I will be conducting several pilot programs in Chicago suburban schools called A Dream Achieved (ADA). ADA is a personal strategy plan with some entrepreneurial flavor that targets high school Juniors and Seniors. I also will be conducting training’s for educators at the Network Room, located in South Holland, IL.
For Wendell Mosby, climbing the ladder of success can only be done one way: through work, determination and
people
by SHEILA COLLINS
Iowa State Daily Staff Writer
December 11, 1997
From “Wimp wear” to college, 19-year-old Wendell Mosby has found the key to success.
Mosby was living in Chicago Heights, Ill., where he saw the rough lives people in his neighborhood were living.
He said when he was young, he decided he wanted to make a difference. Mosby said when he was young, his parents couldn’t afford the brand name clothes his friends had. He said he used to go to a local store and have them embroider his nickname “wimp” into his clothes. The idea of his own clothing line began to materialize and Mosby created “Wimp wear” in 1992.
Mosby said while he was deciding what to do with his future after high school, his girlfriend had a miscarriage when she was five months pregnant the day before his graduation. ”That made me decide that I had nothing to lose, and I decided to jump right into my future,” Mosby said. “That is still my motivation now; it’s just a dog-eat-dog world.”
In the fall of 1995, Mosby said he took his graduation money and purchased T-shirts at wholesale and decided to introduce “Wimp wear” to the public. At this point Mosby said he knew he wanted to break into the fashion industry.
Mosby’s home economics teacher from high school had a daughter in textiles and clothing at ISU. Mosby said she encouraged him to apply because she felt he had talent. ”My mom taught me to wash, cook, clean and sew by the time I was 10 so I wouldn’t have to depend on anyone to take care of me,” Mosby said.
Mosby said he didn’t think he would be accepted to a division one school because of his low ACT score.
When ISU accepted him, he said he didn’t know how he would pay for it– but he knew he had to go. Mosby, now a sophomore in clothing and textiles, said he worked two jobs his freshman year to pay for school. He also took out an unsubsidized loan, an emergency Martin Luther King Loan and a Perkins loan. ”When I came to Iowa State, I didn’t know anybody except the people I met over the summer in the George Washington Carver program,” Mosby said.
Mosby said he was the only minority person on his floor, and he moved in with a farmer from Monroe. ”I’d never been close friends with a white man until coming here; now some of my best friends are white and from small towns,” Mosby said. Mosby said the key to getting along was simply sitting down and talking to one another right away to dispel any bad feelings or misunderstandings. He said he learned a great deal from his roommate, and his roommate learned many things from him. Mosby added that he thinks it is important to try to understand one another and learn about places and people that are unfamiliar.
“I even went home for Thanksgiving to Monroe with my roommate; it was really cool, and I will go back there again,” Mosby said. Mosby has since moved out of his old room and is the only African American resident advisor in RCA. However, he and his former roommate are still close and talk to one another often. ”I’m from a town of about 2,300 people, and Wendell and I were about as far off as you can get in background,” said Jonathan Wilson, Mosby’s former roommate.. Wilson, a freshman in sociology, said he learned his work ethic and improved study habits from Mosby.
Currently, Mosby said he has around 30 designs for “Wimp wear” and he is using his college time to make connections for his future. ”I’m just building the foundations now — someday “Wimp wear” will be a household name,” Mosby said. With a distinct lack of money due to his student status, Mosby said he is limited to producing his merchandise in the spring and winter for promoting his clothes. ”I’ve been donating shirts to various organizations to get my name out. I’ve given away about 50 shirts since I started,” he said.
Mosby has high hopes for the future of “Wimp wear.” He hopes to have his line of clothing licensed, start a foundation for at-risk pregnant women and eventually become mayor of his home town of Chicago Heights.
“It’s never too early to start working toward your goals; the world can be as big as you want but as small as your neighborhood,” he said.
To pay the bills, many Iowa State students work a typical minimum-wage job, but one student has taken a different approach — marketing his own line of clothing.
Wendell Mosby, a freshman double majoring in fashion design and production from Chicago Heights, Ill., created his own line of clothing when he was a freshman in high school.
It began, he said, when fellow classmates told him he looked like the “Fresh Prince,” a character from the television show “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.”
While sitting in class one day, Mosby said a friend told him the real Fresh Prince had his own line of clothing, called Willy Wear. His friend suggested Mosby come out with his own line.
That’s the story of Wimp Wear, Mosby’s apparel.
During the summer before his sophomore year in high school, Mosby brainstormed.
“I went to Kmart because a lot of my friends wouldn’t shop there, and I knew that I could get something that they have never seen before,” he said.
Mosby said he bought three outfits and had his brand name embroidered on them.
Wimp Wear is Mosby’s nickname.
When he went back to high school that fall, Mosby said his new clothes attracted a lot of attention.
“Everybody was like ‘Man, what’s that?’ They thought I had my own clothes line, and that is how it all started,” Mosby said.
From that point, Mosby began printing T-shirts, sweat pants, hats and jackets with “Wimp” on them.
Mosby said being different paid off.
Through his junior year in high school, Mosby continued to produce his line of clothing. His classmates bought the Wimp Wear.
In November of his senior year, Mosby said he decided to take his Wimp Wear to college.
“It hit me. Somebody told me that if I could make money off a hobby, then it was a job, and that is when I thought more about the future scope of Wimp Wear,” he said.
Mosby applied to Iowa State because his home economics teacher said ISU had a good textiles and clothing program.
“[Iowa State] was the first college that I looked at, and the only one that I looked at,” he said.
When Mosby came to ISU, he brought Wimp Wear with him.
Mosby already has had a few opportunities to promote his threads. He had a booth set up at the Big Eight Conference on Black Student Government and has given a presentation in his Management 310 class, an entrepreneurship course.
Mosby said he is confident Wimp Wear will be successful in Ames.
ETHOS MAGAZINE
Though they haven’t been as financially blessed as Getty, ISU students Matthew Goodman, JIm Stark, Wendell Mosby, and Ryan Kinart are entrepreneurs in their own right, constantly giving birth to new ideas, shunning conformity, lusting after efficiency, and ultimately trying to find an untapped market at Iowa State. Some of them have discoverd that market. Others have struggled financially, barely breaking even. All four seem to view any present success in terms of experience rather than dollar signs. This is the story of the neighbor you don’t see because he or she is alwyas working. This is the reason John or James or Jessica is drving that 1999 Chevy Tahoe you’ve been salivating over. This could be your story.
Wendell Mosby, creator of “Wimp Phations” clothing line
Wendell Mosby, senior in apparel merchandising, design and production, isn’t a wimp, although his clothing line bears the name “Wimp Phations.” He chose the name for his trademark because of his childhood epithet -wimp. Maybe it was because he was an only child and gave up ‘boy stuff,” a.k.a. sports, for cooking, cleaning, and building so other children biittled him. He’s a big boy now and has advice for those people who think he’s too big for his britches or that his clothing line will fail: “Picture me rollin’,” he says with a characteristics snicker. He borrows the line from his late inspiration: Tupac Shakur.
To the cursious, “Picture me rollin’” is synonymous wiht “Watch me make bank,” Mosby says in a slick voice. His smooth, jiggy demeanor resmebels Will Smith’s as he pace the floor of his dorm room, occasionally stooping to pick up an item of clothing that has been put in the wrong spot in haste. He’s a busy man.
As a high school freshman in Chicago Heights, IL., Mosby created his own clothing line: “Wimp Wear.” Acquaintance guffawed when he brought his wares bearing his nickname to school his sophomore year. His inaugural line consisted of jackets and jeans he bought on layaway at K-Mart. He emblazoned the “Wimp” name with recognizable icons, such as reefer leaves and dice. “Snoop and Dre was in at the time and so was the chronic. I thought, ‘I’ll make some quick money by putting blunt leave or some dice on the clothes,’” he says.
The young entrepreneur misread his market. He was met mostly with discouraging words. But Mosby was not going down like that. To make a point, he broadened his clothing line, printing T-Shirts, sweat pants, hats, and jackets bearing the “Wimp” logo.
Mosby decided to take his clothing line with him to Iowa State after tragedy struck one day before he was to graduate high school. His girlfriend at the time, who was five-months pregnant, miscarried.
“That made me decide that I had nothing to lose, and I decided to jump right into my future,” Mosby told the Iowa State Daily in December 1997. “That is still my motivation now; it’s just a dog-eat-dog world.’
It was two articles about “Wimp Wear” appearing in the Daily his freshman and sophomore years that gave him notoriety. That and the fact that he involved himself in everything he could fit comfortably within his schedule. Now, he’s a Government of the Student Body senator for the College of Family and Consumer Sciences. He’s a teaching assistant, a peer mentor, a student admissions representative, a member of ISU’s strategic planning committee, and he moonlights at Tazzles.
“My overall goal for me at Iowa State is to become immortal,” he says frankly. He wants to be the next prominent minority figure at ISU. “I’m gonna lave a mark so big, they’re gonna have to name building after me.”
Though “Wimp Phations” has not become the next Tommy Hilfiger or Abercrombie and Fitch at ISU, Mosby shrugs it off. He is thinking longevity. He does not want “Wimp Wear” positioned beside other lines in a popularity contest. “I want to be like Ralph Lauren,” he says. ”He’s been in the business for at least thirty-some years.” Mosby takes the fact that “Wimp Wear” has not turned a profit in stride. His plan to make it big in the future sounds like the first lesson in Economics 101: regulate a supply to create a big demand.
Now he’s “planting seeds” for the future sales by donating several articles of his clothing as door prizes and allowing his disc
jockey friends to give out “Wimp Wear” clothing during their KURE radio shows. To him, everyone is a potential customer. It is not the money that matters the most at this point. “It’s name-brand recognition,” he says. His bedroom mirror reads: “It’s your world,” another Tupac-inspired quote. To talk to Mosby, you would think he had his secured by the tail.
His first job was dealing crack cocaine on the streets of Chicago. His picture of the world included poverty and drive-by shootings. Yet for some reason, Wendell Mosby decided to stop being part of the problem and became part of the solution.
Maybe it was his mother, who told him as a boy that he was special. Maybe it was Iowa State University, which took a chance on a poor kid with mediocre grades.
Maybe it was his dream of running his own clothing line.
It might have been all the setbacks in between, which gave him the guts to keep going. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream for the United States once seemed out of reach to Mosby.
Today, at 25, he personifies the civil rights leader’s legacy. Part of the credit goes to his life in Iowa, a mostly white state. It was here that he started to draw a life blueprint. Mosby earned a diploma more than two years ago. This month, he is starting a $25,000 scholarship program at ISU for poor students, like he once was.
***
The boys in Mosby’s family often left home for jail, not college. He became a father while still a boy himself. The odds stacked up. But pretty soon doors began to open. His grandmother taught him to sew. As a teenager, he parlayed the skill into an amateur clothing business.
He bought sweatshirts from Kmart and sewed on a logo: Wimpwear. The brand was named for “Wimp,” a childhood nickname Mosby picked up for being small and fair-skinned. When Mosby was a senior in high school, his home economics teacher took notice. She encouraged him to apply at ISU, where her daughter studied textiles and clothing. With a 2.7 grade-point average and an ACT score of 15, Mosby was accepted.
“That completely changed my whole mentality in life and where I was going in the world,” Mosby said. Scholarships helped Mosby financially, but college was a rude awakening. He struggled with schoolwork. He felt out of place on a campus with so many white faces.
Mosby was tempted to go home. At his darkest moments, he called his mother. He listened to Shakur.
He also thought about his purpose. While his student counterparts spent Friday nights at parties, Mosby sat alone in his dormitory room. ”I started to realize that being in school is bigger than me,” he said. “Somebody fought for me to do this.”
Mosby revived Wimpwear. He tended bars in Campustown, which introduced him to new friends – and customers.
He found a political voice in student government. The ISU president knew his name. Pretty soon Iowa felt like home. Here, being different became an advantage. ”He always talked about what he was going to do for society,”
said Mary Lynn Damhorst, an associate professor of textiles and clothing.
Then a problem surfaced back home.
***
The doctors told Mosby’s mother she had AIDS.
Her health deteriorated fast. She lost her memory, sight and speech all in one week, Mosby said. She died in December 2000, a semester before her son’s graduation.
Mosby had lost friends to gunfire and suicide. He wasn’t prepared to lose his mother. ”I was truly out to sea for the first time,” he said. Mosby went through the motions his last semester of school. Graduation was bittersweet. He was the first in his family to earn a college degree, but the person who had coached him through wasn’t there to see it.
Mosby stayed in Ames, but his life purpose seemed to fade. He spent some nights drunk. He couldn’t find a full-time job that he wanted.
“I just kind of lost that sense of passion for everything,” Mosby said. Then he found another source of strength – in his 6-year-old son, Tyrone. The boy was visiting his father in Ames when it dawned on Mosby:
“I can’t let him down,” he said. “That’s my purpose.”
***
Mosby is back in Chicago today, where he juggles art school, Wimpwear and a spot on his son’s school board. He also mentors troubled children.
Now he’s adding another role: Youngest ISU alumnus to endow a scholarship. It’s a pledge he hopes to fulfill with the help of others.
The program bears the name of his mother, Terri Lynn Mosby.
Mosby decided not to limit the money to black students because ”my mom would not want it that way,” he said. “She believed if you see someone slugging and chugging, you push them along.” Mosby isn’t sure where life will take him from here. He hopes it’s back to Iowa, where things began to turn around for him.
His list of role models now include King.
His picture of the world includes hope.
And his purpose includes helping others see they have control of their destiny.
“This is my defining moment,” he said.
BY ESTABLISHING A SCHOLARSHIP IN
HER HONOR
July/2004 VISION© Magazine
Wendell Mosby (FCS ’01) has experienced more in 26 years than most people do in a lifetime. He witnessed poverty and violence at a young age. Started a clothing company when he was 14. Became a father at 19. And watched his mother die when he was 22.
Now at age 26, Mosby has returned to his hometown of Chicago Heights, Ill. He has more than his share of life stories to tell, and he views each one as an important learning experience. He is still managing his clothing company (now in business for 11 years), parenting an active 7-year-old son, attending the Illinois Institute of Art (he will graduate in December), and enjoying frequent visits to Ames.
It’s easy for Mosby to reflect on his time at Iowa State University – an experience that started out a bit bumpy, but proved to be one of the best things that ever happened to him. “I was fortunate to have the support of many people, and I will never forget that,” Mosby says. “Iowa State and the Ames community have been very good to me.”
In 1996 as a high school senior, Wendell Mosby first became aware of Iowa State University based on conversations with his home economics teacher. He had an interest in the clothing industry and wanted to study apparel design and production. Mosby applied to ISU and was accepted without ever visiting the campus. He was thrilled with the opportunity and felt on top of the world.
Once on campus, Mosby began experiencing some difficulties. He felt homesick. He missed his son and mother. He had a hard time in his classes. He felt out of place in his new environment , – and he told his mother he wanted to come home.
Terri Lynn Mosby was a loving mother who faced many adversities in her life. Even though she never attended college, she was a champion of higher education. Terri told her son if he stayed in school he would achieve great things at Iowa State. Terri’s encouragement worked, and things began to improve. By the time Mosby was a junior, Terri had visited Ames several times to meet his friends and talk with his professors. She attended VEISHEA and ate cherry pies with FCS Dean Bev Crabtree (Ph.D. ’65). During many of these visits, Terri brought Mosby’s son, Tyrone, so he could spend time with his dad.
Mosby became involved on campus and received several honors and awards. He was a Government of Student Body senator, George Washington Carver scholar, campus tour guide, FCS freshman peer mentor, teacher’s assistant for Textiles and Clothing 165, and ISU Strategic Planning Committee member. He was nominated for student employee of the year in 1999.
In the late months of 2000, Wendell was looking forward to his graduation the following spring. But then, Mosby’s world took a sudden jolt. His mother died of complications from the HIV virus on Dec. 1. Through his grief, Mosby was even more determined to graduate and make his mother proud. In May of 2001, Mosby received his bachelor’s degree in apparel merchandising, design and production.
Following graduation, Wendell worked several jobs in Ames while he continued managing and building his clothing company, Wimp Wear Phations (WIMP standsfor “Wisdom is Misunderstood Power”). He became active in the Ames community and involved with the ISU Alumni Association.
Because Mosby had been helped financially with several college scholarships, he learned firsthand the direct impact that private support can make. Just before his graduation from ISU, he decided to do something to help other students in need. He had saved a small amount of money from his various jobs, so he was able to make a $250 contribution to support scholarship programs in the College of Family and Consumer Sciences. “It felt good to give something back to Iowa State and knowing that I could help other students in my same situation,” Mosby said. “I knew I wanted to give more in the future and needed to think about what was right for me.”
Last year, Mosby realized the perfect giving opportunity for him. With a $25,000 pledge, he established the Terri Lynn Mosby Memorial Scholarship. “This opportunity encompasses everything I wanted to do,” Mosby said. “I was able to help incoming freshmen coping with financial burdens, create a lasting tribute to my mother, and thank her publicly for the impact she made on my life.”
About the Writer | Ann Wilson is the director of communications for the ISU Foundation.
July/2004 VISION© Magazine