Justin Tuck's small town schools didn't offer the necessary preparation for collegiate academia. The experience stuck with him.

"Just knowing how I grew up. I grew up in a small town in Alabama that wasn't offering AP courses," Tuck told UPI Thursday. "When I got to Notre Dame, I was completely behind the 8 ball as far as the experience from the educational space that some of my teammates or some of my classmates at Notre Dame had experienced."

Tuck's R.U.S.H. For Literacy provided more than 94,000 books to 17,400 students in Alabama, New York, New Jersey and California. Tuck founded the initiative in 2008 with wife Lauran to bring the same opportunities that made them successful to low-income youth in those states.

"Getting the opportunity to donate books and reading materials and afterschool programs and logistics around literacy in general has been one of my fondest experiences," Tuck said. "Getting the opportunity to kind of pay it forward because obviously God has blessed me to have a great opportunity for being an NFL star and creating value around my brand and having the opportunity to use that brand for something that important, I think is one of the greatest things I think I've done."

Read the source article at upi.com