Behind the scenes video: MDDay photo shoot: An exclusive video behind the scenes of our Make A Difference Day Awards issue cover shoot, featuring country star Darius Rucker and winner Linda Wieck.
- Filed Under
Rucker with Linda Wieck, who sews special quilts for deployed troops
How you can help Darius help others
When not performing, odds are good you'll find Darius Rucker on a golf course. So his role as spokesman for PGA TOUR Charities was a natural, merging his love of the sport with his love of music and charity.
Rucker wrote the song Together, Anything's Possible to support the PGA TOUR's charitable initiative of the same name. Through 2011, all of the song's proceeds ($1.29 per download) go to PGA TOUR Charities to support initiatives such as The First Tee, which provides character-building programs to young people through golf. The initiative is a partnership between the PGA TOUR, Capitol Records Nashville, McGhee Entertainment and iTunes.
To download the song, visit PGATOUR.COM/Together or go directly to iTunes.
More
Darius Rucker is a man devoted to his causes.
This week alone, the country star and his pop band from the 1990s, Hootie & The Blowfish, host their annual Monday After the Masters celebrity pro-am golf tournament for charity in North Myrtle Beach, S.C. On Wednesday, he plays a show in Sioux City, Iowa, before hopping a flight to Washington, D.C., where he'll be the keynote speaker at USA WEEKEND's Make A Difference Day Awards luncheon Thursday. From there, he'll hop back on a plane for a concert that night in Effingham, Ill.
He may lose a few hours of sleep, but it's important to Rucker to honor this year's 10 winners — including the woman he shares our cover with, Linda Wieck of Wisconsin, who dedicated herself to making Camo Quilts for soldiers overseas.
"It's always great to see people who are just so selflessly giving," Rucker says. "You read stuff like that and it gives you chills."
Rucker has been a fan of Make A Difference Day for years, and has been giving back since college, when he and the Blowfish would do benefit concerts in Columbia, S.C., for an orphanage.
The Hootie & The Blowfish Foundation has raised more than $5 million in the past 14 years, he says, and Rucker actively supports Pattison's Academy in Charleston, S.C., a school for children with multiple disabilities.
That's his most personal cause to date: Rucker's niece, born with a rare genetic disorder, attends the academy.
As he read about the 10 honorees, Rucker felt a connection to New York teacher AnnMarie Castrogiovanni and the way her school honored Jack Perlungher, who would have turned 6 on Make A Difference Day but died of cancer just days after his first day of school.
Rucker has a son named Jack, who's also 6. "That one almost made me cry," he says.
"Reading these stories touched me. These are regular people, but something happened and they went, 'Wow, I'm going to do something about that.' And they did."
POWERED BY USA WEEKEND Magazine & more than 
