AUTUMN HOPE RISING For a Class of 2020 whose members conquered rare challenges to reach their goals, the resilience of Autumn Hope Johnson offers an emblem of their optimism and promise. BY RICK DE YAMPERT
THE TEE When Autumn Hope Johnson spied a Stetson University T-shirt in a Sanford soup kitchen in 2011, she had to have it. “I immediately loved it because it was a baseball T-shirt, and I was very much a tomboy,” said Johnson today, who was 14 at the time. “I never was able to buy my own clothes. So, I would pick up things here and there from soup kitchens that gave away clothing.”
Photo: courtesy of MDK Photography
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Johnson’s mother had passed away in early 2000, when Autumn was 3 years old. Her father, a selfemployed carpenter and handyman in Central Florida, had been hit hard by the Great Recession triggered in 2008. Work evaporated. The family, including Autumn’s younger sibling, lost its home to foreclosure in May 2010. Johnson’s dad used his last $1,000 to buy a big, boxy, used beach-concession truck, and the family moved into it with their meager possessions. Home became wherever Johnson’s father could find an inconspicuous place to park the truck at night in the Sanford area, one county away from the Stetson campus in DeLand. That treasured green and gray baseball tee would soon bring about yet another profound change to Johnson’s young life.