Lena Terry remembers seeing her future husband speak from the pulpit for the first time, when she was new to Santa Barbara and searching for a church. Friendship Baptist sounded most inviting, and that’s where she found Keith Terry giving a sermon titled “That Was Then, This Is Now.” That phrase, it turns out, could serve as a tagline for Keith’s entire existence.
Today, from a cramped office adorned with posters of César Chávez, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr., behind that same church on the corner of Cota and Milpas streets, Keith Terry runs a nonprofit called YStrive, which offers educational opportunities and job-training skills for the riskiest of at-risk youth. “We take young people who other programs won’t take or can’t take, and we help them reach their goals with education and employment,” said Terry. In other words, when everybody else has given up on these kids, Terry finds the power to forgive.
It took time for Lena to feel that way again after the night of December 30, 2009, when a 15-year-old attempted to rob her two sons in Palmdale as part of a gang initiation. When her older son spoke back, the robber executed him with a shotgun blast to the head. Lena couldn’t bear the thought of associating with gang members herself, but Keith’s seemingly superhuman power to withhold judgment is quite contagious. Lena has not reprised her role leading a women’s group at YStrive, but she serves on the board and occasionally counsels young women on an individual basis. “When dealing with young people,” she said, “I try to focus on what is, not what was.”