MANSFIELD — Terese Terrell didn’t let obstacles stand in her way when it came to helping struggling students.
If she had to go to their house and wake them up, she would.
Effie James, who worked with Terrell during her days as an alternative school administrator, still remembers waiting outside in the car while his boss marched up the stairs.
“We had to do that for a few kids until they got the importance of getting up and coming to school,” James said.
Terrell died in February. She was 78. An informal memorial gathering will take place Friday at the North Lake Park Pavilion from 4 to 6 p.m. to honor her memory.
It will not be a service, but rather an opportunity for those that knew her to gather and share memories of her.
“We put it together kind of as a last-minute gathering,” James said. “She didn’t have a lot of family here in town.”
‘She was all about the kids’
James said Terrell was born in the Virgin Islands.
She earned her master’s degree in educational administration from Ashland University around February 2000, according to an archived edition of the Mansfield News Journal.
Former colleague and close friend Kathy Davis met Terrell while the two completed their studies.
“I walked in the room spring semester of 1998 and there she sat,” Davis recalled. “We became instant friends, almost like sisters.”
Terrell held several administrative positions within Mansfield City Schools before retiring from the Mansfield Integrated Learning Center (MILC), an alternative school program at the Hedges Campus, in 2014.
Terrell’s former colleagues describe her as a force — a fierce defender of her students and staff who occasionally ruffled feathers with her unconventional approach.
“She wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea, but she was all about the kids,'” said Aaron Williams, pastor of Maddox Memorial Church.
Williams said Terrell insisted on serving holiday dinners with turkey, ham and macaroni and cheese before Thanksgiving and Christmas break so every child could enjoy a traditional meal regardless of instability at home.
“She knew about their personal situations. I think that was a driver for her that fueled her — trying to break their situational cycles,” Williams said.
Davis recalled Terrell finding a boy asleep under the stairs one school day. Terrell told the staff to let him rest, feed him when he woke up and then send him to her office.
“He was petrified. He thought he had gotten in trouble,” Davis said. “She asked him, ‘What’s going on with you that you’re coming to school and going straight to sleep?’”
The boy confessed that he and his mother were living in a shelter and he stayed up all night to protect her.
“I can’t remember what she did, but she did something so that he was able to get a couple hours of sleep at school,” Davis said.
James said Terrell helped change the culture of the school.
“It started as an alternative school where kids just wanted to go serve their time and get back,” James said. “It became a place where students actually learned.”
But Terrell didn’t just push students to be their best. She pushed her staff, too.
Williams now serves as a youth mentor in the Richland County Juvenile Court. James works as the site director for the GEAR UP program, which focuses on helping students at Mansfield Senior High School prepare for their future.
“At the time, I was working as a family liaison,” James said.
“She felt like my impact on young people could be larger if I had more education. At the time I didn’t even have a degree. Because of her, in large part, I went on to get my bachelor’s and even my master’s degree.”
James said Terrell’s greatest trait was her ability to engage families. If a parent couldn’t come to school, Terrell would ask if she could swing by their workplace with lunch or a cup of coffee.
“Most people would never go through the lengths she would go to just to engage with those kids’ parents,” James said. “That was really the key to their success.”
