Just a few months after J.J. Watt was honored by the NFL for his remarkable fundraising work for the city of Houston in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, the Texans have told ESPN that the philanthropist athlete has pledged to honor the victims of Friday’s high school massacre.
Texans defensive end J.J. Watt will pay for the funerals of those killed in the shooting at Santa Fe High School, the team confirmed.
In addition to his successes on the field, Watt, a Wisconsin native, made headlines last year when he created a fundraiser to help Houston residents after Harvey ravaged the city beyond recognition. With a modest goal of $200,000, Watt’s fundraiser raised over $37 million in about three weeks.
Though he’s yet to tout his support for the Santa Fe families, let it be known that, like many professional athletes, Watts has a long history of charitable work. Long before Harvey, and even before entering the NFL, the defensive end has been working to support kids in need, and those affected by violence. His Justin J. Watt Foundation, founded in 2010 while he was still a student athlete at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, helps establish and fund school athletics programs in underserved areas.
The foundation serves schools in need, where 40 percent or more of students qualify for a free or reduced-price lunch. Items purchased by the foundation must be able to be used year after year, so mouth guards are out. But the money can go to cheerleading, soccer, football, baseball - any athletic activity.
Most of the schools the foundation has funded are located in Texas or Wisconsin, but funding is open to any school in need. The foundation has donated recently to schools in Alabama, Illinois, California and Indiana.
Watts’s generosity won’t undo the damage that confessed shooter Dimitrios Pagourtzis has done to these families, but hopefully being spared the expense of a proper farewell brings them some peace. Remember their names. They deserve that much, since they can’t have their lives back.