Jill Wolfson, Book Reviews

Book Reviews
by Jill Wolfson
San Jose Mercury News, February 2005

The Promise: How One Woman Made Good on Her Extraordinary Pact to Send a Classroom of First Graders to College
By Oral Lee Brown with Caille Millner
Doubleday, 288 pp., $22.95

Oral Lee Brown made a promise and kept it, changing the lives of a classroom full of Oakland kids

One day back in 1987, a middle-aged Oakland woman named Oral Lee Brown was walking to the store to pick up a pack of Spanish peanuts and a soda, just as she did every morning. A little girl, maybe 6 or 7, rushed up and asked for a quarter, not for candy or junk food, but for real food.

This was a time of crisis in the neighborhood. Oakland was in the midst of crack wars and, as Brown recalls it, ''the place was full of dope, crime and killing.'' Nearly a third of the city's children lived below the poverty line. In the market, Brown emptied her wallet and when the girl ran off with a bag full of bread, cheese and bologna, Brown's thoughts ran after her.

Where is the girl's mother? What if I had been a kidnapper? Why isn't anyone doing something to help this child?

Haunted, Brown went to the nearby elementary school and tried to track down the girl. Standing in the first-grade classroom, she scanned the faces of the kids—the bright, sassy, intelligent, humorous, hopeful, energetic faces. Brown never did find the girl she was looking for, but that day she found her life calling.

A native of Mississippi who had grown up hard, Brown was earning only $45,000 a year. Yet she decided that she was going to "adopt" all 23 children in that classroom. She made a promise to the school principal, the children, their parents and to herself: If the kids finish high school, she would pay for their college educations.

''It's my belief that if you start young enough with any child and instill in them the importance of education, maybe, just maybe, by the time that child gets to twelfth grade he or she will be ready for college," Brown writes in this moving, tirelessly upbeat account of her pledge. "Castlemont High School, which is where most of the students would go, had a 26 percentgraduation rate. What happens to the other 74 percent? Is nobody accountable for them? Does nobody care about them? That wasn't going to happen to my kids."

For the next 12 years, Brown saved and invested $10,000 annually, along with emotionally investing herself into the lives of the children. Drawn by her determination, others began donating to the cause. Remarkably, all 23 in the original class graduated from high school and 19 of them chose to further their education. In May 2003, Brown began sending "her babies" off to college.

Stories of exceptional kids beating the odds are nothing new. There is practically an entire genre in which a child raised in poverty somehow rises above his or her circumstances to go onto greatness—or at least middle-class stability.

Such icons are inevitably held up as role models: See, if this boy could do it, why not you? The beauty and power of Brown's story is that these were ordinary kids—not blessed by extraordinary parents, IQs, looks, athletic or musical abilities. They were just plain kids, chosen completely at random, and still, they defied the odds.

With the help of Mercury News writer Caille Millner, Brown tells her saga in a loving, no-nonsense manner. We get glimpses into the lives of the kids, as they grow from happy-go-lucky first-graders to teens struggling to overcome formidable obstacles, such as racism, indifferent parents and their own see-saw of motivation.

Among the most memorable are Susan Richard, the ''mother hen'' of the class, and Tracy Easterling, who tragically died in a drive-by shooting and ''without a doubt embodied the indomitable spirit of the class." A teen named Robin became a mother at 16, yet did not give up her dream. As Brown notes:

" 'Look at my baby Robin,' I say. 'She had a baby at sixteen. She's as poor as anyone in East Oakland. She could have started collecting her welfare check and sat down. But she didn't give up.' She graduated from high school just one semester later than her brothers and sisters in the program, and now she's at American River College."

Brown has appeared on the Today Show as part of its "People Who Make a Difference" series. She has received numerous awards, including the California State Lottery Hero in Education award. The Oral Lee Brown Foundation is now committed to sending a new group of students to college every four years.

In an era when literary memoirs typically focus on pain and have so much psychological hand-wringing, it's refreshing to read one that is straightforward, optimistic and pragmatic, clearly a reflection of Brown's can-do personality. Just as she cajoles her students, she challenges readers to get out there and do something. Her book concludes with helpful financial advice for parents trying to save for college, along with tips for community activists who are determined to repeat Brown's success in their own neighborhoods.

As she explains: "The point is, if we all give a little, it will add up to a whole lot, and it's not that hard. If I could send all these kids to college on my own, imagine what this whole country could do if we decided to work together."