The Christmas spirit is alive and well in the Rebel nation
By John Cofield
johnbcofield@gmail.com
This great Rebel Christmas story all started with a simple email.
As Andy Williams, a single father from Meridian, Mississippi, recently wrote to HottyToddy.com, “I just signed up for the newsletter with hopes of winning the four tickets (to the Compass Bowl). I really need to win these tickets so bad. I have three boys who are diehard Ole Miss fans, ages eight, seven and five. They get it honestly from me, since I am a HUGE fan. All they have asked for this Christmas is anything Ole Miss related.
“I usually try to take them to a game or two during the year, but I have fallen on very difficult times and did not get to this year. They were so disappointed. Christmas is not going to be very big this year. I for one am just glad to be here spending it with them, but it’s hard to make kids understand finances.”
Emails such as this one could have easily fallen by the wayside. But it ended up in the box of a Rebel with a big heart and the Christmas spirit. Ed Meek, the founder of HottyToddy.com and a man known throughout the Rebel Nation, saw the email from Williams as an opportunity to give three young Rebels a Hotty Toddy Christmas, for sure.
While the Williams kids missed out on attending a game with their father during the regular season, all four will be Birmingham bound this January 5th when the Ole Miss Rebels plays Pittsburgh in the Compass Bowl.
Meek donated four tickets to the bowl game for the Williams family, and another local Oxford businessman, Rebel Rags owner Terry Warren, added some Christmas cheer of his own with Ole Miss Compass Bowl tee-shirts for the entire family.
Williams, who works on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico and has raised his kids as a single parent since his divorce from their mother, is thrilled at the prospect of being able to give his kids their Christmas wish this year.
“I just received the shirts from Rebel Rags,” he wrote to HottyToddy.com writer and editor John Cofield. “Please pass on how thankful I am for this. They are going to be so happy when they get those on Christmas. Mine is awesome also. I’m a grown man but had tears coming out as I opened the box. Y’all will never understand how much this really means. I am very blessed to be a part of the Rebel Nation. This is probably one of the greatest things to ever happen to me besides the day my kids were born. Again, thank you all for everything. I can’t wait to meet y’all. This means the world.”
A Hotty Toddy Christmas
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