Will Bynum Paid the Electric Bills and Thanksgiving Dinner for Women’s Shelters in Chicago

Chicago native and Detroit Pistons guard Will Bynum provided Thanksgiving dinner for hundreds of women in the Windy City. Bynum also took care of the light bill for two charitable organizations. Per the Detroit News: “Pistons guard Will Bynum was scheduled to be at Boysville of Detroit Tuesday to donate Thanksgiving turkeys and spend time with children and their families. Bynum declined, but he had a good reason. He had a Skype date with a few hundred women in his hometown Chicago, who wanted to thank Bynum for his unexpected donation of more than $3,000 — which took care of the electric bills for Clara’s Place and Clara’s House, and Bynum paid for a Thanksgiving dinner for the two women’s shelters. Bynum saw that Clara Kirk, founder of the West Englewood United Organization, was behind on the bill and stepped up, without provocation, without intending to be acknowledged publically. The Chicago native, who grew up in one of the roughest parts of the city, knows the statistics like he knows his own. ‘(There are) 116,000 homeless people in Chicago,’ Bynum said, ‘and 56 percent of them are women. These women aren’t homeless because they don’t have a job, but they’ve been in domestically-abusive relationships and don’t have anywhere to go.’ He’s long admired Kirk from afar; she has run the shelters for more than 30 years, and beyond the helping hand, he saw an opportunity to do what he’s always done — provide whatever resources he could. ‘More so, it was Clara Kirk,’ Bynum said. ‘She’s one of those people in Chicago who goes unnoticed, who does so much for people in general. Those are the people you want to help. She doesn’t turn down anyone and that’s something special. That’s a characteristic of God.’ Having been in Detroit since 2008, he’s very aware of the similar issues plaguing both cities. Catch him in the locker room before the game and he’s holding court with teammates about the gang problems in Chicago, or he’ll approach a local reporter, asking what’s being done about the issues in high schools in his adopted city.”