Clanton, Alabama — Sometimes, wearing rainbow colors isn’t about orientation or politicization. Sometimes, a rainbow is just a rainbow, such as when 10-year-old Hunter Blankenship of Clanton, Alabama, picked out his rainbow-colored glasses.
This car-loving, autistic boy wasn’t making a statement, he just loved the look — until the day he didn’t.
A few months ago, Hunter was outside playing when an older child teased him about his glasses. The bully called Hunter a homophobic slur and then told Hunter he should just kill himself.
“All of a sudden, he stormed off and he’s holding a knife,” Hunter’s mother, Meghan Fancher, recalls. “And I was like, ‘No, what are you doing?’ And he said, ‘I’m going to kill myself.'”
Hunter spent the next two weeks on the psychiatric floor at the Children’s of Alabama hospital in Birmingham. Just before his release, Fancher — desperate for some way to show Hunter that people care and life can be joyful — posted a small request on social media to “arrange a few people to bring cars and trucks to let him see?”
“To see if I could get four or five cars to just come down the driveway when he comes home,” Fancher told CBS News. “That would have been more than enough for him.”
What they got, however, was a response from Sergio Sanchez, owner of a local Clanton restaurant, who saw the post and put word out to car clubs.
“Cars all the way from north Alabama to south Alabama,” Sanchez said. “They literally had to shut down downtown.”
Roughly 1,500 show cars showed up, along with more than 1,500 friends that Hunter never knew he had.
“He was, ‘Oh, there’s my favorite person! There’s my other favorite person!’ We’re running to everybody,” Fancher said.
And all of them were big fans of rainbow-colored glasses, which Hunter now wears proudly thanks to that gathering of car collectors driven to make a difference.
“It did,” Fancher said. “It saved his life.”
If you or someone you know is in emotional distress or a suicidal crisis, you can reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988. You can also chat with the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline here.
For more information about mental health care resources and support, The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) HelpLine can be reached Monday through Friday, 10 a.m.–10 p.m. ET, at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264) or email [email protected].
