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"It's indescribable. I mean, it's something I don't think any of my brothers were expecting," said Yasin Smith as he stood proudly inside the KYW Newsradio studios wearing his black Morehouse Marron Tigers sweatshirt, just hours after arriving home in Philadelphia Tuesday.
"As a black man from Philly, it's just," he said, "I mean my counselor told me I wasn't going to go to college."
The Spanish, pre-nursing major is one of the roughly 400 Morehouse men who got this surprise gift of a lifetime from African-American investment banker Robert F. Smith on Sunday.
"It's, it's freedom," said Yasin, "it's the ability to make my own choices."
"This blessing is surreal," said Amia Burton-Smith, who says she had tears in her eyes when she heard Robert Smith's announcement.
Yasin is one of five children. With two siblings still in private grade schools, the family struggled to pay the cost of education. So when Yasin was unable to graduate in 2018 as planned, the healthcare administrator says she was upset.
"I'm so happy he didn't graduate last year," she laughed.
"This man, he never, he doesn't know any of these folks," said Darryl Smith, Yasin's dad. He says he literally cried during the commencement speech. The auto salesman says he and his wife had planned to help Yasin pay off his crippling student loan debt.
"I will invest in them, it doesn't matter what the cost is" he said.
"But I'll take this one," said Burton-Smith.
As for this gift from one Smith family to another Smith family, it's life changing. Yasin will now be able to teach abroad and perfect his Spanish and then go on to nursing school. He plans to do everything he can to do just what Robert Smith asked of him and his entire class — to pay it forward.
"To be able to walk across the stage to get my degree was my first blessing," said Yasin, "but to be able to pay off my student loans, I can only thank God. Thank you Robert Smith. I am still speechless."