Hope Fail: Ty’Sheoma Bethea’s Unfulfilled Dream

It was about a year ago that America met 14-year-old Ty’Sheoma Bethea of Dillon, South Carolina. She was a key feature in President Barack Obama’s address to the nation last year, sitting directly next to First Lady Michelle Obama. Ty’Sheoma had written the President a letter asking for help to rebuilding her crumbling middle school in Dillon. He invited Ty’Sheoma to stand as he spoke about the youth of America and how “their resolve must be our inspiration…their concerns must be our cause.”

Eleven months later, a crumbling middle school in Dillon, South Carolina remains in shambles. J.V. Martin Junior High School received a lot of attention after that speech — even considerable donations from those who heard about their needs. Ty’Sheoma’s bold action, which brought her before a nation as a symbol of the hope promised America by President Obama, goes unanswered. It seems she was a prop in the circus of superficial hope that has died beneath the reality of politics as usual. Dream-big visions of shiny floors, tall ceilings, a sparkling cafeteria and more prevailed for months before money could not be secured for such lofty ideas. According to a Washington Post story:

They left behind a town where the hopefulness of the past year feels like a much more distant memory. Dillon’s unemployment rate is 18 percent. Its largest employer is a chicken processing plant that pays $9 an hour. The only stimulus money that arrived has gone to road resurfacing. All six of the town’s schools remain in various stages of disrepair and, the mayor said, “all of them are about as eye-appealing as sausage.”

Though many have forgotten young Ty’Sheoma’s story, we haven’t. Why didn’t the President deliver? Who will call him out on this and so many other broken promises and will he listen? I don’t expect to hear an apology, nor to see Ty’Sheoma sitting next to Mrs. Obama at tonight’s State of the Union Address. Securing funding fo such drastic changes in this school might have been unrealistic but the President made it seem otherwise. The story couldn’t be a more obvious symbol of this President’s first year of failure.

Oddly enough, the school district received a $4 million grant and a $35.8 million loans the day after this story ran in The Post. Better late than never but only because they got called out. Wow.

Watch the video from last year, if you can stand it. Note how the CBS reporter says that Obama gave Ty’Sheoma the “audacity to hope.” She’s since had to move out of Dillon so she won’t be seeing the fulfillment of her dream.

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