One year after her children died, local mother collects prom dresses for high schoolers

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    NEWNAN, Georgia (WGCL) — Deletha Bailey Colton heard the news every good mother fears. Her eldest daughter Denijiah and her youngest son, Scooter, had left the house on a Sunday for a trip to McDonalds and never came back.

“My cousin called me and she said, get in your car and drive up there now, Nijiah got in a bad car accident,” Deletha Bailey Colton emotionally continues saying, “and that’s when I found out my son was dead, and I kept saying where’s Denijah? Where’s Denajah? The coroner came in and he said, ‘we just got her off the scene’, she passed away on scene.”

One year later, Deletha is hoping to begin healing the pain by helping young Newnan High School Girls.

She says after watching hundreds of families lose their homes and belongings during the deadly tornado last month that destroyed miles of the city of Newnan, she’s hoping to take the burden off of parents shoulders on spending money on their daughters prom dresses.

So now, she’s spending her days collecting prom dresses, shoes, and jewelry.

“They all rallied around us on March 8th.” says Deletha, “So what I want do is rally around those girls that lost their dresses or girls who can’t afford a dress but want to go to the prom.”

Nijiah’s Love has been receiving so much support online, that now, Deletha is planning to keep the initiative going for years to come. She says her hope is to donate dresses to young high school girls across Georgia and to find a warehouse location to store the dresses so she’s able to collect more. Her goal is to eventually collect and donate wedding dresses to women in need for their big day.

If you would like to donate to Nijiah’s Love, you can do so by reaching out to Deletha through Nijiah’s Love Facebook page.

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