By: WESLEY STEVICK ’28
Updated 11:50 a.m. EDT, 3 Oct 2025
This Saturday, Houghton University (HU) graduate, Derrick Tennant ‘93, will be performing a comedy show in the Van Dyk Lounge at 2:30 p.m.
Tennant is this year’s recipient of the Houghton Fearless award at the homecoming Legacy Chapel. This award was created in 2022 as a part of the Houghton Fearless campaign, and is given yearly to a Houghton alum, couple, or a friend of the university who fearlessly follows Jesus and displays with their life the fruit of the Holy Spirit and supreme confidence in the power of God to overcome challenges and adversity. Tennant displays this confidence throughout his life, from hosting SPOT as a student to earning his living performing “Bleep Free Comedy.” This is also evident in his professional life, where he spreads the message, “Your obstacle equals your opportunity.”
In his comedy routine “Being Paralyzed Isn’t So Bad,” Tennant tells the story of his most famous injury. At the age of 14, he developed a medical condition described as “random bleeding from point x [in the brain] for an unknown reason”, rendering him comatose for three days. The doctors expected him to die. Instead, the brain damage left him temporarily unable to walk and permanently paralyzed on the left side of his body, putting an abrupt halt to his dreams of a sports career.
It would have been easy for Tennant to let his injury define him. Instead, Tennant became a comic. Dan Noyes ’93, Regional Director of Development for HU and a classmate of Tennant’s, described him as “super outgoing…very funny, very witty and very comfortable being upfront.” Tennant hosted SPOT multiple times, sported “an amazing mullet”, and drove a Mustang. Noyes said, “Everyone knew who he was … he never had any limitations; he was hysterical.”
Noyes said Tennant developed his comic tendencies into a career, doing his own marketing and promotion. Soon, he was spending most of his time on the road, performing at everything from churches to cruise ships. Resenting the monthly rent he paid for his apartment, where he only slept 3-5 nights a month, he decided to “Live Simply. Love Completely.” According to his blog, Tennant now has no home address, lives out of a carry-on suitcase, and owns only seven shirts, each printed with a day of the week. “The reason we have so much stuff is we have a place to put it. So I got rid of the place.” He says people ask him whether his underwear is also printed with weekdays, claiming on his website that instead they display the months of the year.
He challenges his readers to “find a stranger with something you notice—a smile, their hair, a cool car, a fun hat. Then suck it up, be polite, and deliver the light.” On his blog, Tennant describes the reaction of McDonald’s employees after thanking them: “Every time, I’m stunned. The employees light up. Faces brighten. It’s like I just handed them a raise or a free trip to Disney.” The impact of this kind of encouragement is sad, Tennant said, because it demonstrates how rare simple kindness is. It shouldn’t be a big deal when fast food workers are thanked. The bright side is that now “even the smallest light now shines brighter than ever.”
You can find Tennant online at https://derricktennant.com/ or https://www.14sleeves.com/, or as “14sleeves” on social media. ★
