While former Tampa Bay Buccaneers player Warrick Dunn has long since retired from professional football, he has still found a way to bring smiles to families in Florida. Through his nonprofit, Warrick Dunn Charities, and a partnership with Habitat for Humanity, Dunn gifted single mom LaToya Reedy and her 18-year-old son a fully furnished two-bedroom home located in St. Petersburg on Tuesday, according to the Tampa Bay Times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBeing a homeowner now, I can be at home,\u201d LaToya, 39, told the newspaper after walking into the home for the first time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before receiving the keys to her new place, Reedy was struggling to pay the bills as a nursing assistant. For two years, she and her son, AnTrez Reedy, rotated sleeping on the bed in the bedroom they shared at her mother\u2019s house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI can be at peace,\u201d she told the Times of the special moment. \u201cI can bring sweet memories to my house and I can have my family and my friends over. I have a home now, and that\u2019s something that I\u2019ve always wanted for my son, and for myself. It\u2019s been a long, hard journey,\u201d LaToya added. \u201cStruggle and sacrifices, but we made it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But this isn\u2019t the first time that 44-year-old Dunn has helped a single mother into their first home. In fact, LaToya is now the 173rd recipient of a home presented by Dunn\u2019s Foundation. The former football star was inspired to help other single mothers after his mom, Betty Smothers, was shot to death at age 36 during a robbery, just days before Dunn was set to turn 18. After that, Dunn cared for his five other siblings, taking up the many responsibilities his mom had held as a single parent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cShe was compassionate, she was kind, she was helpful, thoughtful,\u201d he added. \u201cShe was everything that I would want in my wife. I consider my mother to be superwoman.\u201d<\/p>\n