Austin arielle metzger

During their four years of study, the scholars volunteer for at least eight hours per week for a nonprofit organization. University President Dr. Stetson also introduced Arielle and Austin to several students mentors who volunteered to guide them throughout their academic journey.

Arielle and Austin say that the reason they agreed to the 60 Minutes interview in the first place is because they thought it might help homeless families. Then the phone rang again. After the news reports, she received thousands of calls and emails from people all over the world including Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Japan, and Great Britain.

One marine called from Afghanistan to make a donation. Since the news reports, FIT has opened 48 food pantries, largely sponsored by the local faith-based community. More than churches, large food organizations, and individuals have donated to help fill the pantries, which offer information as well as providing food.

The churches are also offering volunteers who are trained to serve as resources advocates. These volunteers will be strategically placed at the different food pantry locations and at a location at Northland Church to help support families through the transition process.

Families who are in transition themselves are motivated to help. The need will continue. Latest reports show that there are around 10, homeless children in Central Florida. November through January , the FIT program staff along with the school social workers helped 42 families with emergency housing to avoid living on the streets. And this happened during the holidays, when landlords are typically kinder. Beth invited the Metzger family to accompany her on a trip to Washington, D. They also ate in the private cafeteria, and toured the Capitol building.

Libby added, "At Stetson, we always talk about daring to be significant. To be significant as a university, to be significant in your individual life, and when we first saw the Metzger family and the amazing things that their father, Tom, has done to hold this family together, we really said that is part of the Stetson University experience. Please enter email address to continue. Please enter valid email address to continue. Reprinted with permission from Creators. When iconoclasts topple Jefferson, they seem to validate the argument advanced by defenders of Confederate monuments that there is no escape from the slippery slope.

Where does it end? Is Jefferson next? Is George Washington? No historical figure is without blemish, they protest. And it's unfair to condemn our ancestors using today's standards. If owning slaves is the discrediting fact about Lee, how then can we excuse George Washington? As if on cue, "TFG" chimed in with a statement chiding the city for "evicting" the "late, great Thomas Jefferson, one of our most important founding fathers.

No, Jefferson was in Paris during the Constitutional Convention. He authored another founding document Trump hasn't read. But never mind. There is an answer — a reason why it's right to remove Robert E. Lee from his pedestal in Richmond, Virginia, yet wrong to exile Thomas Jefferson from a place of honor in American life. It requires grappling with the full complexity of human beings and the mixed legacy of history. We must, as William Shakespeare said, "Take them for all in all," that is, judge them for their entire lives, not just a part.

People who defend monuments to Lee on the grounds that he played an important role in our history are confusing significance with honor. Lee surely played a huge role in our history, but as the leader of an army whose aim was to destroy the union. That made him a textbook traitor. As Ulysses Grant put it in his memoir, recalling his feelings upon accepting Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House, Lee had fought "valiantly" but for a cause that was "one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.

Is it fair to judge Lee by our modern standards? Perhaps not, but even by the standards of his own day, he is wanting. Much has been made of Lee's supposedly agonizing decision to resign his U. Army commission because he could not "raise my hand against my birthplace, my home, my children. Winfield Scott, who offered Lee command of the Union army in , also hailed from Virginia, yet remained loyal, as did Virginian Gen.

Lee's image has been sanitized and even beatified by purveyors of the "Lost Cause" narrative about the Confederacy. They've depicted Lee as an upright, chivalrous defender of tradition, a moral man and a Christian.

But, as Adam Serwer reminds us, Lee was a cruel slave master. In the words of Wesley Norris, one of his slaves who attempted to escape and was whipped, "Not satisfied with simply lacerating our naked flesh, Gen. Lee then ordered the overseer to thoroughly wash our backs with brine, which was done. As the author of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson enshrined the ideals that made this nation.

In the beginning of our report, Arielle is seen wearing a Stetson University shirt. After watching her story on 60 Minutes, the school offered her and Austin full scholarships to the university.

Life is different now for Arielle and Austin. Since our story aired, the siblings were adopted and changed their names to Autumn Hope Johnson and Aaron Matthew Johnson. Autumn recently graduated from Stetson.