Eli Manning To Open Children’s Clinic In Mississippi

Not many things can get Eli Manning to match the smile he wore as he lifted the Lombardi Trophy after Super Bowl XLII. One that comes close, however, is the satisfaction he gets from helping unfortunate children.

After all, how many 27-year-olds have their names emblazoned on a children’s clinic?

In December, the Eli Manning Children’s Clinics at the Blair E. Batson Hospital for Children will open in Jackson, Miss., thanks in part to money raised by the Giants’ quarterback.

“I like working with kids, it’s entertaining for me,” Manning said the other day at the New York Giants’ University at Albany training site. “Obviously the ones that are unhealthy and sick, it’s hard. You feel for them and want to do everything you can for them to make them feel better, make them have a better day, just get them to laugh or smile, try to get them to talk to you.”

Making the clinics happen has been a concerted effort by the entire Manning family, BankPlus in Jackson and Batson, the only hospital in Mississippi dedicated solely to the care and treatment of children. It involved a June gala, “An Evening with the Mannings,” in Jackson that raised nearly $1 million and featured an on-stage cook-off between Eli and famed New Orleans chef Emeril Legace.

“I know in New York those numbers sound small,” he said, “but in Mississippi — that’s a different league.”

Manning said he wanted to give something back to Mississippi, which played an important part in his life during his college days. The need for a new wing at the hospital for children turned out to be a perfect match. He has a five-year commitment to raise $2.5 million, and has reached half that amount in just two years.

His love for helping children, however, began before he became the No. 1 selection in the 2004 NFL draft, and long before he led the Giants to the NFL championship. It started when Manning, big man on the Ole Miss campus, began spending his leisure time in a very un-BMOC way.

“In college, there was this little center for mentally challenged and disabled kids I used to go to,” he recalled. “There were maybe 20 kids in this little school, and they didn’t have much going.

“So I used to visit there kind of randomly, they just say, ‘Drop by any time.’ It was only five minutes from the campus, so if I had an extra 30 minutes, or an hour, I’d drop by.”

He also would visit the elementary school, which also was just five minutes from the campus. “I’d drive by it every day on the way to the football stadium,” he said. “The teacher told me the kids do their reading between 11 and 12, and then they get their nap. So if you can come by, you can read to the kids.

“I’d have 30 minutes to kill, and what should I do? I’d drop by and read to the kids. A lot of them were young and they might know me or know the name after we were introduced. It was fun being around them and seeing them laugh and hear some of the questions they ask, just the innocence of a child.”

Manning said that when he was growing up he watched his father, Archie, the former NFL quarterback, get involved with several charities. While that may have provided him a game plan, it still had to be executed.

“You can see someone do it, but if you don’t really enjoy it, you’re never going to take it to heart, you’re never going to do much of it,” he said of the work. “Sometimes you just might like being around kids, you feel like you can act like a little kid yourself without being under the microscope.

“As much as they enjoy it, I might enjoy it even more than they do.”

- Vinny Ditrani, North Jersey Record