplies.

We've had a lot of that over the School uniforms, sports equipment so they can may play football or baseball, something like that in school because those things cost money and in a household like that, you sometimes don't have that mo We've had all kinds of requests One thing that, many years ago, touched my heart and many others we had a request that was verified for toilet pap When you think about that and yo this teenager is asking for toil because they don't have any.

-That's heartbreaking.

Do you provide donors with that or do they typically get things on their own, or you suggest items for them and they fill in the gaps?

-We ask each of the social worke in each county to give us lists or to gather li for their teenagers because they're in all over the West Tennessee area.

We try to get what's on their li as much as we can.

We don't give them the money.

The money is sent to the people in each county that work for the center and they go out and purchase tho from their wish list and wrap them and give them back It's like Christmas morning, they have something under the tr -The donors typically don't meet the teenager?

-No, because of the privacy issu of the situation.

We just basically say we have this many teens and then people cover those based on how many they can do.

We just say here's this many tee -I guess the donors typically shop for these items all over?

-We do have some volunteers that want to help out and do the It's just dependent on the count because we try to keep that busi within that county.

If there's a retailer that might give you a break on maybe doing something at a cost, there are some counties who are able to do that.

-The donor has the option of saying here's money or here are items that were on your list.

-We have done a little bit of th Some places, especially companie they may want to be more involve in the actual purchase of the it but in this busy world we live i a lot of people don't have that What we do is say, "We will take that money that you send in and we will mak that the items are purchased."

-In the first year of the progra I believe you had 18 teens?

-We did.

We had 18.

-In 2021, you had 550?

-Yes.

That was a big year for this part of the center's pr -What challenges have you had over the years to be able not to have to say no to a teen?

-Luckily, I will say through the whole time that we've done this, we've never had to say no.

-That's amazing.

-Because the community, it's not me, it's not Rusty, it's the community that provides the money for the donations for these prog We've never been disappointed.

I can just say it like that.

-I would say that Tennesseans are extremely gracio -Very much so.

I've lived here all my life, in I don't know about any other com but I know that this one is amaz -Can you tell us about Conrad's Good Deeds?

-First of all, let me just say, when Rusty started this, we had no idea it would just be for a few years He and Conrad were good friends.

Conrad Delaney was also a DJ at a competing station at the ti Rusty was on one station for a very long time.

Just a couple of months before he passed away, he had moved to the same station as Conrad.

Even though they'd been friends for all these years, they really got close just in that short time that they worked together.

When Rusty passed away, Conrad was there, and he said, "We're going to keep this going.

Between he and I, we agreed this is going to keep going.

Because of Conrad, I think that was a big part -of keeping this-- -The program continued -Yes.

-to survive.

He and I talked many times about how do we do more?

How can we make this bigger?

Because we were serving the need at Christmastime, but the needs do not stop at Chr Many times we got requests for school uniforms and school s so we knew that they needed those earlier in the year.

We thought, "What can we do?"

Unfortunately, we lost Conrad.

That is what spurred us on to de this other part of the program that we call Conrad's Good Deeds We just collect money once a yea at Christmastime.

Anything that's over and above what we need to take care of those Christmas needs goes into the Conrad's Good Deeds program.

That covers the needs of these t throughout the year.

If they need something when school starts in August, we're able to take that and buy school supplies, school clothes.

Again, if they want to participate in s a lot of times they can't afford We had requests for football cleats one year.

We were able to get that purchased out of the Conrad's Good Deeds fund.

-If a teenager probably would unfortunately find themsel in the Exchange Club or the Carl Perkins Center for more than one Christmas, would they still be eligible for the next one?

-Oh, absolutely.

Yes.

If they're still being served by the center, that is the number that we get e It's strictly those served by th It could be several years.

It could be, unfortunately, multiple years.

-You shared a little bit about this earlier, about all of their gifts are som more than $100.

-Sometimes.

-I guess you've had some experie in telling them to dial it back a little bit.

-It's rare that we have to, but they understand from the beg that it's not going to be the big ticket items.

A lot of times they ask for things for other people.

We've had them ask for, "Can I give something to my little brother or my littl We've had them ask, "Can I give something to my mom They want to take the money that's allocated for them and spend it on somebody else.

We try to discourage that because it's really for them, we want you to have a good Chris We assure them if they have smaller brothers and sisters that are younger than them, they're going to be taken care o -Great.

Do you have one or more memorabl over your involvement in the pro that you would like to share with our viewers?

-Any time that I was able to be on a show with Conrad, it was a good time.

Conrad was a great person.

We shared the microphone many times on radio to talk abou One of the events that we enjoye was a Christmas in the city that was done here in Jackson.

We stood out there in the cold most of the day, giving out stickers to the child and to anyone that wanted them.

Everybody was a kid that day.

We were encouraging people to co if they wanted to make a donatio but really it was just an awaren This might be a good time to show you my little sticker.

-Aah.

-Aah.

That is our sticker.

It was designed after Rusty.

This reminds me of him every time I see it.

Those are good memories and it still continues.

I'm sure if there was an event that we could get involved in, we would still do that.

It's just me now, mainly.

-You're doing an amazing job.

-Oh, well, thank you.

-We thank you for that.

-I can talk almost all day about -That's a passion.

-Yes, it is.

-It's a dedication on your part.

There are a lot of people that would love to be able to do what you do, but there are probably more peop that appreciate what you do.

-I do appreciate that.

It's getting the word out, any social medias or any way we we get word out.

-Speaking of which how can, how can the community become more involved?

-I'm so glad you asked.

If you want to go online, there is a website for the cente -That web address.

-It's carlperkinscenter.org.

If you go on there, you should be able to see that little sticker.

That's our emblem.

We use that throughout the seaso to promote the Rusty Mac Adopt A If you click on that, it'll take you to more informati about the whole program and about how it got started and how you can become involved by making your donation.

You can do that online or you ca if you want to mail it in, you can send it too.

-It's available for individuals and businesses?

-Absolutely.

-Great.

-Cheyenne Drive, the 113 Cheyenn is the address for the center.

Of course everybody goes online.

That is the way to find all that information.

You can call the center, 731-668 at any time, they can give you the informatio You can make your donation over My favorite way is if somebody were to see me out a "Hey, I'd like to give you my mo so you can take it."

I am happy to do that.

Conrad and I called it, See a Rita or See a Conrad, so you can still see a Rita and send that information.

-You don't happen to have that on your bumper sticker on your c -I don't, but that's a great ide -That would be great if somebody were to pull me over -"Hey, I want to give you some m -I'd give you some money.

I have taken it from the street corner, literall We were doing an event at a radio station one time and somebody pulled up and said, "Hey, Conrad," and that was great because they were like-- He said, "I got some money for y We just walked right over and to from them right out of their car -We'll take it anyway.

-Every dollar helps.

-It does.

-Every dollar helps.

-I do want to say that, because it's $100 a teen, but that doesn't mean you have to give $100.

It's great if we can get that wh because that takes care of one, but if that is more than you can we understand that.

If you want to give what you can we'll add it to somebody else's and we'll take care of a teen.

-Great.

Do you have some of the that come back to you year after -Yes, we do.

We send out letters to those fol at the beginning of the season and just say, "Hey, it's time for this," and so many of them just send their money in.

We don't have to beg as hard as we used to, because we have so many donors that have given in the past.

-What would you like to see the program turn into, maybe 10 years from now?

-One of the things that I have always had as a goal is to make it self-sufficient, w Something's going to happen to m and if I'm not here, I want the program to continue.

I believe we've really done a gr on getting the word out, and so many people already know that if I'm not out here talking and nobody's really having to say a whole lot, then we've done our job and it's going to continue without us in the future.

-While the bulk of your work hap during the holiday season, you are working endlessly throughout the course of the yea -We do have that Conrad's Good D that we can do any time of the y when we see a need.

Oftentimes we will get requests from the social workers in the c that say, "Hey, we've got this teenager that is not able to buy school c or they need a pair of shoes for or something like that.

We're able to pull from that fun to provide those needs when they come up.

-Is there anything else you want to leave our viewers wi about the program?

-The web address, again.

-The website, yes, carlperkinscenter.org.

There's so many worthy causes.

If this one touches your heart, just go out there and find that information.

We'd be happy to have you as a d -That's great.

That is great.

Unfortunately, we're out of time for this edition of Tennessee is We want to thank Rita McCaslin for stopping by and telling us a the Rusty Mac Adopt A Teen Progr If you want to re-watch this pro or share it with a friend, remember it can be streamed anytime on the PBS app, along with all local Channel 11 You can also watch it on the West Tennessee PBS YouTub and on westtnpbs.org.

Keep the conversation going by following West Tennessee PBS on social media.

Until next time, keep on talking Tennessee.

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