They say you die twice: Once when you physically die and once when the last person says your name.
After Jory died in 2019, a few of his close friends, students and I wanted to make a way to remember him. We did this foundation. Our budget was barely over $1000/ year to raise to pay for a scholarship and accounting. That’s it. We hoped maybe we could grow it but it wasn’t a main focus. We just wanted to reach local people and keep Jory’s name a live in a positive way.
For 2 years my students, friends and I raised money for this project. We paid for the set up and then we had a little extra over the amount of the scholarship we intended to give…. So we decided to give 3 scholarships. I nearly matched all donations with my own personal money so that we could give out 3 scholarships of $1000 each to highly qualified applicants instead of just 1. We also spent some money on setup and accounting fees as required, leaving .58 in the account after distributions of scholarships.
This has been a positive endeavor for us at Revolution in particular to remember Jory. It’s been positive for those who knew him, and it allows those who didn’t to get to know a little about him. It provides more opportunity for us to talk about Jory and keep his name alive, which was the main intention. In fact for 2 years after Jory’s death this 501c3 has brought a sense of pride to find for us to remember him and find ways to let people who didn’t know Jory know him.
Due to the unrelenting and obnoxious harassment from certain family members now targeting this 501c3, I have decided to take a pause to reflect if I will continue to do this. While Jory’s closest friends and I worked diligently on this, others sat by idly and did nothing positive and now want to target this 501c3… for what? Obnoxious, selfish… it’s hard to come up with the words for this behavior. I refuse to let this organization for my late husband’s memory be used as a pawn.
Thank you for being part of this if you were. If you are here looking for a scholarship, please contact me directly. We will be running positive programs directly through my gym Revolution for the time being. We would prefer to run a scholarship in memory of Jory directly, but for the time being we’re done with harassment and negativity. I hope we will be able to do this in 2023.
~Abby
Revolution Mixed Martial Arts www.RevolutionMMA.com