PANAMA CITY, Fla. — When Waundra Bittle saw a school bus parked outside Walmart collecting supplies for children, she understood the need in a way that was deeply personal.
There had been a time when Bittle and her family were homeless and struggling with money and food. During that difficult period, strangers helped her make sure her children could succeed academically.
Years later, she saw an opportunity to become that stranger for somebody else.
Bittle, a mother of three whose children include a college student, an eighth grader and a virtual-school student, filled a shopping cart with glue, crayons and other classroom supplies for the United Way of Northwest Florida’s annual Stuff the Bus drive.
She was far from alone.
Donors ultimately filled six school buses with supplies for students across Bay, Gulf, Holmes, Jackson and Washington counties. The campaign also collected more than $20,000 in monetary donations, including $15,000 from Buffalo Rock Company.
The money will allow school districts to purchase supplies that were not donated or replenish materials as needed.
Retired educators participated. Families participated. Businesses participated. People without children currently enrolled in local schools participated.
The buses filled up.
Organizers said folders, notebooks, snacks and other supplies covered seats and floors.
But Bittle’s contribution gives the larger effort a particularly human dimension.
She remembered what it felt like to need help — and instead of leaving that experience in the past, she turned the memory into generosity.
That is the Heartitude lens this story offers: Receiving compassion can teach us how to recognize another person’s need. The strangers who once helped Bittle could not have known where their kindness would eventually travel. Years later, part of what they gave was being passed forward through a shopping cart filled for children they would probably never meet. That is the quiet power of “Go Give It.” What leaves our hands can keep moving through other lives long after we stop seeing it.
United Way board member Annette Cederholm told WJHG that retired educators were among those donating despite no longer working in schools.
Bay District Schools Superintendent Mark McQueen described the sight of an entire community working to ensure students had what they needed as inspirational.
And Bittle offered perhaps the clearest explanation for why she participated: She wanted children to succeed, even while acknowledging that everyone experiences difficult seasons of their own.
Her story is a reminder that generosity does not always come from abundance.
Sometimes it comes from memory.
Someone remembers the groceries, the school supplies, the encouragement or the unexpected hand that arrived when life was difficult.
Then, years later, another school bus appears in another parking lot.
And they know exactly what to do.
Live with Heartitude. Remember the help you received, notice where you can pass it forward — and Go Give It.