Giving Kids A Better Life

By Tom Poland
February 21, 2014 

Unfinished Business Led To A Wonderful Charity

    
Over in Georgetown, South Carolina you’ll find the headquarters of a kind and supportive organization for children. It’s called Kids’ Chance. Here’s its mission statement.

Kids’ Chance of South Carolina was created to provide scholarships and support for college and vocational education to dependents of South Carolina workers who have been fatally or catastrophically injured in a work-related accident. The hardships to children and families created by the death or serious disability of a parent often include financial ones, making it difficult for deserving young people to pursue their educational dreams.

Legalese states that “Kids’ Chance is a 501(c)(3) organization that was created for the purpose of creating, assisting and supporting Kids’ Chance organizations throughout the United States and other similar programs that provide educational opportunities and scholarships for the children of workers seriously injured or killed on the job.”

I know about this charity and I met the man who started it. I was writing a book on the history of Workers’ Compensation insurance in Georgia, a more interesting topic than you may think. Much of the material was coming from attorneys on both sides of Workers’ Comp. Thus it fell on me to travel across Georgia to interview attorneys. One attorney in particular stood out.

My mind goes back to a hazy warm day in June 2002 when I was driving through the slash-pine-thick South Georgia flatlands to Valdosta. I was on my way to interview Robert, “Bob,” Clyatt. A defense lawyer, Bob represented employers and insurers. He was on the opposite side of injured workers.

I met Bob, a gracious man, who said he’d love to be a writer and then he sat back and began to talk, and a beautiful story unfolded.

“I was taking a deposition from an injured worker in Albany,” said Bob, “and the deposition dragged on a long time. I didn’t know his daughter was sitting in the lobby. All of a sudden, the door burst open and here comes his little girl. She was the same age as my youngest child.”

It was around Christmas time and Bob noticed that the little girl had dirty clothes and looked like a ragamuffin, just pitiful.

“She ran in and stood between me and her daddy and put her arm around him. She was worried about him.”

The little girl’s predicament hit Bob hard. “Here was this child who’s caught between the two forces in Worker’s Compensation—the injured worker and the employer/insurer. It struck me how this child’s life would be forever changed. She’d lose a lot of opportunities in her life. Her father had herniated discs in his back and he had very little education and was never going to work again.” 

Bob kept thinking about how this little girl’s life was changing. He called the man’s attorney. “Let’s get that little girl some Christmas presents.”

Bob thought about the many kids whose injured parents couldn’t work and the words “kids need a chance” kept going through his mind. He formed a corporation, KIDS’ CHANCE, to help the kids of injured workers but ran into an IRS roadblock getting a tax-deductible donations status. “Things kind of crawled along and I started getting lazy about it. I putt it on the back burner.”
Time passed.

One Sunday Bob was sitting in church and the preacher’s sermon was Things I Have Left Undone. “The preacher said that if God has told you, and I don’t mean a booming voice coming down from Heaven,” said Bob, “but in so many ways He’s told you what He wants you to do and you know you’re supposed to do it, then it’s a sin if you don’t.”

Bob said the more the preacher talked, the farther he slid down in his seat. “He was talking to me.”

Bob got a copy of the sermon. “I read it every day fifteen times or more.” Soon he called the Internal Revenue Service to see where his charity’s status stood.

“Have you approved it?”

A lady said, “No, you’ve got problems.”

“I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Come if you want to,” she said, “but I’m not going to see you.”

Bob got up at 4 a.m. and drove to Atlanta to the Internal Revenue Service. When the doors opened, he told them to tell the lady he was there. She came out to see him. “We don’t need to meet,” she said, “I just approved it.”

“I was stunned,” said Bob. “She took it off the back table, looked at it, and saw that it was right. After we got the tax-deductible status, the money started coming in, and it took off.”

KIDS’ CHANCE has spread to 24 states. During our interview Bob said, “We’ve got kids now who are lawyers, ministers, a doctor, a broad spectrum of people who have gone through school. All they needed was a chance and they got it.”

Back in 2002 I could tell Bob was having a hard time accepting the nice things people said to him for starting the charity. Why? Because he knows he almost didn’t do it. He’s glad he did, of course, and it’s an emotional experience for sure. “I talked to a father who walks with a cane and he started crying when we gave his daughter a scholarship,” said Bob. “The man said, ‘You’ll never know what effect this has had on our family.’ He broke down crying and I had to get up and go to the bathroom. I started crying. I thought I can do more since there are so many hours in the day when I’m not doing something. There are thousands of children out there we could be helping.”

KIDS’ CHANCE is not a “give away” welfare kind of thing. The money comes from lawyers and other contributors. It gives children the opportunity God intended them to have—a chance. “God’s given them a certain amount of ability,” said Bob, “and if it’s to graduate from high school or to be a plumber or a heart surgeon or whatever, as a Christian I have an obligation to do everything I can to help them.”

People tell Bob all the time that KIDS’ CHANCE was his idea. He tells them “it was God’s idea and for some reason he chose me to do it and I don’t know why.”

Former Georgia Governor Roy E. Barnes and the Georgia Legislature recognized KIDS’ CHANCE for outstanding service. The Wall Street Journal covered it, and an ABC “Peter Jennings Special” broadcast a 15-minute segment on it.

KIDS’ CHANCE is 25 years old now, and all of it started very simply. A little girl, worried about her daddy, ran into Bob Clyatt’s office. The rest, as they say, is history, a history that spread to South Carolina and other states.

Author’s Note: Nationally Kids’ Chance organizations have distributed over 2,000 scholarships to the children of injured workers, a sum exceeding $5 million. Locally, Kids’ Chance of South Carolina has awarded over $800,000 in scholarship funds since 1993. Learn more about Kid’s Chance of South Carolina at http://www.kidschancesc.org/