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Son's Wasted Promise Drives Mom's Efforts

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By VALERIE KALFRIN, The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 13, 2007

Updated: 12/13/2007 12:14 am

TAMPA - Betty Knowles is tired of lost possibilities and faded promise.

As a social worker, Knowles often hears about children who start out bright but lose their way. Her son Tedric, or "Teddy," was like that, she said, gifted in math and foreign languages before ending up in a state prison. He died a few months after his release, in a drive-by shooting in Port Tampa that remains unsolved.

Now Knowles, 50, wants to give other youths the self-respect that eluded her son until too late. She has established a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, The Tedric D. Maynard Tighten-Up Community Outreach Program Inc., to teach youth what they can do for themselves.

"I know there's a lot of great kids out there who have a potential to be greater if they're just given a chance," she said.

"Tighten up" means getting serious, getting one's act together, she said. It's a phrase her son often used, especially after his time in prison. "He had to go through a lot of things to realize that wasn't the life he wanted," she said. "Unfortunately, he came to that a little late in the day."

Knowles wants to organize after-school programs and teach life skills such as handling money. So far, her organization has thrown a yellow-and-blue banquet - named after Tedric's favorite colors - where a local college student received $500 for textbooks and three elementary-school youngsters were honored for essays about how to "tighten up" the community against violence.

"It helps me to heal," Knowles said. "These young people, they're just losing their lives. Because of what I'm going through, I don't want to see anyone else going through this."

Knowles has 25-year-old twin sons and a 35-year-old daughter. Tedric was her heartbreak. He went from an intelligent, caring child to an arrest for aggravated assault at 15, a marijuana conviction at 17 and prison for selling cocaine at 18, records show.

"That was the most devastating time of my life. I cried a lot and prayed a lot because I could see him changing," she said. "He was just that child I knew was going to be a professor or a lawyer or something."

As a boy, Tedric "soaked everything in" and earned good grades, but as a teenager, he grew tired of being teased about his intelligence, she said. "He handled it in the wrong way. He hung out with the bigger and badder kids. Instead of being a leader, he started being a follower."

He also clashed with Knowles' new husband - she and Tedric's father divorced when Tedric was about 6 - and would "act out," she said.

One day as she picked up her son up from the Juvenile Assessment Center, a worker told Tedric if he didn't watch himself, he would be the smartest person in prison, Knowles said. "That's just what happened."

Tedric didn't finish Chamberlain High School, although he later obtained his GED. He was released from prison on Dec. 21, 2006, after serving a four-year sentence related to cocaine-possession charges from 2002, records show.

At that point, Knowles said, "he finally took responsibility for who he was as a human being and wasn't blaming others. He was always talking to children about not going the way that he went."

Tedric enrolled in classes at Florida Metropolitan University and talked about moving to Georgia and marrying his girlfriend, Knowles said.

Then on Sunday, March 4, while Knowles was in church, "I kept getting a feeling something bad was going to happen to him and I didn't know why. I went into a deep prayer and asked the Lord to save him."

She called her son, who was helping his girlfriend with her car. He said, "Ma, I'll talk to you later," and told Knowles he loved her, she recalled.

That night, Tampa police knocked on her door.

Someone in a sport utility vehicle had chased Tedric on South Morton Street, near West Richardson Avenue, and opened fire, police said. He died March 5 of his injuries. Investigators are still seeking leads in his shooting.

Knowles doesn't know who was after her son that day but said, "Because of the life he led, I was always afraid."

She hopes the organization she founded can do something positive in his name. "It just hurts so much to lose him," she said. "I just wish things could've went a different way. He didn't really have a chance to prove himself."

For more information about the organization, call (813) 664-9674. Reporter Valerie Kalfrin can be reached at (813) 259-7800 or vkalfrin@tampatrib.com.

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