ORANGE MOUND, Tenn. — A Melrose High School student pushed beyond his difficult upbringing.
Dellarontay Readus was a success story unlike any other.
His smile lit up a room, but his intelligence was lighting up his future.
“While I’m in college I plan to start a starter company,” he said.
Readus had a GPA of over 4.0 and accepted an invitation to attend Stanford University.
“I would never have imagined in a thousand years that I would have something like this,” he said.
Life was not always easy.
Readus’s parents were both legally blind, and doctors even recommended that his mother have him aborted due to health concerns.
His mother raised him on her own, struggling at times to provide.
“I went to church one day, and I was, in fact, getting some food for home, because we didn’t have anything to eat,” Readus recalled.
However, he never let those circumstances become his crutch.
“You have to be willing to go a step further to do the things that you want to do,” he insisted. “I didn’t have the resources necessary to get it done by myself, so I had to go out and find them.”
Readus said he will major in computer science.
Samsung decided to reward his hard work by donating a computer, tablet, phone and free service.
Readus hoped other students would see hard work pays off and recognize that it does not matter where you have been.
It only matters where you are going.
“I plan to have a successful business by the time I get out of college, and then after college… Bill Gates, baby. Bill Gates,” he said with a grin.