Tamyra Mensah-Stock, who is the second woman to win a wrestling gold medal for the U.S. and the first black woman to do so, has expressed not only her love for God and America, but has revealed her love for her mother as well.
During an interview after her win, she was quoted as saying, "I love representing the U.S. I freaking love living there" as she pulled the American flag draped on her shoulders tighter around her. Her bright disposition is well received and loved by fans.
Mensah-Stock's grateful outlook and patriotism towards America is a refresher in the midst of many athletes who take to the games to show their disdain for the United States, including hammer thrower Gwen Berry, who turned her back on the National Anthem during the Olympic trials and during the women's hammer throw final at Tokyo 2020 raised her fist in protest.
Unlike the "activist athletes" who took to games to protest, Mensah-Stock admitted feeling very emotional and that God spoke through her in that very moment of her win, Fox News reported.
"That specific moment when he asked me [how it felt to represent the U.S.] I felt like, I went into a trance and God just spoke through me, and I was like, 'All right, look directly at the camera and just go," Mensah-Stock admitted. "I know there's a lot of negativity going on, and I just want to enlighten people of my feelings to spread positivity, and it happened."
Mensah-Stock, who was born to an immigrant from Ghana and grew up in Texas, is continuing to spread her positivity by giving back to her widowed mother, Shonda Wells. The athlete lost her father to a fatal car accident when he was on his way home from one of her sister's high school wrestling matches. Mensah-Stock admitted that she had seen her mother "struggling ever since my dad died."
This is why she decided to pool her Olympic winnings and purchase her mother a food truck, Faithwire reported. Mensah-Stock will receive $37,500 from the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, which the athlete has committed to purchasing a food truck for her mother. She recalled that five years ago, she and her mother were talking about a food truck business, which she said her mother was "ecstatic" about. Wells even has a name for it already: "The Lady Bug."
"I just wanted to help my mom's dream come true like she's helped mine come true," Mensah-Stock told ABC13. But instead of using her winnings to buy a food truck, Cruising Kitchens has decided to give Mensah-Block and Wells their very own food truck instead.
Cruising Kitchens is the largest manufacturer of mobile assets in the world and is owned by Cameron Davis, who committed to "design, build and donate a $250,000 food truck for Wells." Mensah-Stock admitted, "I've been wanting this for her for so long. I pretty much forgot about my dreams - just wanted hers to come true."
