With the dream of playing college basketball one day, Mike Tertsea, a Nigerian native, moved halfway across the world to Bel Air, Maryland. He started to play basketball for John Carroll School at age 14.
By the time the 6 foot 10 inch athlete made it to 18 and the end of his high school career, it had been over four years since he’d embraced his mother. A feature in the school newspaper revealed this information about Mike, who many saw as one of the John Carroll School’s hardest working students, and his classmates and teachers decided to take action.
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Not only had Mike sacrificed years with his family, but his earliest years had been a season of poverty, where he and his mother, Felicia, frequently lacked funding to even afford food and electricity.
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Determined to make sure Felicia made it to Mike’s graduation, the teens raised $1,600 for her tickets, all while pretending they would be supporting a collection for a senior lunch. Although the kids came up $500 short, one carrying teacher decided to cover the gap.
Contributing her part as well, Felicia worked around the clock to secure a visa and make specific travel plans.
Classmates secretly flew Felicia Ikpum, to Maryland so she could be present for her son’s high school graduation. She endured 12 hours of travel in order to simply make her flight. She would travel a total of more than 5,000 miles in order to reach Bel Air.
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Even though there were points in the journey where she “felt like giving up,”Felicia persevered, keeping the goal of making her son’s graduation in mind.
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And on a day where families surround graduates with praise and congratulations, a day that could have easily been extremely lonely for Mike, the young man got to experience a graduation even more exciting than most of his friends.
After reuniting at the airport, he was able to stare out into the crowd of supporters while on stage, and see his mother. She was decked out in bright clothing which represented the joy in their relationship and the pride each felt in getting to spend the day together.
She said he,”is big, bigger, too big…I didn’t recognize him he was so big and he put on weight.â€
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In addition to high school graduation, Mike and Felicia have another reason to celebrate. Mike’s talents for basketball will be put to use at the college level for the University of Rhode Island’s Division I team.
Watch the emotional moment he sees his mother for the first time in 4 years below.
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