A Foundation for Success: Remembering Missy Wells

A legend at Baylor, Missy Yeary Wells (‘88) served as director of Student Foundation from 1989 to 1997. Beloved by everyone who knew her, Missy’s death at 59 on February 4, 2025, was sudden and unexpected. Her husband Steve (’90, M.Div. ’97, D.Min. ‘03), a regent at Baylor and pastor at South Main Baptist Church in Houston, hoped to have many more years with the woman he met and fell in love with in 1989 when he walked into the office of Student Foundation to pick up an application and saw her hanging a sign. “She looked like she needed help,” he says, “so I offered to lend a hand.” 

When it was founded in 1969, Student Foundation had 13 members tasked with a novel goal: students serving students. “The important question is not what Student Foundation does, but why they do it,” says Steve, who became a member during his senior year. “The university believed that the world needs leaders and that the way you develop leaders is by giving them responsibility and letting them lead.” 

Funding scholarships has always been a big part of Student Foundation’s mission, so when a new crop of students was selected each year they were given instructions to reach out to donors, drive to the city where they lived if necessary, and make their appeal in person. The stakes were high since there was always a certain number of students who needed scholarships in order to continue their education at Baylor. The University also trusted members of Student Foundation to pore over the applications themselves to determine who was deserving of the scholarship money they helped to raise. That’s not the way it’s done at most universities, where boards and administrators make those decisions. But remember: Baylor was interested in building leaders, and effective leaders understand the importance of accountability. 

Student Foundation was a calling for Missy, who loved Baylor and was committed to helping students develop the kind of real-world leadership skills they’d need after graduation. “She had a gift for helping people develop confidence and problem-solving skills,” says Steve, who notes that she doubled the size of the endowment for scholarships during her tenure as director of Student Foundation. “Everything she did was pretty impressive.”

Melissa Kaye Yeary was born into Baptist royalty in 1966, and grew up in Coral Gables, Florida, where her father, Dan Yeary, was pastor at University Baptist Church. With a degree in interior design from Baylor–where she became president of Pi Beta Phi and was crowned homecoming queen her senior year–she moved back to Florida and landed a job at a corporate design firm in Miami, but she didn’t really like the work. To his credit, her father told her, “Honey, if you’re not happy, you don’t have to keep doing this.” They say that timing is everything, and in this case the timing couldn’t have been better. As it turned out, the director of Student Foundation had just moved on, and when the university reached out to Missy, she was more than happy to fill the position. As the Foundation’s longest-serving director, she was convinced that students have the power to change the world. 

Dr. Todd D. Still, Truett Theological Seminary dean, met Missy in the fall of 1984 when they were freshmen at Baylor. “When she became director of Student Foundation, which had historically been staffed by student volunteers, she poured all of her energy, which eclipsed that of anyone else I knew, into her job, always looking for ways to promote Baylor, to connect students to Baylor, and to create alumni who will ultimately be supportive of the University,” he says. “More than anything else, Missy knew full well that sometimes the very best thing we can do is just show up, and when members of Student Foundation showed up in their distinctive green and white polos, you knew that hospitality, generosity, and magnanimity would show up, too.”

Being selected as a Student Foundation member is an honor for 100 juniors and seniors chosen annually, while a steering committee made up of co-presidents and co-chairs oversees three committees: alumni relations, campus promotions, and student recruitment. Aside from recruiting qualified students and raising scholarship funds, Student Foundation provides entertainment with games, photo opportunities, and a worship service after All-University Thanksgiving, a longstanding tradition at Baylor. It also sponsors a VIP section that includes access to an alumni tailgate during homecoming, and takes part in the largest and oldest collegiate homecoming parade in the country, an extravaganza that features marching bands and horse-drawn carriages and wagons.

Fundraising initiatives include the Bearathon, known as “The Toughest Half Marathon in Texas,” and the Sic ‘Em 6K. Part of each participant’s registration is donated to the Student Foundation scholarship fund. More than 1,800 people registered for the event this year, which challenges runners with steep hills and tough terrain, generating over $25,000 for student scholarships.

When Steve met his wife in 1989, the Student Foundation had offices on the first floor of a white wood-framed house on Eighth Street. “A men’s service club called the Baylor Chamber of Commerce was upstairs,” Steve says. “When a fire broke out and the house burned down, Baylor found a ‘temporary’ home for Student Foundation in a small building across the street from the Hankamer School of Business.” Finally, after 35 years of having offices in eight different buildings on campus, Student Foundation got a permanent home in 2006 thanks to a generous donation from Foundation alum and former CEO of Publix Super Markets Ed Crenshaw (’73) and his wife, Denise. The Ed Crenshaw Student Foundation Center not only has ample space for all three committees, but also includes a Great Room, which serves as a central meeting and special events space.

Greg Looser (’91, JD ’94) practices law in Houston, but as president of Student Foundation during his senior year at Baylor, he worked closely with Missy, helping to create a slogan for the group’s fundraising efforts: “Change the life of a student today.” What he loved about Student Foundation was that it brought together a group of people united by a common bond—love for Baylor and love for the student body. “It gave us an opportunity to show God’s love to others. It might be while we were conducting campus tours or raising money for scholarships, but ultimately it was all about service to students.”

Missy Wells dedicated her life to serving others, mentoring hundreds of students as director of Student Foundation, and teaching Sunday school at South Main Baptist Church in Houston, where she made it her mission to let children as young as two know that God loves them. When he thinks of Missy, Greg is reminded of scripture. “The first great commandment is, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind,’” he says. “The second great commandment is, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ If anyone embodied these two commandments, it was Missy.”

Lifelong friend Todd Still thinks that Missy’s legacy will be that she encouraged students to lean into the Baylor experience, to enjoy what she had enjoyed, and to give back to the place that had given so much to her. 

In addition to Steve, her husband of 34 years, Missy is survived by her daughter Rachel Lawrence and her husband Blake, her sons Ben and Joshua, and three grandchildren: Fischer, Lila, and Shepherd Lawrence. All three of her children are sixth-generation Baylor grads.