Corey Smith's family sets up scholarship fund

By: Ellen Robertson | Richmond Times-Dispatch
Published: March 21, 2009

Scholarship fund will honor Smith Award named for NFL player will go to Marshall students

Corey Domanic Smith was a quiet, gentle man who led by example, friends and family members said.

"We all looked at him as the epitome of what we wanted in high school athletes, and not just at John Marshall [High School]," said Kevin G. Adams, athletic director at John Marshall and one of Smith's early coaches. "He'd give you 110 percent. He'd just go and go."

In the three weeks since the 29-year-old Richmond native and NFL defensive end was in a fishing accident off the Florida coast and presumed dead, his family has decided to do something positive and lasting in his honor that will reflect his character and what he believed in: using education to follow his dream.

Encouraged by friends, coaches and his NFL teammates, the family established a scholarship to be awarded to an athlete-scholar at John Marshall, with hopes that the fund will evolve into a foundation. The family wants to award a scholarship this year.

"It would be wonderful if we could raise $5,000 to $10,000 by the end of the school year," said his sister, Yolanda Newbill of Richmond. "I hope it will be a nationwide effort."

Donations may be mailed to the Corey D. Smith Memorial Scholarship Fund, P.O. Box 27691, Richmond, VA 23261. They may be made at any Bank of America branch nationwide. Contributors outside the state must tell bankers that the fund is based in Virginia.

The focus will be on supporting a high school student who has the talent and ability to be a college athlete, Newbill said, as well as the academic excellence to graduate from college.

"I give credit to [Smith's] parents and family," Adams said. "Everything Corey got, he deserved, and he worked hard for it. He worked hard academically to get eligible to go to the [Atlantic Coast Conference] as a freshman. He was a good student."

He attended North Carolina State on a four-year scholarship and graduated.

"He used his education as a vehicle to achieve athletic success."

Giving back to his community, whether working with teammates to distribute toys, food and clothing to the needy, playing golf for charity in Virginia or donating uniforms to the John Marshall football team "was something Corey was very passionate about," Newbill said.

Because of that, the family has built in community service as a scholarship requirement.

"Playing pro ball was not something he took on in high school. He had that dream as a fifth-grader," Newbill said.

"To build a strong community is to build a foundation for your children," his sister said. "Corey came back and gave because he obviously had that foundation."