Leigh Anne Tuohy speaks during the Mountain Education Foundation fundraising event Thursday evening at Signal Mountain Middle School in Signal Mountain, Tenn. Tuohy spoke of the events surrounding the adoption of Michael Oher and subsequent movie adaption called “The Blind Side.”A year and a half ago, Gervell Morgan told his track coach at Signal Mountain High School that after living in 10 foster homes since he was 4 he would no longer have a place to stay because he was turning 18.
Morgan and his coach, Beverly Blackwell, weren’t particularly close.
“It was a typical coach-athlete relationship,” Blackwell would say later.
But she took him in, offering what she said was a stable home. In the next year, he received a football scholarship to play linebacker for Carson-Newman College in Jefferson City, Tenn.
Thursday night, Blackwell got to meet the woman whose similar experiences had encouraged her when she was helping Morgan.