About Me

Profile

About: My name is Fred Tally-Foos. Although my family and I moved to the Texas hill-country a short three years after I took my first invigorating breath of mountain air, I claim that I am from Estes Park, Colorado. My little three-year old body protested our move by having six nosebleeds on our 13-hour drive to Texas. This stunt didn’t change my parents’ minds about moving, and, luckily, I have since grown to appreciate and love the hill-country, though maybe not quite as much as the Rocky Mountains.

My interests span almost as many topics as the number of days I’ve lived, because I learn something new and interesting each day. Because of this I’ve considered just about every major in the College of Liberal Arts and a few outside of it, and am now happily planning on keeping it simple with my Plan II Honors major.

I am now in my third year at the University of Texas, and I never thought I could enjoy school this much. Every day I get to learn new things and commit to bettering myself. I’ve worked as a reporter and the Social Media director at The Daily Texan. I am serving my third year on the Plan II Students’ Association officer board. I acted in a student written and directed play my freshman fall, co-directed one in the spring and am now directing a play. I began bouldering to keep in shape and relieve stress and have fallen in love with the sport. I’ve now taken on Texas 4000 and I can’t wait for the experiences that will come with it. My interests are constantly evolving, and I only hope that never stops!

Why I Ride

I ride for Memaw. My mother’s mother was my Memaw, and I miss her every day. On the second Wednesday of February 2012 she was diagnosed with lung cancer and on March 22, 2012 she passed away with her family around her, holding her hand, and wishing her well. The speed with which cancer took the most caring, inspiring, and quietly powerful woman I have known out of my life was and still is nearly impossible for me to grasp. This is especially true because she never let her family see a bit of the pain or struggle she felt. In the time she was fighting cancer, she hosted holidays, watched the sun set from her porch with her grandchildren, and, a week before she passed, smiled as she listened to me excitedly talk about how unbelievably cool my visit to UT was.

Recently, I was at her home to read on the porch, and I looked through her book collection. I realized that I had never once discussed literature with her. She had a trove of books, she never stopped reading, and I missed my opportunity to enjoy such a simple pleasure with my Memaw as talking about stories. I missed this opportunity because I did not predict I would lose her to cancer. I ride to honor Memaw. By making this ride I can put an action to my feelings and, in a way, say thank you for the ways she helped me become me.

My second dedication is to my high school theatre teacher’s husband, Roy Burney. Though I never personally met Roy, he has impacted me heavily. He worked at my high school and, along with my teachers, built the theatre program in which I thrived. He passed away because of pancreatic cancer before I met him, but his memory and his impact have not been lost. In the spring of my senior year, I, along with four other students, received scholarships in his memory. Since his passing, his loved ones have maintained the Roy Burney Memorial Scholarship. It has grown to the point where roughly 15,000 dollars are distributed in his memory to students entering college from my high school each year.

I dedicate my ride to him because his story proves that though cancer can take a life, it does not have to rob a person of their impact. Until cancer has been cured, we must follow this example and do our best to rob cancer of its impact. For Roy Burney, I ride to bring education about healthy living and to raise money for a cure. By riding, I hope to give back and, in some small way, pay the gift of his impact forward.


This disease exists, and it touches too many. I ride for those I know, and I ride for those I will never have the chance to know. I ride because I have hope that one day we won’t have to.