One of the guests at President Obama's address to Congress Tuesday night was Ty'sheoma Bethea, an eighth grader from a small town in South Carolina. Bethea wrote Obama and asked that money from the stimulus go to her dilapidated school. She had reportedly never been on a plane before boarding a flight to D.C. with her mother for the speech.
The president referenced Bethea's story in his remarks, and quoted her letter:
I think about Ty'Sheoma Bethea, the young girl from that school I visited in Dillon, South Carolina - a place where the ceilings leak, the paint peels off the walls, and they have to stop teaching six times a day because the train barrels by their classroom. She has been told that her school is hopeless, but the other day after class she went to the public library and typed up a letter to the people sitting in this room. She even asked her principal for the money to buy a stamp. The letter asks us for help, and says, "We are just students trying to become lawyers, doctors, congressmen like yourself and one day president, so we can make a change to not just the state of South Carolina but also the world. We are not quitters."
In an interview with ABC's "Good Morning America," Bethea revealed her own ambition: to be the first female president. She said she was inspired to write the letter because she thought too much of the stimulus money was going to people who already had enough.
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