She was helping her husband Troy launch the Dayton Mohawks Youth Basketball program, which, in the three decades that would follow, would touch the lives of thousands of youngsters from West Dayton especially, but also everywhere from Beavercreek and Centerville to East Dayton and Xenia.
“At first we didn’t have any money for uniforms, so we got some T-shirts and I used my lipstick to write numbers on them,” Zell once told me as we sat at the kitchen table in her home on Greenbriar Drive.
She told how her husband made the first trophy they awarded from wood which he’d painted red.
From those meager beginnings, the couple built one of the best-known, most respected youth programs the Miami Valley has ever known. It hosted leagues and, in its heyday put on tournaments that would draw as many as 60 teams from across the Midwest.
Most importantly, it nurtured children — black and white, boys and girls, those in need and not — from right here in the Miami Valley.
Some of the area’s most-celebrated athletes were once Mohawks, including Chris Wright, Jeff Graham, Keith Byars, Darnell Hoskins, TuTu Brown, Ray Springer, Kirk Taylor, Jamie Skelton, Chris McGuire, Carlos Knox, Roy Roundtree and Derrick Brown.
The list goes on and on and on.
Some later played in the NFL and NBA. Scores played in college. Many today have families of their own and are businessmen and teachers and coaches and a few have paid it forward with youth programs of their own.
Troy Pearson, who died in 2015 after a battle with Alzheimer’s, is known as the Father of Youth Basketball in Dayton, so much so, that he’s featured in this year’s Dayton Skyscrapers Art Exhibit, which honors people who have stood tall in the community.
Actually though, the perfect Pearson depiction, said son Milt, would be Twin Towers.
“My mom was right there with him,” Milt said the other day. “People don’t realize all the behind-the-scenes stuff she did for my dad.
“She was the Mother of the Mohawks.”
Zell passed away last Saturday at the age of 87.
She is survived by her sister, five children,12 grandchildren, and seven great grandkids.
Her funeral service is Saturday at Exodos Ministries, 405 West National Road in Englewood. Visitation begins at 9:30 a.m., and the funeral service follows at 11.
Athletic family
Zell was born in Bluffton, Georgia, on July 8, 1936, and graduated from Early County High in nearby Blakely. She met Troy — a multi-sport athlete from Toledo Libbey High School — when both were students at Fort Valley State, an HBCU 100 miles south of Atlanta.
“Oooh, back then he had a hook shot and when he just started with that arm going up, the fans in the stands would go crazy,” she told me.
After the couple wed, they moved to Ohio, where Troy first worked for the post office in Toledo and then got a job with the IRS and moved the growing family to Middletown. In 1973, that job brought the Pearsons to Dayton.
Zell eventually would work for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, which oversees federal civil service matters.
All five of couple’s children went to Fort Valley State on athletic scholarships, Milt said.
He played football for the Wildcats. His older brothers Troy III and Nathan played basketball. Older sister, Landes, was a volleyball player and younger sister, Deborah, was a standout basketball player.
The athletic genes have carried over to the next generation, too, especially in Milt’s son Chris, who played basketball at Trotwood Madison High School and became one of the best boxers to call the Miami Valley home in recent years.
After going 93-8 as an amateur and winning the national Police Athletic League (PAL) title in 2009 and the U.S. National middleweight crown, he turned pro, now has a 17-4-1 record and may be fighting for the NABF makeweight crown right here in Trotwood in September.
Although Zell had been hesitant to see her grandson fight live, I remember the first time she sat ringside. It was for Chris’ bout with Richard Gorham of Indianapolis at a gala show at Fifth Third Field in 2010.
After the first round, I checked in with her.
“Oh my goodness!” she said in a trembling voice. “I’ve never seen him box before. I had no idea. None. They hit them right in the face! Over and over. Oh my goodness!”
The next round I happened to glance in her direction. She was up, out of her seat, cheering her grandson who had pummeled Gorham and forced him to take an eight count.
More than basketball
The Mohawks weren’t just about playing basketball.
Zell told me children who needed coats and shoes in the winter were given them. She and her husband reinforced the kids’ understanding of good hygiene and being polite and getting good grades, so much so, that she often had the youngsters show her their report cards.
For 15 years, Troy charged kids just $25 to play an entire season. And if the child’s family didn’t have the money, the Pearson’s paid the fee out of their own pockets.
Several years ago, former Mohawk Cliff “Sput” Nelson — then in his early 40s and with a family of his own — told me all kids though had to pay up in another way.
Before they could ride the bus to a tournament, he said they had to pay a fare to the Pearsons.
“We had to recite a bible verse we’d learned,” he said, then chuckled. “But it had to be a good one. It couldn’t just be: ‘Jesus wept.’”
Milt said he remembered when he was just 16 hearing a reporter ask his parents why they took on such a time-consuming, finance-draining program for the area’s youth.
“I expected my dad to give this deep answer, something about revolutionizing the world,” he said. “When he answered, at first, I thought it was lame. It seemed too simple.
“All he said was ‘It’s the right thing to do.’”
Turns out it was the perfect answer.
Jesus wept.
Naah.
Jesus smiled.
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