By EMILY SPARACINO / Staff Writer

CHELSEA – Former Florida State University head football coach Bobby Bowden’s recruiting days might be over, but he will join a Shelby County church in rallying support for a local man awaiting a kidney transplant.

Bowden is set to speak at a fundraiser event for 45-year-old Michael Shaw on the evening of March 18 at Union, The Church at Chelsea Park UMC in Chelsea.

The free event is open to the public, and donations collected throughout the evening will go to Shaw and his family to help defray the cost of his transplant surgery and ongoing medical expenses afterward.

“What we’re looking for is donations and mostly prayers for Michael,” Union, The Church at Chelsea Park Lay Minister Charles Vacarella said in a Feb. 29 phone interview. “We don’t want time to run out on him.”

Vacarella said he had the idea to hold a sports-related fundraiser for Shaw, and suggested contacting Bowden as the potential speaker during a church council meeting, where plans for the event were first formed.

“I come from a football background and know a lot of the coaches, and I coached for a long time and played football,” Vacarella said. “I said, ‘What if I reached out to Bobby Bowden to speak at this event?'”

Vacarella said he called Bowden to ask, and Bowden not only said yes to speaking, but he offered to do so for free.

Vacarella said Bowden said to him, “Anytime I can come back home to Birmingham to help, my heart is there and I would be more than happy to do it.”