| from the heart |
18 LAKE OCONEE LIVING | SPRING 2022
place he had come from.
He was homeless.
Curry says the sta and administration
gured that out the rst
summer when Bracken stayed behind
in the athletic dorms. ere
was no home to return to, no
one to tell him he was “meant
to be here and do something
with my life.”
Bracken excelled at Georgia
Tech, went on to succeed in
business, and wrote the book
“My Orange Due Bag: A Journey
to Radical Change.” From that
book came the beginning of an
initiative to improve the lives of
homeless children and children
in foster care through education.
Since its inception, the initiative
has aided more than 1,500 children
that were both hidden and
From left, legendary coaches Ray Goff of UGA and Bill
Curry of Georgia Tech join ODBI President Mike Daly,
Reggie Pope of J.E. Dunn Construction, and Lucius Sanford
forgotten.
“You don’t see it,” says Reggie
Pope. Pope, a board member of
the Orange Due Bag Initiative
(ODBI) and a senior management
member of the construction
rm J.E. Dunn, says children
struggling with trauma and broken family
ties are discarded. e initiative establishes
a 12-course program for identied students
and becomes, in part, a surrogate family, a
place with people who don’t leave and who
show an interest.
“It’s a huge problem,” Pope says. “ere are
a number of homeless teens in trouble and
that number is increasing. Everybody has let
them down.”
“Our ‘Team Orange’ culture is to improve
the wellbeing of our program graduates by
empowering students to establish and maintain
of Georgia Tech Athletics at a previous tournament
to enefit the Orange uffel ag ntate.
healthy relationships and community
connections
in
support
of their
vision for
their best life.” is mission, stated on the
ODBI website, is a clean and precise way of
explaining how Bracken’s vision became a
driving force, enjoining like-minded persons
like Curry and Pope and Mike Daly who was
speaking at a writer’s conference in Atlanta
when he rst heard about the initiative.
Daly says he was approached by Echo
Garrett, co-author of Bracken’s book, with
a request to help promote the book and the
vision. “I was blown away by the story,” says
Daly, who is now the president of the ODBI.
He was most impressed, he says, by how
Bracken’s experience molded a philosophy
that children “reconcile the trauma they have
been through and give meaning to it.”
When he had that epiphany, he says, “I
knew we had something very powerful that
would make a dierence.”
Daly now manages the $500,000 per year
My
ney
book
Sign up
today!
WHAT:
ODBI Charity Golf Classic
WHEN:
Monday, March 28
WHERE:
Indian Hills Country Club,
Marietta
MORE INFO:
theodbi.org/annualcharity
golf-classic
Shown, from left, are ODBI Board Chair, Dwayne Kasper,
ODBI Vice President, Diana Black, Sky Ranch Foundation
President, Ralph Aguera, ODBI Co-founder, Sam
Bracken, ODBI President, Mike Daly, J.E. Dunn Senior
Manager, Reggie Pope.
/annual-charity-golf-classic