Cleaner enjoys holiday paid for by Bristol university students

Authored by bbc.co.uk and submitted by gaymerRaver
image for Cleaner enjoys holiday paid for by Bristol university students

Image copyright Sandals Image caption Students raised cash so Denise and Herman Gordon could visit Jamaica

A university cleaner has been on holiday to Jamaica after students donated £1,500 so he could visit family for the first time in a decade.

About 230 University of Bristol students crowdfunded the week's trip for Herman Gordon and his wife Denise.

Mr Gordon said: "God bless you all. Everybody will see this and think that I'm a trillionaire."

A video of the cleaner breaking down in tears when he was told about the trip in June went viral.

Mr Gordon, who has worked at Bristol University as part of the cleaning staff for 12 years, stayed at the Montego Bay resort with his wife.

Mrs Gordon thanked students "for this gift that they have given to me and Herman".

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Herman Gordon's emotional reaction to the gift was caught on camera

The initial post called Mr Gordon "the jolliest man I have ever met" and said "if you wanna reason to smile, go talk to him for a min or two".

A day later, Hadi Al-Zubaidi, a 20-year-old medicine student at Bristol, anonymously posted that he was starting a crowdfunding page for him.

The target was reached in a week.

Details of the Gordons' trip have been shared on the Bristruths Facebook page, where the idea to help Mr Gordon first materialised back in May.

"We're delighted to say that Herman loved his holiday at a five-star resort in Jamaica along with his wife Denise," a post said.

"Bristruths would like to thank all the Bristol students who made this possible."

Image copyright Sandals Image caption Denise Gordon thanked University of Bristol students for paying for the trip

miker35591 on September 19th, 2018 at 12:45 UTC »

We tried to get a GoFundMe going for one of the teachers who was retiring at my old high school so he could go to Italy, but the school shut it down. It was kinda a shitty thing for them to do.

floofmoose on September 19th, 2018 at 12:26 UTC »

This happened at my uni, I can confirm that this guy is a ray of sunshine to be around, and this fundraiser spawned out of genuine love for him :)

Bby69 on September 19th, 2018 at 11:18 UTC »

Great story, people like that are legends and should be treated as such.