On Mothers’ Day weekend in May, Lakeland College graduate Trisha (De Young) Harris will join her husband, Jim, on a road trip to Nashville, Tenn., to continue a friendship that has attracted national attention.
There, the couple and their hosts will share laughs – and quite possibly shed tears.
“The Bradfords have become family,” says Trisha, who graduated in 2004 with a degree in sociology and a minor in criminal justice. “We are now two families brought together by the spirit of Taylor Bradford.”
Jim and Trisha Harris own and operate Midwest Customs body shop in Howards Grove, Wis. In 2014, they were watching TV when an episode of “The First 48” on A&E tugged at their hearts. The show was about a college football player – Taylor Bradford – who had been murdered in 2007 while in the driver’s seat of his beloved 1979 Lincoln Continental. The car had been a gift from his dad, Jim.
“It had my husband and I in tears,” says Trisha of the show. “We never felt a calling like that. My husband knew he could help. He wanted to help. He asked if it was something I was OK with him doing. I was fully on board.”
What happened next is best explained in this moving ESPN E:60 feature, titled “A Stranger’s Gift.” The feature has aired nationally several times.
In some ways, the Harris and Bradford families are different. Jim and Trisha Harris are white and live in the northern Midwest. Jim and Marva Bradford are black and live down south. But the similarities – love for family and friends tops the list – continuously strengthen their bond.
“People need to realize that we should all see each other without racial boundaries,” says Trisha. “We all have a soul. We all have endured tragedies of some type and also have needed to lean on others for help.”
Trisha, originally from Sheboygan, Wis., acknowledges how valuable her college education was.
“Lakeland was so liberating for me,” she says. “I was able to meet so many different kinds of people, different races and nationalities. That experience really opened up the world to me, showed me what life has to offer.”