Jimmy Wayne is a country singer, who just released a new CD, Sara Smile. The song “Do You Believe Me Now,” from his previous record, was number one on the country chart for three weeks. He toured with Brad Paisley and Dierks Bentley.
Michael Oher was the 23rd overall pick in the NFL draft and just signed a 5-year, $13.8 million contract with the Baltimore Ravens.
Both boys are amazing success stories. But both boys came from troubled backgrounds. Odds were staked against them, but they both found a way, Jimmy Wayne through music and Michael Oher through football.
Oher's story was recently told through the movie The Blind Side (starring Quinton Aaron, Sandra Bullock, and country singer Tim McGraw). The movie has grossed over $164,000,000. The story is very powerful and the movie is incredible.
Oher’s mother had a drug addiction and was therefore not available. He was sent to multiple foster homes and went to eleven schools in nine years. He ended up homeless. Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy, a typical Memphis family, took Oher in. He graduated from high school, then got a scholarship to Ole Miss and was drafted last year – a major success story.
Jimmy Wayne says The Blind Side was a “parallel to my own story that I've shared with the world over and over in my shows for the past eleven years.” He adds, “I felt like I was reading my journal,” and the movie “allowed me to see my own story as a spectator for once.”
He goes on to describe the similarities between the two stories: “Like Mike, I had a family that randomly took me into their home when I was 16 years old...a woman named Beatrice Costner talked her husband Russell into allowing me to move into their home. I remember folding the blankets up each morning and leaving them on the sofa just as Big Mike did in The Blind Side. I remember sitting at the dinner table alone as family gathered in the living room to watch TV.”
Both men were success stories because of multiple factors. One of the major factors to their success is that both of them had real-life guardian angels. For Mike, it was the Tuohys and for Jimmy, it was the Costners. Jimmy Wayne said that The Blind Side “showed me how lucky I am to have someone like the Costners become a part of my life just as the family did in Mike’s.”
Article comments
1 - Tom M
Thanks for another great look at 2 remarkable young men.