Cooper Barnes is an outfielder in Harrison’s baseball league and a football team manager.
Cooper with some of the teenagers who manned the concession stand at Harrison during baseball season.
Tyeshia Green gives Cooper Barnes a hug during his surprise party.To donate
A Go Fund Me page has been set up to raise money to send Emmett, the Barnes’ German shepherd, to therapy training. Find Independence for Coop at www.gofundme.com/indep4coop.
Sometimes it’s not the quantity of a gift that counts, but the spirit in which it’s given.
That was the case last week when a dozen teenagers who work concessions at Harrison Recreation ballfields took their tips collected during the three-month baseball season and gave them to 9-year-old Cooper Barnes. Cooper was diagnosed at age 5 with epilepsy and, due to the type and frequency of his seizures, he can’t be left alone.
The teens gave the Barnes family their collection of $120 to go toward training Cooper’s German shepherd, Emmett, to be an epilepsy therapy dog. While $120 is hardly a dent in the $14,000 expense of training Emmett, Rachel Barnes, Cooper’s mom, says, “To know you have that kind of support for your child makes me want to cry.”
Carol Pearson, concessions manager for Harrison Recreation on Highway 58, says that, on some nights, the tip jar might have 16 cents in it at closing, on a good night $6.