Summer 2012
As a defensive back on his high school football team in the early 1980s, Terry White was an early version of an emerging breed of football player who brought a lethal combination of speed, quickness, and size to the game.
Terry’s success hinged on more than inherent talent though. Drilling a ball carrier into the ground provided a welcomed distraction for a young man looking to escape an abusive father and a hostile neighborhood in Cambridge, Ohio. For a few hours each day in practice or during a game, he reveled in his talent and dream of bigger stages to come. Unfortunately, the games’ final whistles always blew sending the all-state athlete back to an environment better suited for a ticket to prison than a scholarship to college.
After a sterling high school career in football and basketball, Terry received numerous offers from elite college football programs and ultimately chose the Ohio State University. There, helping to anchor a defense that included All-American linebacker Chris Spielman, Terry played a key role in the Buckeye’s earning a Rose Bowl invitation in January 1985. He also brought to campus baggage from his home and community that eventually wrecked his promising athletic career.
“Looking back, I had some great examples to follow on the team in William White, Keith Byars, and Christ Spielman,” Terry remembers. “I loved the lives they led, but I couldn’t emulate them because I was so caught up in destructive and deep-seated behaviors. Just the lifestyle of being a high-profile athlete who was told how wonderful I was when I was really doing bad things assisted in my decline. I had two really good years at Ohio State athletically, but socially, it was crazy.”
Terry’s mother was only 14 years old when Terry was born, and he became a father at 18. During the next two decades, another five children would follow. But fatherhood was not a goal in his life. Football was his passion and he worked hard at it. But, as before, practices ended, seasons concluded, and Terry returned to what he knew best after sports.
“I was into drug use. I ended up failing three drug tests in college and I was suspended from the 1985 Rose Bowl. And then, at the beginning of my redshirt junior year, Coach Earl Bruce planned to suspend me, and I immediately transferred to the University of West Virginia where I played football during my last two years of eligibility. I was really lost and I was searching. I had begun my drug habit in high school and I just really struggled with the addiction and the lifestyle that accompanies it,” Terry concluded.
With a disjointed college career completed, “I signed as a free agent with the Kansas City Chiefs of the National Football League, but was cut a week before the season began. Then, the following year, I signed a free agent contract with the Houston Oilers, but was cut from the team a few weeks into that. I did manage to make a little money and went back to Cambridge to my drug use and everything got out of hand. I became a career drug dealer.”
Within five years of his audition in the National Football League, Terry was convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to prison at the age of 30. Five more incarcerations followed until just three years ago when, at the age of 43, Terry emerged from prison doors determined to turn things around. What distinguished this emergence from his previous five?
“I found faith in God during my second prison stint,” Terry shared. “But being grounded and rooted in that faith was something I really struggled with. Every time I encountered hard times, I reverted to what came easy. I had never been taught how to deal with disappointment or failure. So, I did what I had seen my father do and others in my environment. It was just a hard and long process for me to get out of that.”
Since his last prison stay, Terry worked as a UPS manager before being laid off. Then, some six months ago, he received a call from Reverend Joe Foster of the Fountain of Hope near downtown Columbus, Ohio about an at-risk youth position at Foster’s ministry.
“One of the good things about bringing Terry here is that he has had his own struggles – very similar struggles to the youth we bring inside these walls,” the reverend said. “He’s an excellent example of someone who has turned his life around, discovered his talents, and is now using them to help others. In fact, if you look at the Fountain of Hope’s leadership, you will see similar stories to Terry’s in terms of having potential taken away in our youth, but finding it again as adults.”
As inspiring as Terry’s story may be to young men and women desperate for good role models, his visible athletic career and the ties forged during that brief era of his life are enticing to an organization fighting to stay afloat. It’s a testament to the power of Buckeye football that an all-Big Ten defensive back from a quarter-century ago who crashed and burned multiple times during those 25 years, can still open doors to donors.
“The Fountain of Hope has struggled to get funding during its existence and they have nearly closed the doors several times,” Terry said. “But we have goals now. We’re building a calendar filled with fundraising opportunities. We’ve applied for state and federal grants and have gotten sponsors for several of our initiatives. When I started six months ago, there were probably four or five children finishing the program. When we completed our last summer session, we had 22 children involved in the Fountain of Hope.”
Terry has also reached out to former teammates and the university seeking assistance for the inner-city refuge. He has gotten positive responses and his efforts are beginning to pay dividends for the non-profit gradually moving from life-support to a more stable financial footing.
One senses though that while the athlete, turned drug dealer, turned counselor to youth, has closed the door on his past, pain is still there. The anger associated with a dysfunctional home and a society that valued his ability to run and jump more than his soul has largely been compartmentalized and no longer weighs on his decision-making. However, Terry must wrestle with the lost years. Time lost building relationships with his children; time lost establishing a career with which he can support his new family (Terry is engaged to be married soon and is expecting his seventh child). And there will always be the question of whether, with more discipline, he could have succeeded in the NFL.
“What the world calls a conscience is also a divine spark available to guide us. I finally started to pay attention to that conscience and when the world was telling me ‘no’ I couldn’t escape drugs, it was telling me ‘yes’ I could. The last time I was in prison, I really dedicated myself to finding out who I was. I didn’t have athletics anymore, but I didn’t have drugs anymore either. I finally realized that I have many other gifts – the ability to communicate, the ability to reach young people caught up in many bad behaviors, and the ability to love. I use those now in my life at home and in the community and I love what I have become.”
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