Wednesday was a special day for Hassan Whiteside, his mom Debbie, and their family. Whiteside surprised his mom by buying her a house, something he promised her when he was a young kid. He documented his family’s visit to the house (and eventual reveal) on his Snapchat:
Hassan Whiteside makes good on childhood promise to buy mom a new house
Pulling off the surprise was difficult as it required a lot of secrecy, Whiteside told the Sun Sentinel:
“As far as to keep it a secret was the hardest part, because my mom, she can find out anything,” he said with a laugh. “I didn’t even tell some of my brothers. I had a couple of brothers, they didn’t even know.”
When they visited the house, Whiteside had to pretend the house had been sold to another person, and maybe go look at a different house — in reality, he was hiding the keys in his pocket. When it came to make the reveal, he presented his mom the keys, and well, there were a lot of happy emotions spilled in the kitchen.
The gesture is even more significant because of the hardship Whiteside’s family went through when he was a teenager. As Debbie Whiteside tells the Sun Sentinel, she did so much for her family:
“I got laid off,” Debbie Whiteside said, “and had to sell the house because the bank wouldn’t refinance the house. It was heartbreaking, because I built the house from the ground up.”
It wasn’t for a lack of trying, working as a machinist, building transmissions for tractor trailers, toiling in a shipping department.
“I went down to deliver newspapers, put out flowers. I catered. I did anything to bring in money to help,” she reflected, “at the time, the father wasn’t in his life.”
And now Whiteside got to give back to his mom, a “thank you” in the form of a big, beautiful house that she wanted.
“I love you,” Debbie said on Whiteside’s Snapchat story. “Thank you, son. You made me very happy today. I don’t think you could’ve made my day no better.”
