“Are your parents the kind who will stay on top of your grades? If you drop down to a C in one of your classes, will they jump on your behind?” I asked. She said no. Her father didn’t live in the home, and her mother stayed busy raising three teenagers. I knew that story well. So I took the leap. “I’m going to be that person for you,” I told her.
Within a week, she had dropped by my office at least three times and introduced herself to every staffer in my hallway. “I can’t believe you’re my mentor,” she told me once. “I run into people all the time who say they’re going to help me but never do it.” She’s so hyped to get to her future. That’s the enthusiasm I love to see. And I hope it never burns out. I want only to help these kids preserve that energy and make it to their goals.
It’s amazing to me how hungry these young people are for attention. The positive influence a mentor can have is amazing. Stanley, a short, chocolate-complexioned kid who is much quieter than Taysha, used to tell me he wanted to be a lawyer. “Why not think bigger?” I asked him. “Think about becoming a judge.” Now he walks around telling everyone he aspires to be a judge. And I think that’s great. Our kids need to open their eyes.
These kids need support. The things they’re going through at home might scare a horror film director. Taysha once called me, totally freaked out, to tell me she had seen a dead body in her apartment complex. The same week, another mentee was in my office crying over the combined stress of a dying stepfather and a delay in his financial aid for college.
“Play the hand you’re dealt,” I tell young people all the time. “I know life is stressful, but you can’t let it deter you from your goals. You’ve got to stay in school. It’s the only way to change your life.”
Just like the kids I mentor today, Sam, Rameck, and I had our own misconceptions about what college would be like. We thought the hard part was just getting there. We didn’t realize how hard it would be to stay.
We learned quickly that college is a business, and there are no free rides at expensive private schools. The school actually threatened to bar us from enrolling because we had unpaid tuition bills from the previous semester.
Each of us made an appointment to plead our case with the bursar. Rameck even brought his transcript to the meeting, confident that he wouldn’t be denied. “Just look at my grades,” he said proudly. “Please release my account.”
The bursar chuckled. “That’s nice, Mr. Hunt, but it really doesn’t matter.”
He told us all the same thing: He couldn’t forgive the debt. If he did it for us, he’d have to do it for everyone.
But we wouldn’t leave his office until he relented. We suggested countless compromises. “Put us on a payment plan, anything,” we begged. Finally, he agreed to let us make nominal monthly payments and allowed us to register for the next semester.
Whenever it seemed as though our good fortune had hit a dead end, we always found a new path. I’ve grown to think that God has put us on this mission and helped us along the way. I wasn’t a regular churchgoer as a kid and neither were Sam or Rameck. Yet life has taught me that God truly does help those who help themselves. I often preach that message when I speak to young audiences.
I tell them that you can never be too afraid to ask for help. If you need to get from point A to point B and you don’t know how, I’ve found that all you need to do is take the plunge and just set out walking toward your goal. Nothing will change if you just stay put. So start walking. Along the way, don’t be afraid to let people know what you need and what you’re after. Somehow help will appear. That’s what we experienced every time. Whenever people saw us floundering, trying to get to the next step on our own, they helped us.
One guardian angel who became our greatest advocate was Carla Dickson, the director of our pre-medical/pre-dental program at Seton Hall. I can’t count the times she intervened when we needed an advocate on campus, helping us to solve our own problems and pushing us when we were on the verge of giving up.
I thank God for the help of angels like Carla and believe that I have been called to pass on the blessings. Every chance I get, I preach the importance of “education, education, education” to these kids, and I try to give them the tools to succeed.
But as long as their dad’s missing, their tool kit’s incomplete. Studies show that when dads disappear from the household, it heightens a kid’s chances that he or she will drop out of school before graduation. Also, students who live with both parents are less likely to get suspended.
These are the reasons that dads need to show up starting on the first day of school, not just graduation day. They’re needed on the front lines to support their kids, especially because inside many urban schools, it’s a battle just for a kid to receive a decent education.
I’m reminded of another mentee of mine, Kenny, who caught his first glimpse of The Three Doctors at age ten, when his mom called him to the TV to see us on Oprah. We didn’t make much of an impression on him at first. But a week later, he saw a poster promoting The Pact, and something clicked: “These guys are real. And they’re from my city,” he thought. Kenny and his mother, Monica, made plans to come to our next book signing to meet us.
When the day of the book signing came, his mom had a sore throat and didn’t want to go out. “If I don’t mention the book signing, he probably won’t even remember it,” his mother thought.
Wrong. Kenny reminded her of it, and protested loudly when Monica said she didn’t feel well enough to take him. An hour later, they were in the car on their way to the bookstore. Monica decided that if Kenny wanted to meet some doctors that much, she wasn’t going to stand in the way. At the book signing, Kenny grabbed a pen and started taking notes as we spoke. Monica had never seen him so enthralled. During the Q&A period, she raised her hand and asked what inspiration we could offer to her son to stay in school and not let peer pressure derail him.
She expected only a few words of advice, but since that day, we’ve appointed ourselves the official mentors of Kenny, who hopes to become a doctor. We’ve found him to be such a standout that we’ve made him our guest of honor at many Three Doctors events.
That day at the book signing, I gave Kenny my e-mail address and told him to stay in touch. During the years, we’ve visited and conversed a lot and I’ve shared my advice with him. Kenny doesn’t see his father often. He’s a bright kid hungry for a male role model. Over and over, I encourage Kenny never to be afraid to approach the person holding the knowledge he needs.
Kenny’s an eager learner. But seventh grade was a rough year for him. His parents’ divorce became finalized and he started a new school. Before long, his math grade dropped to a D. His mom got concerned. And so did I.
I came to his house, sat with him at his desk, and helped him do a few math problems. “What’s happening in math?” I asked. “Why is your grade so low?”
I had to probe to find out what really was holding Kenny back in math. It turns out, he was having a hard time trying to learn in an unruly classroom. As soon as the bell rang, chaos erupted. Kenny’s classmates did everything but pay attention. They wandered in late, played games on their school-issued laptop computers, sent one another e-mails, threw paper airplanes, and stole stuff from the teacher’s desk when he had his back turned. One kid had mastered the prank of making the classroom phone ring, which was a constant disruption. Another student refused to take a seat: “I don’t feel like sitting down so I’m gonna stand up,” he told the young, inexperienced teacher, who ended up doing more fussing than teaching.
In the midst of it all, Kenny sat in the back of the class trying to learn. Sometimes he gave in and misbehaved, too, drawing pictures of the teacher with stupid faces and playing games on his own laptop.
Together, we made a plan to improve his math grade. “You need to surround yourself with people who will help you and not bring you down,” I told him. “Why don’t you go to the people who are getting A’s all the time and ask if they’ll help you? And start by g
oing to see your math teacher so you can catch up on the stuff you missed. Don’t be shy, Kenny, go after what you want.”
Dutifully, he went to the teacher and they agreed to meet on the following Wednesday.
But when Wednesday arrived, Kenny really didn’t want to go. When the bell rang after school, he met up with his friends and started walking home with them. He had gotten three blocks from the school when his conscience got the better of him. “I got to go back and meet with my math teacher,” he explained to his friends.
The teacher was still there, waiting.
Although he didn’t want to, Kenny stayed for ninety minutes that day, brushing up on his pre-algebra. At the chalkboard, he practiced his number sentences, erasing them over and over until he grasped the concept. He continued to study the material with his tutor.
And by the end of the year, he had brought his D up to a B. Kenny knows he learned an important lesson in seventh grade: that he can conquer any problem.
That’s good, because his eighth-grade science class is shaping up to be his next big problem. Although science has always been his favorite class, he’s not pulling his usual A’s. “I’ve learned my lesson,” Kenny said soberly. “I’m not going to wait till the last minute to get help like last year. My science teacher told me to come for help on Wednesday morning.” This time, he made a point to get there early.
Every time I get a report of success from a kid like Kenny, I feel like a proud papa.
This is how I’m building my legacy. I mentor ferociously because I didn’t have a cheering dad behind me. That’s what pushes me to go above and beyond, to wear myself out being a mentor. We didn’t have that fatherly support. Yet I desired it so intensely that now, I provide it with intensity.
I believe in sharing the blessings I have. I’ve always let friends stay with me, raid my fridge, share whatever I have. If I made it alone to the top with tons of money, I wouldn’t enjoy it.
Maybe some people are threatened by the younger generation, but I’m secure. I’m trying to leave this world better off than when I arrived. It’s my responsibility to pass knowledge down and pull people up.
When I die, I want ten thousand professionals at my funeral all saying the same thing: “No question, if it wasn’t for Dr. Jenkins, I wouldn’t be where I am today. He encouraged me to stay in school. He got me on the right track.”
I think that’s an achievable goal. And if I make it, I’ll take great joy in knowing I enabled a fatherless generation to go higher than I did.
Chapter 4
GEORGE
Learning to Be a Man
WHEN YOU GROW UP in a poor neighborhood, escaping from poverty is the ultimate test of your courage.
It isn’t easy for a boy to find his way to maturity and manhood without a father’s support.
What helped us is that the three of us created “superordinate goals.” It sounds fancy, but basically it means that we joined together to reach beyond the self-limiting behaviors we saw in front of us and pushed our way to the next level.
Simply put, it was our pact that made the difference. That’s how we defied the statistics that told us that, as fatherless boys, we were at a higher risk of dropping out of school, becoming violent, and becoming absentee dads ourselves.
The best way to overcome the void left by an absentee father, we’ve found, is to surround yourself with positive people who can point the way to success. In the coming chapters, we hope to help out, by sharing the stories of people overcoming the same obstacles you face.
Your first challenge: teaching yourself to become a man without a father’s guidance.
Here are a few young brothers we’ve met who have managed to do just that.
NAJEE
Najee Carter, a senior at Bloomfield High School in New Jersey, reached out to the three of us after he finished reading our first book. In an e-mail, he wrote: “I want to sincerely thank you for writing The Pact. This has helped me to succeed, and go for my goals. I was born in Newark to a single mother. I can relate to your story because I know how it feels to be raised by a strong black woman.
“The strength of my mother, however, cannot fill the void and emptiness of not having a father in my household. Through my lifetime, I have chosen role models to fill that emptiness. For example, God, my mother, grandmother, Nelson Mandela, Malcolm X, Tupac, P. Diddy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Denzel Washington, and most recently the Three Doctors. You have become one of my greatest role models because your story hits so close to home.”
Najee, we’ve learned, is a talented poet who confronts the issues of racism, religion, insecurities, and finding one’s identity in his writing. He’s a grassroots Shakespeare, breaking it down in poems like this one titled “Voice of the Ghetto”:
Single mothers struggling, childhood cut short
Father not ready so she takes him to court
He gives child support but that’s not what the child needs
He needs someone to teach him, show him, and lead
He needs someone to trust and to direct him to manhood
She needs a father to love her and to tell her she looks good
Najee obviously knows of what he writes firsthand. His parents never married, and he doesn’t see his father often.
Yet he’s determined to break the cycle. He intends to go to Hampton University to study journalism. He wants to write for a living, and to keep penning thought-provoking works.
Najee sees the harm in the trend toward single motherhood. “Certain things, my mom can’t do alone. It’s the whole masculinity factor,” Najee said. “She can’t teach me certain things. She tried. When we were kids, she took us to play basketball, but she couldn’t teach us.”
Najee’s got a perfectionist streak, his mother told us, and as a result, he’s never felt comfortable going out for organized sports because he believes he’s not as good as the other kids. “He felt he had nobody to show him those things. He feels vulnerable around other guys. He doesn’t want to look less than perfect,” she said. “From what I see, a father is irreplaceable. Other people can help fill the void but they never replace it,” she added.
Yet Najee has made up his mind that he’s going to overcome this handicap. He’s adopted a mind-set that we call “Be better, not bitter.” He’s entering manhood determined not to repeat the cycle of fatherlessness. He is insistent that he will never father a child out of wedlock. No babymamas for him.
Growing up without a father means you have to ask people for help, Najee realizes. One reason he is such an outstanding young man is that he’s constantly on the lookout for healthy, inspiring people worthy of being emulated. “I look up to Martin Luther King for his strength. Not his physical strength, but the way he led the nonviolent movement. That was the perfect example of what a man should really be,” Najee told us.
He also seeks out role models he knows, too, to answer intimate questions. His uncle, for example, provides advice on girls and grooming. And he’s followed our advice and cut loose a few friends who used to lure him into trouble. “Now I don’t have that negative energy all around me. I’ve gained a few friends, too, who have the same goals as me,” he said.
“I long ago made the decision to never allow myself to conform to the corruption of the streets. Because of my strength and relationship with God, I have been able to do this. Unfortunately, everyone isn’t as blessed,” he wrote.
Najee, a good-looking kid with close-cropped hair, refuses to blend in. Even when he puts on the urban gear favored by today’s teenagers, he loves wearing attention-getting colors to set himself apart. Ever the questioner, he doesn’t hesitate to challenge teen behavior. But he doesn’t do it through confrontation—instead, he has found that a more effective way to get his points across is through poetry. For Christmas, he even asked his mom for a guitar so he could teach himself to set his poems to music.
We know that teenagers risk rejection when they don’t follow the crowd, but Najee proves it’s possible to b
e both popular and an independent thinker. His class voted him “best personality” and “most likely to succeed” in his senior year. Classmates obviously admire the way he constantly prods them to use their God-given brains and think about their actions. Recently he gently scolded a friend on MySpace who referred to herself as a bitch: “You should never call yourself that,” he told her.
It’s not your average teenager who writes a mission statement for his life. But Najee has done so—and his unsolicited advice to his MySpace pal reflects the mission he’s chosen: “To inspire all people but specifically minorities who are often held in bondage to stereotypes, labels, and expectations. I believe it is up to us to transcend the negativity placed on us.”
QUAMEEN
When the three of us visited Cleveland in 2005, we met an impressive group of young men from the Cleveland public schools called the Barbara Byrd Bennett Scholars. These well-dressed guys, all in shirts and ties, had a million questions for us. They were hungry to know the path to success. Deemed promising but at-risk students, they were handpicked for the Schol ars program in eighth grade. They’ve been guaranteed a full college scholarship if they stay in the program and keep their grades up. Nearly all of these young men will be the first in their families to go to college, as long as they stay focused and stay in school. This bold pilot project is named after the chief executive officer of the Cleveland schools who helped spearhead it. In a way, these thirty-three young men carry the hopes of their struggling urban school district on their shoulders. For them, The Pact was required reading. And they’ve made a similar promise to one another, to stick together and help one another over their obstacles.
The Bond: Three Young Men Learn to Forgive and Reconnect With Their Fathers Page 7