NEENAH, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – 17-year old Mackenzie Leeman died in a car crash in Outagamie County last week, driving home from her job as a nursing assistant during a snowstorm.
Her parents are now hoping to turn their tragedy into something good.
“She would come home, and we had our ritual,” said Alyson Peters, Leeman’s mom. She reminisced about days she spent with her daughter not long ago.
“I would lay there and she would lay there.”
Her daughter now sits next to her in a framed picture on that couch.
“We did everything we could to hold on to the last moments we had,” said Peters, thinking those would be the last moments spent with her daughter before she went off to college or moved out on her own.”
“We were grasping our time together not realizing it was our time together.”
Peters tell FOX 11 her daughter’s busy schedule included balancing family time between high school, nursing classes at Fox Valley Technical College and a job as a nursing assistant at a local rehabilitation center.
“She had a lot of goals and dreams, and she would’ve made every single one of them but time just wasn’t on her side.”
Getting there wasn’t easy for Leeman. Her freshman year she got sick and missed a lot of school. Doctors struggled to figure out what was wrong, and she was eventually diagnosed with suicidal ideation, a severe mental illness.
“She wanted to be the one to help people because when she was in the hospital she said nobody just ‘understood’ what she was going through,” Peters said. “So, she wanted to be a nurse.”
Peters is now starting a scholarship fund in her daughter’s name, The Mackenzie Jo Leeman Memorial Nursing Scholarship
The money raised will help pay for supplies and tuition to help get other students into classes at Fox Valley Tech.
“This will now have a lasting legacy for years to come,” said Julie Coenen, the scholarship manager at Fox Valley Technical College.
“We are really honored to be able to create that for her family. Our job is to help students succeed to make college possible.”
The endowment fund gives interest to students as scholarships and invests the rest, so it can continue endlessly.
“She would just be amazed,” said Peters of her daughter. “I like to think she is with me right now. I think she’d be saying ‘holy crap’ mom.”
The goal for the endowment fund was $15,000.
They’ve already surpassed that goal by more than 5 thousand dollars.
The more money raised, the more scholarships they’ll offer in Leeman’s name.
You can donate here.
