Bink's Coca-Cola is a proud sponsor of many community events, from Little League to youth soccer and hockey.

Coca-Cola Scholars Foundation – (www.cocacola.com) Coca-Cola, long committed to helping build better communities by providing opportunities for learning, established The Coca-Cola First Generation Scholarship program on the Tennessee Technological University campus, Cookeville, TN in 1994. At that school, 65% of the student body are the first in their families to go to college.

Lee Cooper was among the first to receive a Coca-Cola First Generation Scholarship at Tennessee Tech. He says that he was 13 when he told his parents he wanted to follow in their footsteps and be a dairy farmer. His parents had other plans, but decided to give their son a taste of farming life first. He spent six weeks that summer rising at 3 a.m. to milk the family's 100 dairy cows.



"It had an impact on me," Cooper said. "From that point on there wasn't a whole lot of question that I wanted to go to college." Cooper was the first in his family to go to college. Thanks in part to the First Generation Scholarship program, he graduated from Tennessee Technological University in August of 2000. He works as the technical lead in HCA's Document Imaging department in Nashville.

"My family and I still bring it up about every three or four months, about how much of a blessing it was to have my tuition paid for," Cooper said. "It enabled me to save up a little money and get started out on my own. It meant a lot."