Witherite Law Group
Amy Witherite
Witherite Law Group, headed by Fort Worth native Amy Witherite, will be giving away $25,000 in Honey Baked hams as part of the celebration of the coming Easter holiday.
Witherite and 1-800-TruckWreck will provide meals for families in Dallas-Fort Worth in the form of 250 $100 Honey Baked Ham gift cards at a giveaway on Thursday at the Honey Baked Ham Company storefront at 4201 S. Cooper St. in Arlington.
The event starts at 11 a.m. and concludes at 2 p.m.
It is free and open to the public. Registration is not required. The cards will be given away on a first-come, first-served basis. In addition, the event will feature appearances by notable radio personalities and philanthropists, including Dede McGuire and Jade “Lady Jade” Burrowes of nationally syndicated radio show, “DeDe in the Morning,” and Cat Daddy and Slim Thousand, both well-known local radio personalities.
“Deciding whether to buy groceries, pay for medicine or a place to live is a decision no one should ever face,” said Witherite, founder of Witherite Law Group and 1-800-TruckWreck. “Not to mention attempting to make ends meet with the added burden of elements that are completely out of our control. This is the reality for many families in our community today. We’re here to serve the community and help when and where needed.”
The Witherite Law Group is a personal injury law firm with offices in Dallas and Fort Worth, as well as Atlanta.
Giving is not merely a Holy Week habit, but rather habitual for Amy Witherite, raised on the West Side of town and a graduate of Arlington Heights High School.
Witherite has leveraged her professional position to help carry the burden and fill the gaps for those who are less fortunate, especially children, in the Stop Six neighborhood.
I spoke to her recently about this and the story, as well as the beneficiaries of her philanthropic work, are inspiring.
Every Thanksgiving for close to 15 years, Witherite and the firm have given away means for the holiday. Last year, that amounted to 3,000 families — or 12,000 people — had turkeys and food on the table for Thanksgiving.
They are also benefactors of the Stop Six Mobile pantry in Fort Worth, which helps feed 200 families a month. She has also partnered with Fiesta to give away $1,000 in groceries on a regular basis.
Food and housing insecurities and the “need for a safe place to live” has been a focus of her efforts. In fact, she said she only is only waiting out the bureaucracy of the IRS to set up a foundation that will focus on those needs.
“Without food and educational opportunities, it’s difficult for children to blossom,” she said.
Witherite’s journey is her inspiration.
She has lived a life of diversity, having grown up in the Fort Worth schools while the district still integrating in the early 1970s. She attended Como Elementary for a bit, and her mother taught at an elementary school in Stop Six.
“We have deep ties to Fort Worth,” she said.
She was a competitive swimmer and attended Southern Illinois for undergrad. She finished with a bachelor’s in finance and accounting.
She was, she said, her parents’ “worst nightmare.”
“I had a degree in finance and accounting, yet I didn’t want to get a job,” she said jokingly. “So, of course, I went to Europe. What else should you do with a degree?”
When she returned stateside, she went back to Southern Illinois to find herself and make a plan to go to graduate school and become a teacher.
“I sat down with my [former] English professor, Joan martin, and I was talking to her about going back to school and becoming a teacher,” Witherite said.
Martin had other advice to give, which Witherite wasn’t prepared for.
“She was emphatic that I needed to take the LSAT,” the law school entrance exam, said Witherite, who added that the two even argued about it. “I had no desire to go to law school.”
Simply to appease Martin — and, she hoped, her worried-sick parents — Witherite agreed to take the test.
“As things would have it, Mrs. Martin knew better than certainly myself, my family, my friends, and other teachers. I am a lawyer solely because of Joan Martin.”
Her practice eventually evolved into personal injury cases.
“Most of our clients were coming from the African American community,” she said. “Once I started interacting with that community, you just saw the need for opportunity and exposure. These kids are really bright and smart, but they didn’t have the opportunities or exposure that I had growing up on the West Side.”
That was the genesis of annual college scholarships the firm gives out to graduating seniors at Dunbar High School. The firm also sponsors "Dads of Dunbar," a program in partnership with the Fort Worth ISD Family Action Center that is designed to address the crisis of father figures in homes by providing positive role models and direct mentoring for many students who are missing these relationships at home.
The firm has donated more than $160,000 in college scholarships to graduates and alumni of Dunbar, with another $10,000 every school year for student and teacher resources.
This is what you call putting one’s money where one’s mouth is.
Today, the firm is giving out $2,500 per scholarship, per year until the student finishes schooling, whether that be a bachelor’s, master’s, or doctorate degree. It renews year after year, as long as the recipient meets certain guidelines.
“I’m very grateful to have this scholarship,” said Sierra Powe, a 2017 Dunbar graduate who earned a bachelor’s from TCU in Spanish and comparative race and ethnic studies. Though she went through TCU on a full-ride scholarship, there is plenty more that need to be paid for.
Today, Powe is a nursing student at UT Arlington. And her Witherite scholarship remains intact.
“That money has helped me tremendously,” said Powe, pointing out that she wouldn’t have been able to continue her education without the money. “Her scholarship came into play. That’s one piece of my tuition I don’t have to worry about paying because she has kept her word, allowing us to continue to have that scholarship every year we’re in school.
“I’m very grateful. Books, personal and housing things that my family could not afford. She was able to help me pay for those. Amy is a very genuine and kind person and has had a huge impression on my life.”
And as a result, Powe’s hopes and dreams, too, are intact. They are in play.
“The more success we have as a law firm the more I try to invest back into the communities where we were serving those clients anyway,” Witherite said. “I knew we could provide more service than just representation in a lawsuit.”