Keya Graves, 2000 Scholar, dies of cancer
Detroit intern believed everyone had a story to tell

By Colleen Fitzpatrick
Chips Quinn Writing Coach

Posted: June 27, 2003

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Keya Graves

Keya Graves, a Chips Quinn Scholar who learned early in her journalism career the value of seeking out each person's unique story, died June 23 at her home in Media, Pa., after a long battle with cancer. She was 26.

As a Scholar, she was assigned to The Detroit News in Summer 2000.

Born Oct. 30, 1976, in Spartanburg, S.C., Keya was an infant when she moved with her parents, Kim and Donna Graves, to the Philadelphia area.

She took to writing from the very start, Donna Graves said. “She always loved to write. I have so many journals of hers, which she's been keeping ever since she was little.”

Entering Howard University in Washington, D.C., in 1996, Keya jumped into the world of journalism.

She joined the school’s chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, serving as its historian and then president. She also was a member of the National Association of Black Journalists. She wrote for a local paper and for her campus newspaper, The Hilltop.

“She got involved in things immediately,” said Barbara A. Hines, associate professor at Howard and then the journalism department's chairman. “She was one of those stars. It’s very unusual for freshmen to get bylines, but Keya was getting them.”

During her sophomore year, Keya became one of 7,400 or so people diagnosed each year in the United States with Hodgkin’s disease, a cancer of the lymphatic system.

“To most people those numbers do not mean anything, but to me they all have a face and a story,” she once wrote.

The cancer was arrested, and Keya carried on with journalism. She was a research assistant with Channel 7, the ABC affiliate in Washington, D.C., and spent a Summer at the Delaware County Daily Times in Primos, Pa. There, she wrote a series on the lives of senior citizens, through the lens of health and love.

Keya came to the Chips Quinn Scholars Program by way of Sue Burzynski, associate editor of The Detroit News. The two met at a Howard job fair.

“I was impressed with how personable she was,” Burzynski said. “She was excited about writing. Her cover letter said: ‘I believe that everyone has a story to be unwrapped.’ ”

Keya was assigned to The News’ Oakland County bureau, where she handled a range of stories, from suburban sprawl, to the world-renowned Port Huron-to-Mackinac boat racing, to obituaries.

She had the qualities that are key to excelling as a journalist -- curiosity, compassion and an extraordinary openness to ideas and life.

Perhaps most important, she knew how to get things from people.

Once, apparently without her professors' knowledge, Keya secured a grant from SPJ headquarters to set up an exchange between some Howard students and students at a D.C. high school to discuss writing.

“I was stunned,” Hines said. “SPJ made the check out to her personally. The chapter administrator at that time didn’t even know, and didn’t even realize that the kids had done that. I read about it in Quill, and I thought, ‘How nice.’ ”

Keya pursued her work, but not at the expense of other interests -- or of having a good time.

Chips Quinn alum Jennifer Sinco Kelleher recalled how the two had become fast friends in Detroit.

“From salsa dancing to eating Middle Eastern cuisine, Keya and I were never bored," Kelleher wrote. “We danced in clubs as if we were the only people in the room. We roamed around Detroit's diverse neighborhoods. With a wide grin and bright eyes, Keya was always willing to experience something new.”

“Her excitement for life always amazed me,” said Ebony Filer, also a News Chipster at the time. “She was just a ball of energy, bouncing through life and having fun doing it.”

Keya did not talk much with her new friends about her first go-around with cancer .

“When I knew her, she had already battled the disease once, yet rarely ever made mention of it,” News reporter Joe Menard said. “Instead, she lived each day to the fullest with a sense of pride at having been given a second chance at life.”

Indeed, things that might have bothered other people didn't seem to upset Keya. Rather than see her Summer digs in Detroit as small and forlorn, she was tickled to have an apartment to herself for the first time.

Mornings before heading to work, she'd chat up anyone found breakfasting in the greasy ground-floor restaurant, her full-throttle laugh filling the place.

At the same time, style mattered to Keya. She enjoyed designing and sewing clothes. Later, while living at home, she formed a small clothing company called Nappaweda Designs. A shop in Philadelphia bought her creations, Donna Graves said.

Keya's fashion sense once inspired News columnist Laura Berman to write about one aspect of the trend toward casual attire in the workplace -- women wearing open-toe shoes.

Berman wrote: “Keya Graves, a senior at Howard University who is perhaps The News’ most stylish intern, never showed her feet in the office at previous Summer jobs. ‘I wouldn’t wear sandals the way I do now,’ said Keya, slipping her black slides on and off.”

Keya was selected for a second Chips Quinn internship in Spring 2001. But by then the cancer had resumed its ugly crawl, and she was unable to participate.

“I love my Chips Quinn family, and (am) glad to hear you are praying for me,” she wrote to Director Karen Catone during that time.

“And that family loved her,” said John C. Quinn, who with his wife, Loie, founded the program. Keya “brought to our activities the enthusiasm of a young journalist and the delight of a caring colleague. We all shall miss her and keep her and her family in our thoughts and prayers,” Quinn said.

Though illness slowed her studies and doctors ordered her to curtail stressful activities, Keya was determined to finish her coursework at Howard. She chipped away at her credits, popping onto campus from time to time, a cheerful red bandanna wrapped around her hair-ravaged head.

Her persistence paid off. On May 10, 2003, Keya walked with some help across the stage during Howard's commencement to receive her bachelor’s degree in journalism.

“Everyone cheered for her; it was a very moving moment,” Hines said. “But again, that was Keya’s determination. She wanted that degree from Howard University.”

Keya harbored another, more personal dream. She longed one day to be married and to have children. When her cancer reappeared, doctors told her that the treatments could mean she would never bear children.

Those words seared the young woman who had relished caring for -- and honing her leadership skills on -- her four younger siblings.

“Ever since I was a little girl I had day-dreamed about being a mother,” she wrote in late 2001. “I even have names picked out for my babies. I already have books autographed for my unborn child. So hearing these words pierced my heart.”

Keya underwent a stem-cell transplant and had considered a bone-marrow transplant.

Complications from her treatment required periodic stays in the hospital, according to her aunt, Janice Lyons. The last visit occurred three days before she died.

A heart specialist wanted to admit her, Lyons said. But Keya declined, deciding to seek a second opinion.

“I think she was just tired,” Lyons said. “They were talking about doing heart surgery. She was just tired. She hated going to the hospital.”

Lyons said the family will miss Keya’s effervescence. Though she was slender and barely taller than 5 feet, she could out-spark even the fireflies that pack a dark July sky.

“She poured sunshine over everybody who knew her,” Donna Graves said.

Lyons said, “She was just a bubbly person, always caring about everybody else. Even when she was in a lot of pain, you’d never know it because she was putting her needs behind others’.”

That sensitivity was evident to The News’ Burzynski as she listened during that initial interview to the emerging journalist describe her coverage of a story about the AIDS quilt.

“She had been nervous about talking to folks who had lost loved ones,” Burzynski said. “But in the end, she realized they wanted to share the love they'd had for the people who had passed away and were simply waiting for the right person to tell their stories to.”

Keya had said: “I realized how powerful a journalist could be when they listened to a story being told.”

“I'm only sorry Keya's story ended so soon,” Burzynski said.

Besides her parents, she leaves three sisters, Kimberly, 23, Kira, 14, and Kayla, 11; a brother, Scotty; 21; grandparents Thomas and Bertha Holloman and Gloria Graves; two nephews and one niece; and several aunts, uncles and cousins.

Services were at the First African Baptist Church in Sharon Hill, Pa., where Keya was a congregant. Burial was in Arlington Cemetery in Drexel Hill, Pa.

Howard University plans to engrave an inner-circle brick in Keya's memory in front of Howard Hall.

The Graves family plans to set up a foundation in Keya's name, dedicated to people with cancer. Details are being worked out. The Graves family lives at 2238 East Deerfield Drive, Media, PA 19063.

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