Taelor and Sydni Scott have paid tribute to their late dad in a heartfelt video posted Monday for the first anniversary of his death. You may want to have some tissues handy
Scott, 49, spent more than 20 years at ESPN, bringing to the network a fresh hip-hop style and memorable catchphrases such as "Boo-Yah!" and "He must be the bus driver 'cause he was takin' him to school." ( Daughters post touching tribute to ESPN's Stuart Scott )
President Barack Obama issued a statement the day Scott died that began, simply, “I will miss Stuart Scott.”
“The fact that he did have this really, really amazing connection with so many people was honestly a shock,” Sydni said, “and as horrible an experience as that was, it sort of did open our eyes to the impact he had on so many people.”
Said Taelor, 20: “I think when it first happened it was kind of jarring to see just how far the reaches of his influence went, to what corners of the globe it went.”
That was a function both of the visibility ESPN provides and Scott’s own outsized personality and pioneering role as a “SportsCenter” anchor willing to risk bringing different language and sensibility to the role.
The question posed by his death was where to go from there to build on his fame and impact. ( Neil Best: Stuart Scott’s daughters, Sydni and Taelor, carrying the torch )
One year ago today, Stuart Scott died after eight years of living with cancer. A few months before his death, the nation met Scott's daughters, Taelor and Syndi, when he brought them on stage during his heartbreaking speech at the ESPYs. On the anniversary if his passing, Taelor and Syndi have published a video love letter to their father, in which they reflect upon a year of living without him and celebrate the strength he gives them, even in death. ( Stuart Scott's daughters honor anniversary of death with video )
It began that night when Sydni took the stage in Los Angeles and has continued with public appearances, interviews and support for The V Foundation’s Stuart Scott Memorial Cancer Research Fund.
ESPN donated $100,000 to get the fund started. It since has surpassed the $2-million mark. The fund’s focus is to grant research money targeting cancers that particularly affect minorities and to minority doctors doing specified research.
“It was something my father was so passionate about; he did it every year, was adamant about it,” Taelor said of The V Foundation. “Now I get to see why, because they do something really special there.”
Taelor is a junior at Barnard and Sydni still is in high school in Connecticut. Balancing the personal aftershocks of their father’s death with their public roles while living their own lives has not been easy. ( Stuart Scott’s daughters, Sydni and Taelor, carrying the torch )
In a video released by Taelor and Sydni Scott, the sisters reminisced about what their dad meant to them. The clip starts off with Stuart Scott's heartfelt speech dedicated to his daughters at the 2014 ESPYs, where he won the Jimmy V Award for Perseverance.
"You two are my heartbeat," Scott said in the speech. "I am standing on this stage here tonight because of you."
The girls then talk about what they have been through since losing their father to cancer in January 2015.
"The hardest part of losing my dad is times when I either thought I saw him somewhere and when there are things I want to tell him," Sydni Scott said in the video. ( See Stuart Scott's Daughters' Heartfelt Tribute to Their Dad a Year After His Death )
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