Tom Dooley Roanoke, VA
			It all started for Dooley more than 25 years ago when the minister of his local church, referencing the Biblical passage Matthew 25, challenged the congregation to give $2 million to be plowed back into the community of Charlotte. “Lo and behold, everybody at the church knocked the doors down trying to get in to give the money,” says Dooley, becoming more animated. “It was a total success. Matthew 25, in my mind, proved right then the fact that it’s not a bad thing to give money away.”
		Dooley was more than impressed and he began formulating a personal plan based on Matthew 25. The passage describes how God gave three men each a certain amount of talents (money), and how God rewarded the two men who used their talents and acquired new talents, but punished the man who hid his talent away in the earth. It’s where the phrase “You reap what you sow” came from. “I’ve been blessed that we always had enough money to do what we wanted to do,” says Dooley. “We’ve always had enough money to live modestly and enjoy life. And I decided that the Virginia Military Institute (VMI, Dooley’s alma mater) gave me that opportunity.” With that in mind, Dooley started an annual scholarship at VMI called — of course — Matthew 25. “I wanted to give money to help a young man or young woman get an education, but I wanted them to do something other than study,” Dooley explains. “For example, you might have a student go to school and study 100 percent of the time and make all As, or you might have a student who doesn’t study 100 percent of the time but has a good time, and he does a lot for other people and he works very hard in athletics or playing in the band or dancing or working in the commissary. He’s a very busy person, but he makes a B-plus. Now, which one would you rather be around? I’d rather have the one who’s busy all the time with just a marginal difference in grades from the guy who doesn’t do anything but study. And I wanted to reward that person in the form of a scholarship.” Toward that end, beginning with his Super Bowl check in 1980, Dooley signed away nearly every NFL paycheck he received for the next 14 years, an amount in excess of $500,000. Dooley is typically unimpressed with his own efforts. “I put hardly any energy in Matthew 25,” he says. “The school handles that. They invest the money and it grows. I don’t have anything to do with it. It’s an anonymous scholarship, and the recipient doesn’t even know who gave him the money.” Dooley says that he’s the main contributor to the scholarship but that others have asked to donate money on a spot basis. He even expanded his efforts in 1996 when he set up another Matthew 25 scholarship fund at the Charlotte Country Day School. Dooley is indifferent about where the money goes, and that is a conscious effort. “(The schools) give me a financial report each year, but I don’t want to know the number of scholarships they give away. I’ve asked not to be told. “I don’t want (the scholarship recipients) to feel indebted. I don’t want somebody to say, ‘Hey, write Tom Dooley a letter and tell him thank you for the scholarship.’ I want that person, in years to come, to say, ‘What was this Matthew 25 scholarship?’ Maybe they’ll try to trace it back and find out and read Matthew 25 for the first time.” Dooley retired from the NFL in 1992, but continues to supply funds to the scholarship with the checks he receives from his work mediating and arbitrating construction-related problems.