Chapel Hill’s Ted Seagroves, a pal to Roy Williams, reached out to all

Not long after Ted Seagroves died, his friend Henry Smith was getting gas at a Chapel Hill filling station. He must have looked a bit long in the face, as the attendant asked how he was doing. Smith told him he’d just lost an old friend.

“Who?” the attendant asked.

“Ted Seagroves,” Smith replied.

“So did I,” the attendant said.

Smith was not at all surprised. It turned out Seagroves had long frequented that gas station, and had, as was his way, made a point of befriending everyone who worked there.

It seems to his loved ones that just about everyone in Chapel Hill knew Seagroves, whether as a longtime insurance salesman, charity organizer, avid golfer at the Chapel Hill Country Club, or as unofficial “bodyguard” to his neighbor and best friend, Carolina men’s basketball coach Roy Williams.

Seagroves, 68, died during the holidays. He fought pancreatic cancer longer than his doctors had originally expected, lasting more than two years with an illness that often takes its victims within months.

His loved ones struggle to articulate just what about him made his loss particularly hard to bear for so many people – more than 1,000 people came to his memorial service. They simply repeat what a wonderful man he was to have in their lives.

“We say he packed two days into one day his entire life,” said his daughter, Amy Seagroves Benton. “He enjoyed every minute of it, I don’t care if it was mowing the grass.”

Born and raised in Durham, Seagroves was the son of a police officer who went on to become chief. After high school Seagroves enlisted in the U.S. Army, marrying in the midst of his service.

He proposed to Judi Seagroves, a childhood friend, without a ring to offer. On their honeymoon he gave her a ring from a gumball machine. He was 21, she was 17.

After the war, he and his family settled back in Durham. At the suggestion of a friend, he tried his hand at selling insurance for Nationwide in 1972. It proved a good fit. He loved talking to people and believed strongly that the services he was providing were essential to anyone with anything to lose.

“He loved it. He loved it. He would have never retired. It was being with people. It was helping people,” his wife said.

Smith, like many, first got to know Seagroves as an insurance agent, but they soon became friends. He appreciated Seagroves’ hands-on approach, how he was always willing to visit in person. “It wasn’t like he was in the business for the money. He was in it to take care of the people he dealt with,” Smith said.

Those early years were lean years, however, and Seagroves supplemented his family’s income by maintaining a newspaper route.

When the opportunity arose in 1974 to purchase the Chapel Hill Nationwide agency, he jumped at the chance. From that point on, friends and family say, he was a fixture in Chapel Hill, throwing himself into the community.

Helper for good causes

Seagroves was a member of the Jaycees, the civic organization where young business people work on projects to bolster their communities and gain leadership experience. The North Carolina Jaycee Burn Center at UNC was a favorite cause for Seagroves. His group put on everything from haunted houses to golf outings to raise funds.

Whenever Seagroves knew of a charitable event, he was quick to rally his friends and family. Following his diagnosis he spoke at Williams’ “Fast Break Against Cancer” breakfast at the Smith Center, and just last year he spoke at a local Purple Stride Walk, a fundraiser for pancreatic cancer.

“He was like a pied piper,” his wife said with a chuckle. “He just had that way about him.”

Enduring friendship

Seagroves’ family jokes that it helped that he was often oblivious to the inner workings of Division I basketball recruitment, otherwise Williams might not have asked him to tag along so much. They spent many hours together watching high school basketball games throughout the country. The two enjoyed a friendship based on their personalities rather than positions in life. Seagroves was known for that – he was just as quick to stroll into the kitchen at his country club to say hello to the staff as he was to shake hands with basketball legends.

Williams appreciated not only Seagroves’ giving nature, but his commitment to keeping their relationship authentic. Seagroves spoke his mind against Williams when needed – even when the Tar Heels were on a winning streak.

“If we’re winning games, very few people would do that. I loved the truthfulness of him.”

The day after Seagroves died, UNC played Iowa State and lost. Following the game, Williams, wearing his purple pancreatic cancer awareness ribbon, acknowledged what the real loss was for him.

“(The) guy was one of my best friends in my entire life. Shows that basketball is not really that important at a lot of times,” Williams said.

“It’s important to me and my guys in the locker room right now, but Ted Seagroves was one of those wonderful, wonderful human beings. More people really knew Ted Seagroves than they do Roy Williams or Larry Fedora, and he didn’t get quite the publicity that we get.”

This story was originally published February 8, 2015 at 1:55 PM with the headline "Chapel Hill’s Ted Seagroves, a pal to Roy Williams, reached out to all."