About the Scholarship
The Angeline T. (Terry) DeFiore and Arlene Sandra Abramson Endowed Scholarship Fund offers a scholarship to full-time students enrolled in The Center for Worker Education (CWE). The scholarship fund seeks to support first generation college students who are studying to be teachers specializing in teaching children with learning disabilities.
The scholarship was created to honor and recognize the legacy of Angeline T. (Terry) DeFiore, a graduate of the College of Staten Island and Brooklyn College. To contribute to the Angeline T. (Terry) DeFiore and Arlene Sandra Abramson Endowed Scholarship Fund, please click here. Select the Center for Worker Education as the Designation and please add in the comments section "Contribution to the Angeline T. (Terry) DeFiore and Arlene Sandra Abramson Endowed Scholarship Fund."
About Angelie T. (Terry) DeFiore, Brooklyn College
Terry DeFiore was born in Brooklyn in 1949 into a tight-knit family with over 40 close relatives living within 5 blocks of her grandparents' home. She grew up in East Flatbush and would say that she went "four blocks to the left to grammar school (St. Therese of Lisieux or "Little Flower"), four blocks to the right to high school (Catherine McCauley High School, a small Catholic girls school) and fifteen blocks to college."
Terry had a learning disability that was never diagnosed. She used what she called "tricks" to learn. After she graduated from high school, her father offered to send her to college. She told him that she didn't want him to waste his money or her to waste her time. So she went to work at an ink factory in Brooklyn. She also began to referee girls'/women's basketball and became a sought-after ref for women's college games.
It would be nearly 10 years before Terry was ready to begin her college education. She first attended the College of Staten Island and received an Associates Degree. She then returned to her home borough to attend Brooklyn College, where she completed a BA in Psychology, hoping to work with children.
But life had other big plans for Terry. In 1981, she became the second female housing inspector at the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD). She continued to work at HPD for the next 15 years, rising to be named Deputy Chief of Manhattan Code Enforcement and then Director of Technical Services for the Division of Alternative Management Programs. There she worked with tenant groups and private construction managers to renovate city-owned buildings before leaving to start her own construction management company in 1996. She managed many renovations and plumbing re-pipes of occupied buildings. When the tenants complained of the inconvenience caused by the work, she would tell them that "in six months, this will all be just a bad dream!"
On the morning of 9/11/01, Terry drove through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel only to exit just after the first plane had hit the World Trade Center. She was there when the second plane hit and the first building fell. She walked over the Manhattan Bridge back to her beloved Brooklyn and the home in Ditmas Park West that she shared with her partner, Sandy Abramson. Five years later, Terry developed a degenerative neurological disease, Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP). She dealt with the disease as she had dealt with everything in life – with grit and determination, never asking "why me?" Indeed, Terry continued on, working as a site safety inspector for another three years and traveling as much as she could until she was no longer able.
In 2011, on the first day it was possible for LGBTQ folks to marry, Terry married Sandy, her partner of nearly 20 years at the Brooklyn Municipal Building. For the next two years, even as her abilities slowly slipped away, Terry kept doing whatever she could with much grace. This endowment is a tribute to her courage and determination to meet life on its terms, as she always did.
Last Updated: 02/10/2021 10:09