Endowment of Terez A. Paylor Scholarship reflects will of fiancee, love of Kansas City
In her shock and agony after the sudden death in February of her fiance, Terez A. Paylor, Ebony Reed had a certain hazy consciousness of the flood of tributes and outpouring of condolences from around the country and Kansas City in particular.
She knew people were saying wonderful things about the life and legacy of Terez, the beloved former Kansas City Star writer who stayed in his adoptive home area even after he left The Star in 2018 to cover the NFL for Yahoo Sports.
It’s just that she couldn’t absorb much of it for a long time. And the truth is she’s still trying to process it.
“But I feel like I’m moving more toward a place where I’m ready to celebrate him,” she said. “And to me that’s what Friday will be about.”
Friday was about Terez A. Paylor Day in Kansas City. And about punctuating it with his press-box seat being retired at Arrowhead Stadium, where the Chiefs also presented a $10,000 check toward the Terez A. Paylor Scholarship fund at Howard University that was launched in partnership by The Star, Yahoo Sports and The Wall Street Journal (for which Ebony works).
Most of all, though, Friday was about an extraordinary milestone the rest of the celebration was built around: Contributions to the scholarship have already eclipsed $100,000, as Ebony announced via Twitter Friday morning, thus enabling it to become endowed.
This means, as she put it in her announcement, that it will never go away.
Which underscores, of course, the fact that Terez never really will leave us, either.
Now, it’s hard to track how many endowed scholarships of such distinct origins there might be, particularly in the smaller range of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Ebony noted.
But it’s certainly reasonable to suggest that Terez is once again on a rare tier and in distinguished company that (courtesy of Peyton Manning’s Peyback Foundation) includes former NFL stars Doug Williams (Grambling State) and Harold Carmichael (Southern) and track legend Wilma Rudolph (Tennessee State).
This development, though, also is a testament to something else, including Ebony’s iron will about making good on a vision Terez laid out to her in the summer of 2020 not long after an uncle of his had died from COVID-19.
That made for a reflective time for the couple. And it prompted conversations about everything from their future to estate planning to just getting their “stuff in order.”
In the midst of that, one night Terez blurted out, “You know, someday I’d really like to have a scholarship in my name at Howard.”
That’s because Terez was forever grateful for his education and broader experiences at Howard, where he graduated magna cum laude in 2006 with a degree in print journalism before soon starting a 12-year tenure at The Star.
When Ebony asked him how much he thought it might cost to arrange a scholarship, she recalled, Terez figured maybe $25,000.
Neither figured they’d be able to afford that, and certainly not in the near term as a young couple with no generational wealth.
But at the very core of Terez’s being, she said, was wanting to be helpful to others. So he still left her with a powerful suggestion, along the lines of, “Yeah, but some day that would be great, Ebony.”
So, she said, “I was just, like, ‘OK, I’ll put it on the list.’ ”
It moved to the top of the list, alas, much sooner than anyone would have wanted.
But it also became a cause, one she needed and an idea that touched his parents, too.
In a statement made when the campaign was announced, Terez’s parents, Sharmyn Elliott and Ava Paylor-Elliott (who both attended Friday evening’s pre-game ceremony in the press box), said they “couldn’t think of a better way to acknowledge, honor and cement Terez’s legacy and contributions as a sports journalist than establishing this scholarship in his name at HU.
“By virtue of this scholarship, it is our hope that our son’s legacy will live on and inspire future Black sports journalists to employ the tenacity and perseverance Terez epitomized, and to uphold these values he embodied by committing to be the best they can possibly be and to ‘never be outworked.’”
So now there is a magnificent tribute to Terez in the form of the endowed scholarship itself, to be awarded to students majoring in sports journalism who carry a minimum 3.0 GPA, but also how it came to be funded.
When Ebony thinks about how grateful she is to have this idea blossom, she thinks about the commitments from the Journal, Yahoo and The Star. And the numerous companies that offered matching gift programs that their employees took part in. And, of course, the All-Juice Team gear by BreakingT from which all proceeds go towards the scholarship.
But she also thinks about the hundreds of others who contributed.
They were young and old, people he or she or his parents knew … and many none had ever met.
People who gave $10 because that was what they could afford and it mattered to them.
All in the matter of months in the middle of a pandemic and amid her own mourning that sometimes made her wonder if she could get through a meeting without suddenly being in the throes of a “complete cry-fest.” That included as she was coordinating with people at Howard.
“They had to have tremendous patience with me, because some weeks when I was in touch I could barely even speak because I was still grieving,” she said. “But I was like, ‘Give me the numbers. I need to know where we are. I need to know what’s outstanding. I need to know who to call to make sure they send that check.’ ”
The result, she hopes, will make the Kansas City community proud.
But it certainly can be proud in another way.
Because of all who have looked out for her, and over her, since Terez died.
“I want people to know about this community and how wonderful it is and why I’d want to stay,” she said.
Ebony moved from Boston to Missouri to be with Terez in 2017, then from Columbia to Kansas City in 2019. In 2020, they bought and made a home together.
You’d have thought she’d been here all her life, though, from what happened after Terez died.
Her direct messages on Twitter, she said, “were on fire … There were so many people in this community who wrote me that had never met me, and some of them still write me.”
One day, men she’d never met startled her by shoveling the driveway. The wife of one soon called and said, “We’re your neighbors, and we’re going to be clearing that driveway.”
A woman from FedEx came to pick up Terez’s work equipment from Yahoo and stood in her driveway and prayed with her.
When she called in a carryout order at the Red Door Grill in Liberty but took two hours to get dressed because she was having a bad day, they remade her food when she arrived; they didn’t want her to eat cold food or feel bad she took so long to get there.
Over at First Watch in Shoal Creek, where Terez went all the time, they’ve put little messages in her carryout orders so “you know we’re thinking of you.”
The welcoming ways of the city, of course, started before this.
On a Southwest Airlines flight from Washington, D.C., in January 2020, she spotted Mayor Quinton Lucas. Knowing Terez had recently spoken with him, she introduced herself and struck up a relationship with him. In the process that day, she also met Wendy Doyle, president and CEO of United WE (formerly Women’s Foundation) and ultimately came to join the board of directors of the group that also has helped sustain her.
She’s also thankful for her grief counselor, something she wants people to know because of how valuable she has found therapy to be in her journey to “whatever the new Ebony is going to be” after her tragic loss.
In the months to come, Ebony will be working with Louise Story on a book about the history of race and money in our country. The book is to be published by HarperCollins and called “The Black Dollar.” And she sees it in some respects as an endeavor carrying forward the values with which she and Terez were aligned.
Consumed as she’ll be with that, though, she’ll also stay focused on the scholarship since the more the principle grows the more interest it can generate and more opportunities it can create.
In fact, it’s her hope that in the next decade or two the endowment can surpass $1 million.
Especially since she figures the more people who see the quality of students benefiting from the scholarship, the more they’ll want to be a part of “the Terez A. Paylor movement for future sports journalists.”
It’s a movement that has buoyed her through the worst of times, with a little help from family, friends and strangers.
And this result will be another way we can all remember Terez … and through which she’ll stay forever connected to him.
“For as long as I’m living,” she said, “I’ll continue to fund raise in some capacity for this.”
This story was originally published August 27, 2021 at 11:12 AM.