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That's right, Buzz.

For over a century, the Linly Heflin Unit Scholarships have helped young women in Alabama access college who otherwise couldn't afford it.

But numbers don't tell the whole story.

And on today's episode of Buzz, I want to introduce you to three young women whose lives have been changed forever by Linly Heflin.

Having or not having scholarship money means yes or no to a lot of decisions.

I had friends that wanted to do things that just weren't able to do them, because they didn't have the backing and the funding, or just didn't even let themselves look in the first place, because they just didn't believe it was possible.

We hear a lot of stories like this where you know, the family's financial position, the rug is totally pulled out from under them, and they're just horribly making ends meet.

My great-grandmother had heart failure.

My brother was going to pre-K.

I was going to college.

Mama just lost her job making literally above the poverty line.

You got to be resourceful.

Cook a hot dog if you have to.

You know, it was kind of this.

You got to make it work.

My parents split up when I was about nine, and so my mom went back to school and got her nursing degree.

Especially kind of being the youngest.

It almost felt like my family was very loving and supporting, but like, financially, it almost felt like, okay, we kind of ran out, you know?

Well, right before I was about to go into college, my senior year of high school, we found out my brother had epilepsy and he was having these severe seizures.

And so he actually had to move back home from he was in Austin, Texas.

He had to move back home.

And my parents had to take care of him because he was going through multiple surgeries, and then he would have another seizure, so they'd have to get another surgery and everything.

So that was kind of hard watching them have to deal with that financial and emotional stress.

It wasn't no secret that my mama was trying to make ends meet in any way possible.

And I know I'm talking about my mom.

You probably now wondering where my dad is.

He's a trucker, so he's not there all the time.

He's he's not physically present.

He obviously did his own thing.

So where he couldn't financially provide either.

So it was just like that wasn't a resource.

I needed to get the resources lined up.

Who can I depend on?

And she was like, you realize we have to apply to these scholarships.

We can't take on that along with all of your brother's medical bills too.

As I'm like, thinking about going to school, I'm like, okay, well, I'm a big provider here in this house.

I took my brother in at night.

We're a big sister.

We bring money in the household to a burger or two for me and my brother while my mom's working.

My mom worked overnight, so it's like, dinner's on me.

And so my parents were very open about just being like, we want you to do the best.

We want you to be so good in your academics that you get scholarships.

But like, we can't help you.

Imagine you are this young woman and you are, you know, researching, you know, all the scholarship opportunities to try to piece it together of how you can get to college.

They were really making sure I was applying to, like, cheaper colleges and stuff because they wanted me to make it.

So we signed up for Pell Grant.

Obviously it wasn't enough.

I'm looking at her.

She's looking at me like, what are we going to do?

So I did it all, you know, like straight A's and ACT tutoring that I mostly paid for out of my Triple-A money and, like, applied for every scholarship I could think of or heard of.

I'm going to ask my mentor.

I'm going to ask my professor.

I'm going to ask my tutor.

I'm going to ask the pastor at church.

Like, I'm going to let whoever I know has a hand in my life.

This is what I need instead of letting my mom completely take the reins.

And so from then on, I got my first job at 16, was at Burger King all the way through that.

And some.

A girl in the class above me got the Linly Heflin scholarship, and several people had been like, you need to apply for the scholarship, you need to apply for the scholarship.

And when those young women finally have one and realize that they can get, you know, $40,000 for their four years of college and, you know, and they write these compelling essays just telling you about all the struggles and the hardships that their family has been through.

Here's enough.

I did go read my essay, and from the tone that I wrote from, it was like, this is imperative.

I need you to understand that this is my last shot.

You can struggle with feeling hopeless.

And so scholarship foundations like Linly Heflin, they turn nos into yeses.

Not having that is so mentally and emotionally exhausting when you're trying to figure out how you could possibly make something work.

My mom actually brought it to me.

She was like, I think that you should apply to the scholarship.

And I was like, deal?

There's no way I'm gonna get this.

Am I going to get 25?

Hey.

Where are they gonna come from?

It just means so much when you can help them get there like we do.

Look, of course, at their grades and their ACT scores.

If they are working while they're in school, and we look at their family situation and, and just what their total scholarship package is, what they've received from other sources, because we really do try to identify those girls that have the most need, but that we also feel like they're going to be successful.

Here in our inner-city schools in Birmingham, We have sometimes this place, this location is the only place that our children get meals at from time to time.

But that goes into context with scholarships.

If they can't provide themselves with food and probably running water and shelter in their home, how can they provide themselves with a scholarship and financial need to attend college?

We were producing greatness.

We still produce greatness now, but greatness in finances creates limitations.

The way it would feel to a student that is in this situation where they just fall in that gap of getting no aid, no merit aid, no need-based aid, it feels like, hey, this is the end of the road, and no 17-year-old should feel like it's the end of the road.

It's the beginning of their life.

It's the beginning of opportunity.

But some of them feel like it's just, hey, look, it's the end of the road.

Now, I don't get to do with the rest of my life what I want to do, I have to do with the rest of my life.

what I have to do.

It's not the way we want it.

That's not what we want as a society that we should have.

I mean, all about equity, all about inclusion should be across the board.

But it gets heavy, it gets dark, it gets sad.

It's very emotional.

We just need some type of resources to help our students who are tired of fighting.

My parents, I'm tired of seeing them struggle.

I'm tired of seeing them hurt.

I'm tired of hearing my mom cry at night because she can't feed us.

I'm tired of seeing my mom go without.

I'm tired of seeing my dad go without.

That's sad.

That's sad for that student.

And it's sad for really our society, right?

I mean, when you have a student, what could that student have done if they were able to maximize their potential just because of money, they're not able to.

I mean, it's a problem.

It's a problem across the spectrum.

So it was one morning before school and I was like, you know, let me just check real quick.

I'm like sitting on my bedroom floor and I have my laptop on my computer.

And I saw that I had an email from Linly Heflin.

I opened it up and was like, like I said, I had no idea how much money it was even for.

I thought maybe $3,000.

That's awesome.

You know, like anything, it's amazing.

And I opened it up and it was like, oh, yeah, like as long as you keep your grades up, Linly Heflin, you're guaranteed, you know, $40,000, $10,000 a year, which was just leaps and bounds more than I ever imagined.

I didn't know it was going to be a four-year scholarship.

Or maybe, maybe I did, but I've forgotten.

And I went to school that day and I told, like everyone I ran to, my choir director was like, you're not gonna believe this.

Like, this is insane.

Like the Linly Heflin Scholarship is a miracle to me.

Without it, I wouldn't be able to to even know who I am.

There is such a need.

And when we realized how many young women out there are still first in family, and how many come from rural areas where they just really don't even know what all is out there.

It just spoke to me as a young 18-year-old girl.

Like, everyone here at this foundation believes in you and believes that you have the ability to accomplish these big dreams that you have.

It just felt like an affirmation that I was doing the right thing.

If more people supported Linly Heflin, I think they could be a blessing to so many other girls.

You're not only investing into someone's dreams and their college degree, you're also investing into the communities that they will serve and the people that they will lead, and the people who they will help.

And I would just say, like, I know 100% from experience that this foundation is life-changing for the people that are affected by it.

You're so motivated to do well against-- a lot of odds are against them.

It's always been a hurdle to jump.

I'm not going to stop jumping.

These young women are living proof that the scholarship works.

But it didn't start as a scholarship.

It started with Linly Heflin and a group of her dear friends who refused to let her memory fade.

And here is her story.

So who was Linly Heflin, and what's the story behind this organization?

It's really amazing to me that it all started in World War One, and there was one woman who had the chance to make a difference, and she motivated an underutilized workforce of women to come together and roll bandages for the Red Cross.

Myra Linly Graham was born on January 6th, 1887, in Oxford, Alabama.

Her parents, John Franklin and Ella Worthington Graham, moved to Birmingham that same year to be closer to family.

Margie Gray's maternal great- grandmother was Alice Pinckney Worthington Neighbors and her grandmother, Marguerite Neighbors Jones, was Linly's first cousin.

Margie says her mother talked about being part of a group committed to helping others.

I think she was proud of it and we were all raised, you know, to give back, and it was fun to be involved in something where you had a family connection.

Growing up, Linly was close to her sister Alice, and the family was very active in their church on Birmingham's South Side.

She attended the Birmingham Public Schools and the Margaret Allen Prep School.

After graduation, she traveled abroad.

When she was 23 years old, she married Harrington Phillips Heflin.

He had grown up near Roanoke, Alabama and attended Vanderbilt Board College and Law School.

He came to Birmingham and was admitted to the bar in 1887.

He was very successful in his law practice and later became a judge.

They were married in her home on January 26th, 1910.

Six years later, a son was born who died the same day and was buried at Elmwood Cemetery.

On April 6th, 1917, the U.S.

forces joined its allies to fight in World War One.

That summer, Linly Heflin called her neighbors to help out in the war effort.

Also in this time period is that you had the great pandemic flu that killed over 100 million people worldwide.

In the United States, there were 675,000 people that died, and Linly Heflin, unfortunately, was one of those people.

Linly Heflin was pregnant with her second child when she died on January 11th, 1919.

She was 32 years old.

And from there at her death, for her friends who loved her so dearly, to form also a unit called the Linly Heflin Unit, which was not affiliated with the Red Cross, but for them to come together to honor her and for it to eventually have morphed into a scholarship-driven organization.

Linly's sister, Alice Sims, was among the charter members, and they saw the changes the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote had on their city.

Back in those days, it was more the exception than the rule for women to even attend college.

But they were ahead of their time and came across two women in need.

So in 1923, they awarded scholarships for them to attend school.

The young blind girl became a teacher at the now- known Alabama School for the Blind, and the Russian girl who wanted to study medicine to become a doctor, actually did enter the medical field and worked for a doctor here locally.

Are you?

Later, the unit had grown to a membership of 60.

Annual fundraising for scholarships shifted to elaborate Mardi Gras style balls, and these women were not only progressive in their thinking about higher education for women, they also kept a beautiful archive in notes and pictures and newspaper articles.

And when they were raising money for charity, these women knew how to get publicity.

In 1959, teaming up again with Loveman's, the Linly Heflin Scholarship Fashion Show became the primary fundraiser that led in 1960 to its scholarship, trust fund and nonprofit status as a corporation.

Linly Heflin never got to see any of this, but the women who loved her did, and what they created out of their grief has outlasted them all.

And as for those young women you met earlier, they're not just getting by.

They are thriving.

And what began as a tribute to one woman has quietly become one of the most powerful forces for women's education in Alabama.

I feel like.

Thinking what life would be like if I hadn't gotten this scholarship.

It's kind of dark, you know, just because it's something that really helped me, pushed forward and made me who I am today.

So it's kind of a part of who I am now.

So right now I work at Protective.

I am a Financial Analyst II, under the statutory accounting team.

So it's like I do sit at a desk most times, but I love collaborating with people.

How can I bring the fun with collaborating in my accounting work?

So I think we're still navigating that.

Looking forward, I plan to open my own social media marketing firm, and through this, I really want to help people tell their stories and connect with other people.

And so now I want to help those small business owners and help them feel that same reassurance and validation that I felt whenever I received the scholarship.

So I just graduated in May with my music education degree.

So this means I'm K through 12 certified to teach music, I can teach general music, and I'm certified in specifically choir as well.

But I found this job.

I'm at Pleasant Grove Elementary here in Pleasant Grove, Alabama, and this is I'm having the privilege to bring music back after three years of the students not having music, which music I was going to say I believe, but also truly, truly it's proven.

It's a fact.

You can look up studies.

Music is very, very important and helpful for the cognitive development of young children.

We all know that Alabama is not a wealthy state, and particularly in so many of the rural areas.

We have a lot of people who are living on the poverty line.

And so, you know, Alabama as a whole is just very needy in education.

And so, you know, this scholarship money is that much more meaningful to so many young women.

Linly Heflin Scholarship took me from surviving to thriving.

And that relief was something I'm like, okay, I'm going to feel this relief again too, and not just in this moment, but when we get on the other side of college, I'm gonna feel that relief when I get to where I want in my career, no matter what that is, I'm going to feel that relief just because of this start, because now it's a chain reaction.

Now I've seen it, I've tasted it.

I'm not going to let it go.

Recipients of the Linly Heflin Scholarship are in every sector.

They are in business.

We had a young lady who graduated this past May who already had a job at J.P.

Morgan.

We have another young lady who had a degree in graphic design, and she's going to, you know, work in that field.

But she's also a tattoo artist.

We have doctors, we have lawyers, we have accountants and other, you know, finance and and teachers and just, you know, you name it.

And there's a Linly Heflin scholar there.

If you are a parent that wants to send your kid to school, would you want them to be stressed out about every single dime?

No, you don't.

You're probably saving up right now, six years in advance, to make sure that they're okay.

Not everybody has that luxury.

Not everybody has that luxury.

Some people really have to live paycheck to paycheck.

So think about those people who don't have that luxury.

I don't want to say meaningless because everyone has a meaning in life, but I would definitely say it would be significantly harder to find that meaning if I hadn't had the scholarship behind me to support me in that journey.

Yeah, the Linly Heflin Scholarship affects people in your area.

You may not know it, but you probably have met a young lady who's a Linly Heflin scholar.

wherever you live in this state.

And so just please know that if you give to the Linly Heflin Unit, you know you are impacting someone in your own community.

At most universities in the state of Alabama, the cost of a college education is around $15,000 a year.

So if they receive a $10,000 scholarship, a Linly Heflin scholarship, that doesn't leave them that much more to get covered for their tuition.

And it's very, very genuinely scary to try for something that actually matters to you.

with the knowledge that it very well could fail.

It's one of the hardest roadblocks in life.

It truly is, and it takes a lot of courage and bravery to ask.

Why would you want to give up on that thought?

How about you explore it and not be scared of it?

I think a lot of people in life are are afraid.

We don't like change, so we get afraid.

Oh, I can't do this.

Oh, that's too hard.

But I learned early on in my life that too hard is not a thing.

I had these dreams that I wanted to help people before, and now I know how I want to help people, because I know how I want to make them feel and how I want to make them experience life and feel supported.

It's not a thing when you have a village, when you've communicated your need and again, you don't give up.

You put it in the forefront of others saying, hey, this is what I'm trying to achieve.

Do you think you can invest in this?

Most times it's yes, if you can let them see the purpose and intention that you have behind it.

Just ask every single time it's worth it because, one, you would be shocked at the amount of times it goes well, and, two, if it doesn't, you have grown so much as a person from that experience.

You have gained so much strength and confidence and bravery, and you now can confidently say, I did that, I did it, and I can do it again.

And even if you don't end up exactly where you want to be in that next moment, you have the assurance that you tried your best and you don't have to live life knowing that you you could have tried harder, you know.

Should the fire burn out.

That initial seed that you sowed into me as a high school senior?

Wow.

15 years later, has blossomed into a person that has gone on to earn multiple degrees, that has gone on to teach students all over this country that are now literally in so many different parts of the world.

♪ Now don't let go, take my hand and just hold on Even when the waves are strong, hold on to the light ♪ ♪ Don't let go Take my hand and just hold on Even when the waves are strong Hold on to the light ♪ Sorry, I'm not trying to get teared up, but it's just like if I didn't have someone to be like that's hard for them right now.

If somebody didn't have that thought that that thought that, hey, I need to help this person, which, we all, right, the golden rule, treat others as you would want to be treated if you didn't have enough money to try to go to college.

But you know, this person is talented and they deserve every chance that's coming for them.

You're just going to turn away.

♪ Don't let go Take my hand and just hold on Even when the waves are strong, hold on to the light ♪ ♪ Don't let go Take my hand and just hold on Even when the waves are strong Hold on to the light ♪ ♪ Don't let go Take my hand and just hold on Even when the waves are strong Hold on to the light ♪ ♪ And don't let go Take my hand and just hold on Even when the waves are strong Hold on to the light ♪ ♪ Just hold on to the light ♪ ♪ Oh, to the light ♪ ♪ Hold on to the light ♪ ♪ Just hold on to the light ♪ My life was forever changed because of the Linly Heflin Scholarship.

For that one time.

It's like I pushed in, the door came completely open.

Just having the financial support I got from this scholarship dramatically changed the trajectory of my life.

♪ Just hold on to the light ♪ Truly, it's life-changing.

Next time on the show, we revisit some of the 20 nonprofits we have featured so far in Alabama to see how they have benefited from being on Buzz.

We talk about our capital campaign.

We were introduced to the Goodrich Foundation, you know, doing Buzz.

They were actually one of our first yeses to purchase our building.

Through being on your show, we've connected with some people that really wanted to help us kind of grow and get the word out and look how cool this is.

So we have tumblers.

Every time that I send an email to a potential donor or to a new parent, I always include the link for our episode.

You know, we had just rebranded to Iron City Trikes shortly before that, and so it was really great timing for us to be able to kind of get the new name out there.

And I feel like people in today's society really like to get a visual.

So the video has helped, really paint the picture of what our organization is.

So grateful for you and the work that you do creating Buzz.