ST. LOUIS • Alderman Freeman Bosley Sr. says he will return any donations received in response to a fundraising letter he sent to solicit help paying for his daughter’s college tuition.
“I won’t even open the damn envelope, if that’s what it is,” Bosley said Thursday. “I’ll just send it back.”
Bosley came under fire Wednesday after the Post-Dispatch reported he had written a letter seeking donations from “friends and supporters” to pay the $14,274 he says is the outstanding balance of his daughter’s upcoming bill at St. Xavier University in Chicago.
“Since you made such a stink out of it, I’ll return any money,” Bosley told a reporter, adding that he had not yet received a donation. “You really have blown that thing well out of proportion. I did nothing wrong.”
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Bosley, a longtime city politician and father of former mayor Freeman Bosley Jr., asked for the checks to be made out to St. Xavier University in Chicago.
“Although the help from scholarships and grants has paid for nearly twenty-five thousand dollars, the remaining balance is still a challenge,” Bosley wrote in the undated letter obtained this week by the Post-Dispatch.
Now, Bosley says he will find another way to send his daughter, Kenya, to college.
“She’s going. Period. This girl is going to make a difference. Just like Freeman Jr. did. Do you think if he hadn’t graduated from college he would have become the first African-American mayor” in the city’s history?
Bosley said his daughter worked hard to finish in the top two percent of her graduating class at St. Elizabeth Academy. He said she deserves to go to a private school.
Bosley declined to say how many children he has, but said he has one other child currently attending college at Tennessee State University.
The Missouri Ethics Commission said it has never seen a similar situation, but that Bosley didn’t appear to have broken any laws.
Bosley maintains the letter was appropriate and only went to his friends.
”The mayor didn’t get a letter from me because he ain’t my friend,” Bosley said.
He added: “I probably have more friends than probably you do because people don’t call you and talk about something that would be personal to them.”
Bosley admitted: “I do realize that I’m a walking news story.”
