Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 19, 1992 TAG: 9201160270
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOE KENNEDY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
THE ROLE OF A LIFETIME
THE old John Trinidad said, "I'm in love with Michael Jordan, man. I want to be just like him."The new one adds, "But it's going to be hard."
The old John Trinidad looked at the Ds on his report card and said, "That's passing."
The new one adds, "But it's not enough."
The old John Trinidad was an aimless street kid whose wise-guy ways last spring landed him in the Roanoke alternative education program for students having problems in school.
The new one is back at Patrick Henry High School, studying harder and playing junior varsity basketball in hopes of earning a college scholarship and making it to the NBA.
Something happened to John Trinidad at alternative ed. There, he met Peter Lewis, the principal who has become his role model. Through Lewis and others on the staff, he began to get the message that if he wants to accomplish anything, he's going to have to work.
Through Lewis' continuing role in in his life, John Trinidad is changing for the better in many ways.
Role models can help anyone, but the term is especially relevant to the black community.
The statistics are distressing, says Courtland Lee, an associate professor and the director of counselor education at the University of Virginia.
Young black men "have the lowest life expectancy of any group in the country. More of them are in jail than in colleges and universities. They have a three-in-one chance they'll be killed before their 18th birthday by another black male."
Academically, they are more likely to be placed into disciplinary and special ed classes in elementary and secondary schools, he says. Some observers fear that, unless the scourges of AIDS, drugs and violence are curbed, a generation will be lost.
Lee conducts a seminar for black male undergraduate students at UVa. He also has developed a mentoring program for young black males for use in school, church and community settings.
It is a training program that provides counseling for black males as they pass from boyhood to manhood.
"The major question we have boys take a look at is, `What is a strong black man?' We show how one goes about becoming a strong black man by strengthening body, mind and soul."
The theory is sound, says Russell Jones, a clinical psychologist and associate professor at Virginia Tech. "Modeling is one of the most effective ways of learning, and typically the process is one where an individual observes the performance of another and then engages in that same performance."
Positive role models are needed for everyone, regardless of race or income, Jones says. Young people are searching for good role models "because the social and moral fabric of our society is being deeply threatened."
Teachers, coaches and ministers are among the most visible role models, serving many young people at once. Sometimes, they latch on to someone special.
"Maybe it's just an affinity you have for a certain kid," Peter Lewis says of his relationship with 16-year-old John Trinidad. "We maybe were both at the right place at the right time. He just kind of became part of my family. I've had other kids I've been close to and taken home, but not like John."
One thing that interests Lewis is Trinidad's goal of playing basketball, first at St. John's University - because he was born in New York City - and then in the National Basketball Association.
Lewis repeatedly reminds him of retired tennis star Arthur Ashe's dictum: "For every hour you spend on the court of your choice, you should spend two to three hours in the library."
Everyone wants to go to college, Lewis tells him, but "good looks and ball are not enough."
Lots of people want to be pro athletes, too. But, Lewis says, "When you get to an increasingly larger pool of talent, you become a smaller fish in a bigger pool. You have to be exceptional to rise to the top."
That leads to Lewis' second theme - the need to have an education to fall back on if the sports career does not develop.
"Studying comes before basketball," Trinidad says, echoing something Lewis has told him a thousand times.
Teachers, parents and other role models say this to young people every day, sometimes without effect. But the message makes sense to Trinidad, and he's trying to do the right thing.
Lewis and his wife, Harriet, and sons, Peter and John, have welcomed Trinidad to their home. The family has included him on trips to Washington and elsewhere.
"I'm just like one of their kids," Trinidad says.
Lewis hired Trinidad last summer to work as a teacher's aide at Apple Ridge Farm in Copper Hill, where Lewis conducts summer programs for inner-city youth.
Lewis stays in touch - despite the lack of a telephone at the Lincoln Terrace apartment Trinidad shares with his mother, stepfather and four younger siblings.
Trinidad calls Lewis his second brain - the one that keeps after him when he messes up and keeps him from messing up again. It's not that Trinidad's mother and stepfather, Michele and Michael Dennis, don't get after him, too. They do.
"They don't want me to sell drugs," Trinidad says. "They don't want me to get killed. People my age and my color - that's what happens a lot. They sell drugs and get killed."
But somehow, he can tune out their warnings. Not so with Peter Lewis.
Michele Dennis, a 34-year-old housekeeper at Lewis-Gale Hospital, is delighted with the changes in her son. "I was very concerned about him, hangingin the streets. . . . John was very naive. He wouldn't run away from trouble. Hewould run to trouble."
At alternative ed, "they didn't put up with his foolishness. He wasn't allowed to be rude to teachers like he was in other schools." And Lewis became "like the father John never had."
Sometimes, Trinidad gets criticism from his peers. They see Lewis' efforts to keep kids out of trouble as only serving the interests of the white-dominatedestablishment. "They're very negative,," Dennis says. "They say, 'He's out trying to help Whitey.'"
"I just ignore 'em," Trinidad says.
Woody Deans praises the change: "John has probably turned around more than most any kid I've seen." Last year, Trinidad tangled with Deans, Patrick
Henry's varsity basketball coach, when he refused the coach's request that he remove his hat.
When he returned to PH this fall, Trinidad went to the coach and apologized. No one suggested it. He did it on his own.
"He said nothing like that would ever happen again," Deans says. "I've been so proud of him. Since then he and I have developed a very close relationship. We like each other a lot."
Words like those have "made me feel I've accomplished something being his mother," Michele Dennis says. "I feel better about myself because I see an improvement in John."
Trinidad admits he could read more and study harder even now. He knows that, in basketball, he is what Deans calls "a jewel in the rough." But he also knows what it will take to reach his dreams - work, and plenty of it.
Where, his mother is asked, does she see John in five years?
"I see John in college, playing basketball," she says. She wouldn't have said that a year ago.
Where will he be in 10 years?
"NBA!" her son says from the chair where he's reading the newspaper and watching the Redskins' game.
"On TV!" his mother says, laughing with him. Then, more quietly: "I hope John can do what he sets out to do."