ATLANTA — If you ever wanted to find a nominee for Mother of the Year, one option would be great-grandmother Juanita Turner in Atlanta.
“I’ll be 65 in two weeks, and my great-grandbaby is six,” Turner said.
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Turner is part of a group of ladies who are sometimes forgotten on Mother’s Day: Grandmothers who take care of their grandchildren.
“They’re in their senior years and they have to take on a grandchild or great-grandchild,” Hope Atlanta’s Jeffery Palmer told Channel 2’s Berndt Petersen.
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The nonprofit runs a program called Grandparents Raising Grandchildren, and they teamed up with Walmart in Southwest Atlanta Thursday to say thank you.
Volunteers packed 100 gift bags for 100 local grandmas. Items like a blanket, nail polish, candle, and a rose. Not things they need, but nice things they might want.
“Things that they can just go home and nestle up and enjoy for themselves,” Walmart’s Nachelle Rantin told Channel 2 Action News.
Nearly 130,000 children in Georgia are cared for full-time by their grandparents.
Many of the senior moms are on fixed incomes and often need help to provide the basics, which leaves non room for luxuries.
So Happy Mother’s Day to deserving ladies like great-grandmother Turner from Channel 2 Action News.
“Glory be to God that I’m able and I’m doing it. From my heart, I love my great-gran,” Turner said.
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