{"id":6098,"date":"2017-05-03T13:24:18","date_gmt":"2017-05-03T17:24:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/?p=6098"},"modified":"2023-02-15T10:50:18","modified_gmt":"2023-02-15T15:50:18","slug":"in-abbies-honor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/2017\/05\/03\/in-abbies-honor\/","title":{"rendered":"In Abbie’s Honor"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Abbies<\/a><\/p>\n

Abbie DeLoach was one of five Georgia Southern nursing students who died in 2015 when a semi-trailer crashed into their vehicles on I-16 west of Savannah. Abbie\u2019s father, Jimmy DeLoach, Jr. is a University MBA alumnus and former Eagles coach. Through a foundation established in Abbie\u2019s honor, he has created three scholarship funds at Georgia Southern and has made major gifts to his church and other organizations<\/em><\/h5>\n
\n

Assistant coach and recruiting coordinator Jimmy DeLoach had been on the road, pushing hard to lock down Georgia Southern\u2019s 1987 class of football players, but on this day back on campus he strode into the legendary Erk Russell\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

\u201cI called him up on a Thursday and told him I needed to talk to him when I got back to Statesboro. He said, \u2018Come on in and we\u2019ll sit down and talk.\u2019 I went to his office and I said, \u2018Coach, you won\u2019t believe this, but I\u2019m going to leave coaching because God is moving me in another direction.\u2019 He said, \u2018Well, coach, what are you going to do \u2026 cut grass for a living?\u2019 \u201cI said, \u2018Yeah.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Within weeks, DeLoach joined his brother, Eddie, and Eddie\u2019s company, TideWater Landscape Management. \u201cI went with him in `87 and I haven\u2019t looked back,\u201d said DeLoach who serves as TideWater\u2019s vice president. Now the TideWater Group, has become a multi-service company that is not only responsible for green spaces, but designs and builds landscapes, maintains parking lots, and installs holiday d\u00e9cor for towns and businesses in seven states.<\/p>\n

When DeLoach left Georgia Southern, Coach Russell told him that if there was anything he could do, he\u2019d be glad to help. \u201cHe really meant that,\u201d said DeLoach, who saw Russell frequently helping others. \u201cHe had a rare ability to teach, to give and to unify young men who were from diverse backgrounds,\u201d DeLoach said. \u201cEvery year he had the capacity to bring them to a goal. That\u2019s what I took away from him to the business world.\u201d<\/p>\n

DeLoach said he and Eddie, who now serves as mayor of Savannah, always had a dream of working from the east coast to the west coast. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to believe,\u201d he said, \u201cbut you can actually make that statement today because all the way from Virginia to New Mexico, TideWater is working every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

One crucial attribute of the company is its commitment to employees beyond a paycheck. \u201cWe try to provide our guys with some kind of educational backgrounds. That\u2019s what we do every day because those guys need the same opportunity that you and I have had to support their families,\u201d explained DeLoach. \u201cThat\u2019s what my dad taught me, and Coach Russell gave me that team concept that the group is always bigger than individuals.\u201d<\/p>\n

DeLoach has made it his personal commitment to help aspiring students reach their potential with the establishment of scholarships in honor of his late daughter Abbie. He recalled an incident 30 years before Abbie\u2019s tragic death that factored into his decision to create the awards.<\/p>\n

While serving as a student assistant coach at Gainesville High School, he developed a relationship with two brothers, Sammy and Lamar Williams. Sammy, the younger brother, drowned while swimming with friends before he could return to Mississippi State for football camp.<\/p>\n

That was 1984. DeLoach joined Erk Russell\u2019s staff as a graduate assistant at Georgia Southern that year. \u201cI happened to remember that when Georgia Southern started recruiting kids. I remembered the environment that those two kids lived in and that the only escape they had was an education through athletics,\u201d said DeLoach. \u201cI\u2019m talking about doghouse hard \u2014 just very hard. The only thing they had was their willingness to get out and claw and fight and do whatever it took to have that opportunity.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remembered that and I thought, \u2018If I ever get in a position where I can help someone become better today than they were yesterday, I\u2019m going to do that.\u2019 When Abbie died, I thought about that family and their sacrifice to get their children to a point of being successful only to have one of them taken away. It reminded me so much of Abbie, just how something can be snatched from you,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Even today, he said, \u201cI look at the people that I see on a daily basis knowing that they might not be here in a day or an hour. It really gives you a sense of the value of people and the value of organizations and the value of relationships and the value of education.\u201d<\/p>\n

A 2012 graduate of Savannah Christian Preparatory School, Abbie was an excellent student and standout athlete, lettering in basketball, volleyball and track. At the time of her death, she was a junior nursing major at Georgia Southern, a member of Kappa Delta Sorority and an intramural champion.<\/p>\n

Through DeLoach\u2019s efforts, the Abbie Lorene DeLoach Foundation was established to honor Abbie and provide philanthropic support to help improve lives and through them, families and communities. Last December, the Foundation created three scholarship funds at Georgia Southern: the Abbie Lorene DeLoach Memorial Nursing\/Kappa Delta Scholarship, the Tidewater Landscape Management Male Scholar Athlete Scholarship, and the Abbie Lorene DeLoach Female Athletic Scholarship.<\/p>\n

The annual awards will begin this fall and support a University nursing student, a male scholar-athlete and a female scholar-athlete.<\/p>\n

DeLoach wants the scholarships to help ensure sound futures for promising young people and, in turn, allow them to provide for their own families later in life. DeLoach\u2019s other daughter, Anna, is a junior at the University of Georgia and holds a 3.85 grade point average. \u201cShe can be anything she wants to be,\u201d DeLoach said. \u201cAbbie was that way, too. Abbie could have been anything she wanted to be because people at Savannah Christian took their time and made sure my girls were successful. That\u2019s the same thing Coach Russell did and the same thing Georgia Southern did when I was there for my master\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe professors took their time to make sure when you left Georgia Southern you were prepared to be one of the best professionals that you could possibly be. And that\u2019s priceless, because everything starts with a good paycheck and an education is just a springboard to that.\u201d \u2014 David Thompson<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DeLoach has made it his personal commitment to help aspiring students reach their potential with the establishment of scholarships in honor of his late daughter Abbie. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":6101,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[55],"class_list":["post-6098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-foundation","tag-spring-2017"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6098\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}