Terry Wayne Maynard

Terry was the elder son of Marvin Jack Maynard (1995) of lonia and Martha Virginia (Summers) Maynard (2021) of Weakley County, Tennessee.

He was a graduate of Lansing Everett High School (1964) and Michigan State University (Communication) in 1974. Terry served three years on active duty in the U.S. Army (1968-1971), including two years in Karlsruhe, Germany, where he was accompanied by his wife Sue (Slover) of Kalamazoo, and where they travelled the continent extensively.

For short while after Army duty, Terry became enamored with travel and high altitudes and worked all over the country as a steeplejack, erecting and painting broadcast towers, painting guy wires and all manner of high altitude work.

Thereafter, in professional life, he became a stockbroker for regional and national firms selling financial products and services for over twenty years, during which time he held the position of Arbitrator for the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), serving more than seven years as a distinguished securities Arbitrator.

In 2005, Terry became Director of Investor Relations for Lansing's publicly-held Neogen Corporation from 2005 until his retirement in 2018.

Terry leaves behind brother Sam (Sharon) and nieces Dr. Abigail Maynard and Dr. Elise Maynard.

Terry wished to be remembered for his quick wit and sense of humor.

There will be no ceremony or services.

Terry wished to express his grateful thanks to life-long friends Timothy Brogan and Carl Johnson.

A Memoir From Terry,

Let's be clear, I'm fortunate to have made it as far as I did. I could have, maybe should have, died decades ago, starting with my first blood clot in the late nineties. It was dissolved and dispatched with no harm at the time, but it showed up again two years later - and I was lucky once more.

As a result, I was put on a regimen of blood thinners, which required regular testing to monitor its performance. Ironically, were it not for the regular testing, doctors & would never have caught the presence of a VERY AGGRESSIVE PROSTATE CANCER that would surely have killed me then (early 2000's) had it gone unchecked. After months of external and internal radiation treatment, I had survived another close call and narrow escape. After that, I enjoyed many years of a relatively carefree life. Lesson: Be careful with your health, get tested and listen to your doctors.

Apart from those health scares, I worked as a steeplejack on broadcast towers all over the country, hitchhiking everywhere, meeting interesting people and enjoying the view from 1000 feet in the air. While in Europe, I benefited from a great supplemental education while living and travelling the continent with my wife. As many have observed, "Travel is broadening." Do it.

If we're counting 'lives,' I have burned my share, from health scares to steeplejack incidents to near misses on European highways (to which my ex-wife would attest). Yet, through all my travails, I never had any pain or suffering that so many people endure for no justifiable reasons. For me, it was usually just a few days of inconvenience in hospital here and there. Through it all, I feel blessed to have dodged so many bullets. It hardly seems fair to have made it this far and had so much fun along the way.

Do you remember the Football Game of the Century (between MSU and Notre Dame? I sure do. It was Saturday, November 19, 1966, the night before "The Big Game'. The wind was whistling, and it was bitterly cold that night.

I drove over to some friends' house including fellow classmate Rob Moray, to find them finishing and readying to hang a 4' x 25' cloth sign in the basement that lengthwise read, "MSU IS #1." One look and I said, "Count me in."

They were preparing to climb to the top of the MSU Power Plant (approximately 200' high) looking down over and directly into Spartan Stadium, which was heavily guarded by police and Frat guys to protect against pranks at the hands of our Notre Dame rivals.

While the ladder on the side of the tower started at 15-20' above the ground, the climb up started with scaling the tower's lengthy braided steel cable ground wire, a story in itself.

At first, we were able to hold on using our fingers, but halfway up, I had to switch to holding on to the rungs 'lobster claw' fashion to keep going, but we persevered. I led the way and secured the top two corners while Rob tied the bottom two corners tautly to the outside of the ladder. What we didn't know at the time was that some other Sparty fans would climb up after us to hang an Irish opponent in effigy later.)

Watching at home, as the ABC-TV coverage came out of the halftime break, slowly zooming out to the full stadium, I screamed at the TV, "That's my sign! I hung that sign!" Fellow classmate, Rob Moray and I had climbed to the top of the 200 foot tower and made history that night.

The game is also remembered for the fact that, at the time, Notre Dame was ranked #1 in national football polls, and Michigan State was ranked #2, so there was much on the line to football fans everywhere. The game is also remembered for its final score, the 10 - 10 tie, when ND coach Ara Parseghian was accused of playing for the tie, so as to retain his team's #1 ranking, a motive vehemently denied by Notre Dame staff and fans.

Ironically, that climb was the first of a resumé of many high-work jobs over the next two years.

I loved to compete - word games, card games, board games, Scrabble, Wordle, the game of Go, you name it. I enjoyed shooting pool and playing racquet sports such as ping pong, badminton and tennis. I loved television and films (especially foreign films and was a avid student of video content of all kinds).

I've been a salesman all my life - from Cub Scouts, to Boy Scouts, to Junior High and High School, and retail sales into adult life. I was proud to be an honest sales person. I sold good products to raise money for good causes. From peanut/cashew crunch, chocolate/peanut cluster turtles, to magazine subscriptions and encyclopedias and everything else you could think of - all door-to-door, over the phone and in-person over-the-counter retail sales.

I came to learn direct sales is an excellent pathway to human communications, the basis for learning to think on one's feet, to express one's self to others and, in doing so, gain confidence in other future endeavors - all invaluable credentials to becoming a well-rounded person.

Beyond that, the most valuable skill I gained was learning how to type in high school (no kidding.) Nowadays that would translate to learning computer skills. Get with the program!

With my wanderlust behind me, I transitioned to professional life - twenty years as a stockbroker and marketer of financial products and services. I served seven of those years as an Arbitrator for The National Association of Securities Dealers, a position I filled with honor and pride.

But my best years began when I joined Lansing's Neogen Corporation in 2005 as Director of Investor Relations. Neogen is a publicly-held company started in 1982 by the brilliant innovator and deal maker Jim Herbert to manufacture products designed to help keep the nation's food supply free of anything that might put people's health at risk of illness or death from something that should never have been there in the first place. For those who know me, this was my calling - telling a great story of a great company engaged in great mission to save the world from itself.

While head of Investor Relations, if you were a shareholder with a question, your call would come to me. If you were a professional investor who wanted to learn more about this company you might like to invest in, your call would come to me, and I would tell you the Neogen Story' - happily and relentlessly. There was nothing I did with more grit and pride.

After thirteen years, I retired from Neogen in 2018, and soon learned of my diagnosis of Idiopathic (origin unknown) Pulmonary Fibrosis, an irreversible lung condition with a prognosis of about five years. So here I am, right on schedule for its logical conclusion and with no regrets.

And while I can in NO WAY take credit for his athletic prowess (other than being his friend and relative, while playing 'catch' or fooling around with illegal fireworks), I am NOT above claiming ! might have contributed to the success of my famous cousin, recent Baseball Hall of Fame Inductee catcher Ted Simmons, so I am proud to be a member of his/our family bloodline. Ted's mother (Bonnie Simmons) was my mother's (Martha Maynard) aunt when they moved north from Tennessee decades ago. Congratulations, Ted! YOU are the real star of this family!

Overall though, what I cared most about in life was wanting to make people laugh. I'm the guy who loved to tell a joke, or the guy with a punchier punch line, or a funnier line for that commercial. I was always trying to be more relevant or clever or witty or just being the 'office wag' co-workers could appreciate as, laugh with, and remember as, "'I'm not a doctor, but I play one at the office." Remember me as the guy who made you laugh.

Back in the Seventies, I sent some cartoon ideas to Tom Wilson, creator of Ziggy, a popular strip of the day. Imagine my thrill when I actually saw those ideas come to life in print in The Big Book of Ziggy, The Michigan State University News comics sections and others.