Over the last decade, a Jacksonville mom has raised more than $123,000 to help veterans finish college in Jacksonville.
The Josh Watkins Memorial Tennis Tournament is helping other soldiers accomplish something her son never got to do.
Amy Watkins Vazquez got the call every parent of a soldier fears the most — her son Josh was killed in an ambush in Iraq.
He was shot through the stomach, but his fellow soldiers thought he’d make it because of how alert he was, making jokes while being airlifted to a nearby military hospital.
“Captain said he went down firing his weapon. He called out to a fellow Marine who was one of the replacement troops and said, ‘You’re on the wrong side of the fire. Get in the ditch. Get in the ditch,’ ” she said.
Josh helped fend off the attackers but died of his wounds nine days before he was set to return home from his second deployment. At the time, he was a year shy of completing his degree at the University of North Florida.
“He promised me he’d finish school and I thought ‘what better way to have him continue to help his military brothers than to help them go to school either when they come back or before they go?’ ” She said.
Watkins Vazquez said her son grew up playing tennis at the YMCA, so she knew a tournament was the perfect way to raise some money.
The annual tournament has contributed about $60,000 of the roughly $300,000 dollars in the Josh Wilkins UNF scholarship. So far, it’s helped 23 student veterans through school.
The scholarship is an endowment, meaning it functions like a bank account that accrues interest. That interest it earns is what’s used to pay out the awards. That means the more money in the account, the more students that are helped.
The tournament is throughout the weekend at the Williams YMCA in Mandarin.
Reporter Ryan Benk can be reached at rbenk@wjct.org, at (904) 358 6319 or on Twitter @RyanMichaelBenk.
