Tennessee First Lady Maria Lee donated winter coats to students in Pickett County Wednesday as part of her Tennessee Serves initiative.
Lee said she partnered with the non-profit Operation Warm to help alleviate the financial burdens of struggling Tennesseans. She said she wanted to focus in particular on distressed counties like Pickett County.
“Rural communities are important to the Governor and myself.” Lee said. “Rural Tennessee is the backbone of our state and again when those communities are thriving, our whole state thrives.”
Lee said the most distressed counties in Tennessee are rural. Both Clay County and Pickett County rank among the 11 most distressed counties in the state.
“We are trying to focus through my initiative, across the state,” Lee said. “But also mainly on distressed counties.”
Lee visited Pickett K-8 School Wednesday. She said she hopes this initiative leaves each county feeling cared for.
“Someone cares enough that they would be able to hand out a coat to them,” Lee said. “And help alleviate some of the burden that might come with, you know, financially, maybe not being able to provide one.”
Lee said it is important that all Tennesseans give back to the community. Acts of service strengthen local communities, Lee said, and when communities thrive, the state as a whole can thrive.
“We’ve all probably in our lifetime been given something, and it mean’t something special to us,” Lee said. “And that, it’s a way just to take what was given to us, and the feelings that we had when somebody did something nice for us, to be able to give (that) back.”
It is Lee’s second trip to the Upper Cumberland in the last week.
