By Kevin Zeese

At the outset let me apologize. In the past when I really wanted to write something well,‭ ‬I’d do my best draft and redraft and redraft‭; ‬and then send it to Mike Gray. He would turn my charcoal into diamonds. I can no longer do that,‭ ‬as Mike has left us,‭ ‬and he will be missed by all of us at Common Sense for Drug Policy,‭ ‬where he served as chairman of the board,‭ ‬as well as the reform movement and so many others he touched.

We first met when he came to a Drug Policy Foundation conference because he was working on his book‭ ‬Drug Crazy:‭ ‬How We Got Into This Mess and How We Can Get Out,‭ (‬Random House‭ ‬1998‭)‬. When the book came out I remember a meeting initiated by Robert Field with Mike Gray where we discussed what we could do together to promote his book so had an influential impact. That was the beginning of one of the most important relationships of Robert and my lives. We did so much good work together.

‎“‏Drug Crazy‭” ‬was immediately important,‭ ‬as Marsha Rosenbaum writes for the Drug Policy Alliance it became‭ “‬a mainstay in drug policy libraries all over the world‭”‬ and a classic that is “‬required reading for newcomers.‭”‬

I’ll mention two projects we worked on together at Common Sense for Drug Policy,‬two of many,‭ ‬here. First our five year advertising campaign,‭ ‬Is Truth a Casualty of the Drug War‭? ‬In all,‭ ‬Common Sense produced‭ ‬92‭ ‬advertisements that ran in a half dozen public policy magazines that were designed to reach political activists and opinion leaders from across the political spectrum. Mike was a great asset in this process. He was able to write in a way that reached people,‭ ‬more than in a factual way,‭ ‬in a gut-checking,‭ ‬emotional way. No doubt this campaign helped shift the debate,‭ ‬change public opinion and help lay the groundwork for the success of so many reform initiatives.

Mike was also a key to the creation of the Alliance of Reform Organizations. The purpose of ARO was to get the movement starting to think like a movement,‭ ‬sharing information,‭ ‬uniting issues,‭ ‬working together in solidarity to end the abusive drug war. Throughout the years of this coalition,‭ ‬Mike’s role was to be a wise,‭ ‬elder statesman who offered words of encouragement and wisdom from his wide breadth of experience.

And,‭ ‬he brought a lot of wisdom and experience. While he was a Hollywood guy‭ – ‬with lots of credits to his name‭ – ‬he was also a Midwesterner from Indiana and those roots were always there making him a practical,‭ ‬commonsense activist. While he was a Hollywood writer,‭ he was trained as an engineer. The combination of those two seeming opposites was devastatingly powerful.

His work in political advocacy ran deep,‭ ‬as a documentary film maker with his amazing story telling. In‭ ‬1965‭ ‬he and long-time colleague,‭ Jim Dennett formed The Film Group,‭ ‬a Chicago-based movie production company. They made television commercials as well as movies and documentaries,‭ ‬producing more than‭ ‬50‭ ‬film and documentary projects.

It was when he and Jim were working on a commercial in Chicago that they got critical historic footage of the room where Black Panther leader Fred Hampton was shot before the police closed it down. It became the basis for the movie, The Murder of Fred Hampton, which documented the cold blooded murder of this young leader by the US security state,‭ ‬but also told the story of someone whose power Mike said you could feel when you were near him.‭ ‬It was a power based in the fearlessness of knowing he was right and unafraid of telling the truth.

In American Revolution II,‭ ‬Mike documented the uprisings of the‭1960s in Chicago. His documentary film style‭ – ‬a hand held camera,‭ ‬no script,‭ ‬letting the voices of those he covered tell the story‭ – ‬has since been used by many,‭ ‬but it was a style he developed in order to let the story tell itself.

Mike was a great screenwriter and film maker,‭ ‬one movie that brought so many of his characteristics to the table was an Academy Award winner,‭ ‬The China Syndrome. Mike had brought his engineers‭’ ‬training to understanding nuclear energy and its risks. China Syndrome,‭ ‬which starred Jane Fonda,‭ ‬Jack Lemon and Michael Douglas,‭ ‬told the story of a nuclear plant in meltdown‭ – ‬melting through all its containment
structures,‭ ‬into the underlying earth,‭ “‬all the way to China.‭”

The remarkable story of the film may not have been the movie itself but its timing‭ – ‬less than two weeks after its release in‭ ‬1979‭ ‬the Three Mile Island accident occurred. Mike the activist,‭ ‬took over for Mike the Hollywood filmmaker. He stayed with the issue,‭ ‬covered the hearings on Three Mile Island,‭ ‬conducted‭ ‬200‭ ‬hours of interviews and collected‭ ‬50,000‭ ‬pages of transcripts from five government investigations.‭ ‬He wrote about it for Rolling Stone and wrote a book on the issue four years later, The Warning.‭ ‬Nuclear power has really never recovered from this series of Mike Gray and self-inflicted blows.

Phil Smith the editor of Drug War Chronicle highlights some of Mike’s drug policy related films‭ “‬the DVDs‭ ‘‬Law Enforcement Against Prohibition,‭’ ‬highlighting spokespersons of the group by the same name,‭ ‬and‭ ‘‬Cops‭ & ‬Clergy Condemn the War on Drugs.‭’‬”

Mike’s key to writing was drafting and re-drafting,‭ ‬editing and re-editing. One of his favorite quotes came from Mark Twain ‭“‬The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.‭”‬ Mike was always careful to pick the right word.‭ ‬He did the same thing editing his films. He told me once about cutting at just the right millisecond so they eye sees and the ear hears,‭ ‬just what is needed.

I experienced this recently with Mike. Over the last two years I’ve been working on a screenplay about a critically important historical incident that has been swept under the rug of history. I showed an early draft to Mike and he told me some of the basics of screenwriting‭ – ‬after a few hints he suggested a re-write,‭ ‬starting the story in a completely different place. Six months later I sent him a re-draft that had been edited and re-edited. He looked at it,‭ ‬giving some positive comments of the potential for the movie,‭ ‬urged me to stay with it and made some constructively critical suggestions and said‭ – ‬re-write it. I’ve done so and was preparing to send it to him again.

Last week,‭ ‬I told some of my colleagues at Common Sense,‭ ‬that as part of the new Green Shadow Cabinet where I serve as ‘Attorney General’ and coordinate the Justice Council,‭ ‬I would be writing a report on how the Obama administration should handle the voter initiatives legalizing marijuana in Washington and Colorado. Mike immediately offered to help. I sent him the first three sections of the report and never heard back.

One of the people Mike introduced me to was Robert E.‭ ‬Lee,‭ ‬III,‭ a Black Panther turned community organizer in Houston,‭ ‬known as the unofficial‭ “‬Mayor of da‭ ‬Fifth Ward‭” ‬with his office in the local barber shop. Lee became someone I heard from regularly on the state of racism,‭ ‬on how to organize and how to create change. When he died Mike was working on a movie about Lee and Barack Obama called The Organizer.

The Organizer,‭ ‬even this short clip,‭ ‬will help us all do what my long-time colleague and collaborator Robert Field suggests we all need to do now writing to the Common Sense team:‭ “‬We all have to work even harder in the causes of justice and enlightenment to help compensate for this great loss.‭”

(Kevin Zeese serves as president for Common Sense for Drug Policy where Mike Gray served as Chairman.‭ ‬Zeese co-directs It’s Our Economy,‭ co-hosts Clearing the FOG and is an organizer of Occupy Washington,‭DC.)

It took a decade.   My designated successor unexpectedly had to retire for health reasons despite being almost a generation younger, so I had to step back in.  Various approaches did not work out .  Finally successors were in place and I could step down.

I had an opportunity to say goodbye to about forty managers sitting at the plenary session of The Manor Group’s annual meeting.

That morning while soaking in the hotel spa followed by baking in the sauna (and before a swim), I determined the five matters I would talk about.

The first was to acknowledge the many ‘stars’ in our company’s history and what had been accomplished over five decades had been collaborative.  My chief role has been as a facilitator.

The second was my proudest business accomplishment is the unblemished safety record of about 400 swimming pool seasons among our hotels and apartment complexes.

The third was reference to the credo established almost ninety years ago by Robert Wood Johnson, then president of Johnson and Johnson, setting forth the multiple responsibilities of a company to customers, employees, suppliers, communities, not just stockholders.

I then referred to the continuum of life where we all stand on the shoulders of our predecessors and later help lift up our successors.

And in conclusion, I mentioned a speech I had witnessed  during our lunch period as a sophomore in high school on early television.   In 1951,  Gen. Douglas MacArthur addressed a joint session of Congress on his return from decades of service abroad.  As I excerpted the last paragraphs of his address, I choked up and my son Richard took the paper and completed reading the quotation:

“And like the old soldier of that ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Good-by.”

Over dinner with wife Karen, daughter Sarah and her friend Pamela, in passing the Children’s Crusade was mentioned.

Seventeen year old Pamela said she had never heard of the Children’s Crusade.    Karen said much the same.   I explained that it took place during the Middle Ages and children from Western Europe marched in great numbers to the Middle East with the conviction that God would enable them to convert the Muslim’s to Christianity and thus restore access to the Holy Land.  Those who didn’t starve along the way were sold into slavery.

To which Pamela opined “It sounds stupid to me.”

One of the reasons I recall that particular crusade so well is we had read a novel concerning it in junior high school and, in the mid-1950s,  I had studied it in my college history course on the Middle Ages.

So not wanting to pass up a teaching opportunity, I left the table, snuck out to the library, checked Google for the Children’s Crusade, and came across the following from Wikipedia:

“The Children’s Crusade is the name given to a disastrous Crusade by European Catholics to expel Muslims from the Holy Land said to have taken place in 1212. The traditional narrative is probably conflated from some factual and mythical notions of the period including visions by a French or German boy, an intention to peacefully convert Muslims in the Holy Land to Christianity, bands of children marching to Italy, and children being sold into slavery. A study published in 1977 casts doubt on the existence of these events, and many historians came to believe that they were not (or not primarily) children but multiple bands of ‘wandering poor’ in Germany and France, some of whom tried to reach the Holy Land and others who never intended to do so. Early versions of events, of which there are many variations told over the centuries, are largely apocryphal .”

Appears that Pamela was right:  The idea of a mass children’s march was “stupid.” And I uncritically had accepted it.

So my concern is how many other things that I am certain about are not correct?  And how about you?

By Robert Field

When our generation was growing up, all the cousins were aspiring for high grades, good colleges, and brilliant careers in business or the professions. All that was but cousin Bob about whom we worried.

Cousin Bob was spending his spare time collecting jalopies, tearing them apart, repairing them, putting them back together. Pressed by his father to take a business rather than engineering in college, he dropped out of Penn and eventually joined the Air Force and ended up servicing airplanes in Texas where, to the short term displeasure of his Jewish family (this was back in the ‘50s), he met and married a down to earth, very smart Irish Catholic girl.

When he left the service, he obtained an entry job with Boeing and thrived in an environment of team work to achieve specific engineering goals. He completed his business degree at the night school of at Penn and took a number of engineering courses elsewhere along the way. His talent for analyzing problems and administrating a team effort propelled his career in the Boeing design ranks.

Bob was hired away by Westinghouse’s atomic engineer division. Their interest somewhat baffled him because he did not even have an advance university degree nor one in engineering. But by that time it didn’t matter. All they knew is that Bob was a problem solver.

He was paired with an engineer with submarine experience and told to start from scratch and design control system for a proposed atomic energy plant.

He and his partner thought the best place to start was to visit an existing plant. They were given a tour and witnessed a forty-foot long control room with gauges along the walls set in no particular order or relationships and danger signals in a variety of colors: red, orange and white. While listening to an explanation by management of how the control panels worked, he had to suppress laughter and was asked what he found amusing.

Upon prodding, he explained that the monitoring of a nuclear plant wasn’t that much more complex than piloting an airplane and certainly no more difficult than flying a helicopter, and yet the operator in those cases were strapped into a chair. His point: The controls had to be rationalized so that what was most important was centralized in the center with scores of other monitors either moved to the periphery of deemed irrelevant to the operator and eliminated.

Bob led a team that concentrated all the essential emergency information in an area six feet high and eight foot wide. More sophisticated gauges were installed that replaced a number of others. If something potentially dangerous occurred, the operator was immediately warned and in a manner that monitored proper attention.

Shortly after his team’s design for control room instrumentation was made part of a new plant, the Three Mile Island (TMI) disaster occurred. According to Bob, operators until then had not been properly trained on the workings of a plant and had little idea of what to do when something went wrong. According to Bob, if the intention at TMI was to cause a core meltdown, they could not have done better than all the foolish mistakes they made during the first two days.

President Jimmy Carter was an engineer who had worked under the legendary Hyman Admiral Rickover in designing the early atomic submarines. When Carter arrived at TMI during the height of the emergency, he instantly recognized that much of the problem was the lack of a rational control room.

Shortly after the TMI partial melt down (which fortunately was contained within the structure), orders went out (probably due to Carter) for the redesign of all of the atomic energy control rooms in the USA…except for one. The one that Bob and his teammates had designed was both approved and used as a prototype for setting new standards.

Bob has long been retired. He and wife Nancy live in a snug one story home in a very pleasant Florida beach community where for years he volunteered his service as a member of an authority that oversees the city’s utilities.

When asked to what he attributed his unanticpated accomlishments, Bob responded:  “The application of what talents we are given with an inquiring mind and lots of common sense will solve most problems and carry you through.  Also, Do something! Even if it’s wrong.”

For the writer, the irony of it all was his recent reflections on who from the old gang had made the most mark on the world. They included a four term U. S. senator, the president judge of a federal court of appeal, the founder of a New York Stock Exchange listed company, a distinguish college professor, a physician who led a medical department at a prestigious hospital, the head of a major Philadelphia law firm, and others of distinction.

Bob wasn’t even on that list until we visited with him and Nancy for a couple of days this week and we got him talking.

Now he may top it!

By Robert Field

I had an evening alone in Manhattan and a craving for a good, old fashioned Jewish delicatessen.

For half a century I would have headed for the Stage Deli around 54^th and Seventh Avenue, but by the last visit their customers were ordering corn beef on white bread and tuna fish salads and the servers all spoke Spanish.  It just wasn’t the same.

A block to the north is the Carnegie…not the concert hall, but the Deli!   The food was supposedly as good as the Stage, some said better, but I found the atmosphere lacking.   Where the Stage was a show case, with lots of windows along the avenue so that one could watch the passer bys while they gawked at the customers to see if they could recognize a star actor or athlete.   One did not have to share a table and there was at least six inches of space to serve as a buffer zone from the often oversized customers.

Unlike the Stage, the Carnegie has limited Avenue frontage and long, narrow tables for eight people are lined perpendicular to the central aisle, so you were seated with the ‘hoi polloi.’    (Us common people.)

But once I glanced into the Carnegie and saw the servers lined up in their black pants, black vests and white shirts and the long counter filled with traditional deli delicacies, and the crowded restaurant, I knew I had to go in.

Now a sandwich at the Carnegie is filled literally with four inches of meat!  Many take half the sandwich with them for lunch the next day.

Here are some samples from the menu:

Blintzes:  CHEESE – STRAWBERRRY- BLUEBERRY –CHERRY WITH SOUR CREAM OR “BIG APPLE” SAUCE

PRIME BRISKET OF BEEF POT ROAST in rich brown gravy with potato pancake, and fresh vegetables

Milton’s boiled beef flanken in the pot with matzoh ball, noodles, consommé, fresh vegetables and cole slaw

“THE WOODY ALLEN” For the dedicated fresser only!  Lotsa Corned Beef plus lotsa Pastrami

Nova salmon, Sturgeon, Baked salmon, a cut from a large white fish… all served with cream cheese, lettuce, tomato, oniono, and a bagel on the side.

MILLIES STUFFED CABBAGE ROUMANIAN STYLE – In sweet and sour sauce, with boiled potato, fresh vegetables and cole slaw

And of course there is cheese cake as well as strudel to die for.  (And if you eat your entire entre’  plus the dessert, you likely will.)

My choice was “Harveys Midnight Special: All beef knockwurst with baked beans, and sauerkraut.” To which I added a side of rye bread and a side of cole slaw.    (Hang the extra cost!)   There were two giant knockwursts on a platter of baked beans.    (Instead of the traditional Dr Brown’s Cel–Ray Tonic, I cheated by ordering a Heineken.)  I applied the special mustard and dived in.  I ate and drank half of everything!

While growing up, every other Sunday when our housekeeper had her day off, we often swung by the deli row in North Philadelphia and picked up corned beef, pastrami, all beef hot dogs, sauerkraut, pickles (from a barrel), and Jewish rye and kaiser rolls to take home for a dinner spread.

So this evening I wasn’t just satisfying a craving.   As I sat at the end of a table of eight, I was revisiting the distant past.

Post Scrip:   A reader forwarded an article reporting  the closing of the Stage  Deli  last November.  Small wonder.

 Also, if you visit the Carnegie, bring cash.  They don’t accept credit cards.

After a painful and lonely senior year at Lower Merion High School (my group of close friends had graduated the year before), I was pleased to be off to Oberlin, at that time one the highest rated small  co-ed colleges (about 2000 students, of which a quarter belonged to the music conservatory).  It was my first choice because of its high academic standards and  I felt that it would be conducive for a good social life.

I also decided to go out for the freshman football team in order to increase my contacts and to counter my image of what today may be termed a ‘nerd.’   I had not been on a football team before.   There was a no cut policy for freshman football.  You just showed up.   I was about 6’ 4”, only 185 lbs. and uncoordinated.   Fit for nothing, they assigned me to the tackle position.

I vividly recall during practice  looking up at the sky and pondering the commercial airline jet streams that were a relatively new phenomenon in 1954.

I only got in one freshman game, against Northwestern College in Cleveland, and that for less than ten minutes.  But I discovered a ferocity (albeit misdirected in most plays!) that I had not conceived existed before.  And from that season comes one of my finest memories:  an open field tackle against a hard charging back while practicing kick offs and returns.

I think the coaches and other players were somewhat amazed that Field had tackled someone.   I never have been prouder than showering with team mates with blood dripping down from my nose!

I wore with some swagger the sweater with class numerals that I had earned.    But when Coach Butler asked during spring gym whether I would be returning to the team next fall, I put his apprehensions to rest by telling him how much I had enjoyed and benefited from the freshman experience but I would not be returning.

You don’t have to be a star or even be good to treasure participation in an activity.  And, incidentally, I did fit in well both at Oberlin  and later at the University of California at Berkeley.

Columnist and staff writer Larry Alexander recalls in “‘Lone Ranger’ as ‘our’ hero” *,

“ ‘Our’ Lone Ranger is, of course, the Lone Ranger, Clayton Moore, who wore the mask almost every year from 1949 until his death in 1999.  For all I know, he was buried wearing it… (There was a radio Lone Ranger, too.  The series began in 1933 and, starting in 1941, the Ranger was played by Brace Beemer.”)

WATCHDOG: Nothing was more important in our childhood than permission to stay up until 7:30 on Tuesday evenings so that we could listen to the Lone Ranger on the radio.  Beemer will always be ‘our Lone Ranger’.

A gift from daughter Jennifer, a picture of the Lone Ranger hangs prominently in our office.  When asked who was our “super hero,” there was no hesitancy concerning first place.    Captain Marvel would be second.  If you remember him, then all we can say is “Shazam.”

*Sorry, the link at Lancaseronline.com proved faulty.  Perhaps it will be fixed so here it is:

lancasteronline.com/…/805070_-Lone-Ranger–as–our–hero.html

The New Jerusalem Bible, Genesis  18:27: :  “Now Abraham and Sarah were old, well on in years, and Sarah had ceased to have her monthly periods.  So Sarah laughed to herself, thinking ‘Now that I am past the age of childbearing, and my husband is an old man, is pleasure to come my way again?’  But Yahweh asked Abraham, ‘Why did Sarah laugh and say, “Am I really going to have a child now that I am old?” Nothing is impossible for Yahweh.  I shall come back to you at the same time next year and Sarah will have a son’.  Sarah said, ‘I did not laugh,’ lying because she was afraid.  But [H]e* replied, ‘Oh yes, you did laugh.’ ”  (Emphasis added.  *Other translations clarify that Yahweh is speaking.)

“In December 1998, Clinton’s political party, the Democratic Party, was in the minority in both chambers of Congress. Some Democratic members of Congress, and most in the opposition Republican Party, believed that Clinton’s giving false testimony and allegedly influencing Lewinsky’s testimony were crimes of obstruction of justice and perjury and thus impeachable offenses. The House of Representatives voted to issue Articles of Impeachment against him which was followed by a 21-day trial in the Senate.” (Wikipedia)

It was a pleasant surprise in December, 1998 when United States Senator Arlen Specter telephoned me at my office.  Such contacts were infrequent and usually brief.  However this time Arlen asked my thoughts concerning the trial before the Senate of President Bill Clinton on charges of obstruction of justice and perjury, in large part Clinton’s actions to conceal his sexual misconduct with Monica Lewinski, an adult female intern.

Just about everybody was incensed at Clinton just as recently public opinion turned against Penn State University over the Jerry Sandusky scandal.    I toyed with my old friend by saying that, according to Jewish tradition, the verdict is very clear.

Arlen took the bait and said something to the effect “Then you believe he should be convicted?” I responded “Oh no, Jewish tradition is clear that we are permitted to bend the truth for the purpose of maintaining family harmony.   The precedent was set by God Almighty when God declined to accurately repeat to Abraham the assertion by Sarah that Abraham was too old to sire a child.”

I was not aware until years later that Arlen met weekly with other high government officials to study Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament).   Obviously I had piqued his interest and provided a new perspective because we must have talked about Clinton’s innocence or guilt for ten to fifteen minutes, which was extraordinary considering his busy schedule.

“All of the Democrats in the Senate voted for acquittal on both the perjury and the obstruction of justice charges. Ten Republicans voted for acquittal for perjury: Chafee (Rhode Island), Collins (Maine), Gorton (Washington), Jeffords (Vermont), Shelby (Alabama), Snowe (Maine), Specter (Pennsylvania), Stevens (Alaska), Thompson (Tennessee), and Warner (Virginia).  Five Republicans voted for acquittal for obstruction of justice: Chafee, Collins, Jeffords, Snowe, and Specter.” (Wikipedia)

A two-thirds majority is required to convict and thus remove a president.  Specter vote prevented the accusers from even achieving 50%.

I don’t know how much influence I had on Arlen.  But nevertheless, I like to think that Bill Clinton’s owes me one.

For years Robert has been despairing over what he perceives as an economic, political and moral decline of the USA, harrowingly reminiscent in the political arena of what occurred during the 120 years leading to the fall of the Roman Republic.

Nineteen year old son Benjamin is taking off the first quarter of his junior year at University of Chicago to work full time (eighty hour per week as it turns out) for the Obama campaign as an organizer in the North West Philadelphia suburbs.  He chooses to work 80 hours per week.  He was home Labor Day for the first day off in over a month.

In reference to his work, Benjamin explained that everyone has a mindset concerning the upcoming election and he can quickly determine what it is by asking: What are the three most important reasons for supporting the candidate of your choice?

Robert responded he supports Barack Obama because 1) He has extricated us from the outlandish  Iraq War and is well on the way to doing the same in Afghanistan;  2)  Through the stimulus of the National Recovery Act, Obama prevented a national and possibly world wide depression and would have had us back on the road to prosperity were it not for the purposeful undermining by the Republican House of his proposed jobs programs; and 3)  As imperfect as it had to be, Obama achieved some meaningful health care reform, something that for over sixty years both Democrat and Republic presidents had sought to do.

Robert went on to deplore the extremism of the right wing of the Republican Party, a party he had belonged to and even helped lead until he switched in 2001 out of disgust with “W” and his cohorts.

Robert foresees an escalating Republican unwillingness to work with others, demonizing of opponents, disrespect for political precedents, the willful destruction of the middle class, a self serving autocracy with a small group of billionaires and ideologues in control, and possibly  someday a second revolutionary war to overthrow them.

It was then that Benjamin looked Robert in the eyes and said “It is for my generation to deal with these problems.”

For the first time in years, Robert felt a heavy load lifted and had hope for the future.

The year was 1986 and the occasion was the Academic Achievements Award program honoring almost two hundred students of J. B McCaskey High School for individual accomplishments and participation in extracurricular activities.

Among those receiving one or more of the scores of acknowledgements were the Watchdog’s daughter, Jennifer Field (Hart) and many of her friends.  What was stunning to the observer was that from a school that was about forty percent African American, that group only received two honors:   African American history and gospel singing.

The one bright star that year, although not part of the evening, was the president of the graduation class was African American Michele White, whose father was a physician who for decades served the needs of the families in the Seventh Ward of Lancaster.  Michele and Jennifer were close friends.

On a weekend morning soon thereafter, Field discussed the lack of minority academic achievements with Melvin R. Allen, LLD, an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Millersville University, an African American, a product of a Philadelphia inner city community, and one who had worked with the Head Start Program sponsored by the federal government.

Within hours, the outline was formulated for a program that would enlist youngsters from disadvantaged backgrounds into an overnight academic camp program to run five weeks each summer for attendees from seventh through ninth grades.   It was to be held on the Millersville College (later University) campus, feature a rigourous academic program,  and taught primarily by college instructors and professors.

The goal was to interest and prepare youngsters, presumably mostly black, for a successful high school career and then entrance into college or university.

The Watchdog agreed to initially fund the program and before the morning was over, Project Forward Leap had been formed.  (Within days Associate Professor Leon Miller, of blessed memory, joined Allen in planning for the new program.)

The program grew to about 200 youngsters annually from several South East Pennsylvania communities and located on three college campuses.  Although there were some changes over the years, for example public school teachers came to be substituted for college faculty and a tutorial program was established to extend assistance for the youngsters through high school, the basic concepts were preserved.

Approximately 2000 students have benefited from the program and an estimated 90% have graduated from high school and gone on to further education.

Allen remains as President and CEO.   For the past fifteen years, Mrs. Ruth Williams, a former head mistress at a private school, has served as a very able and devoted Chair and she and her husband Morris have been the foremost benefactors of the program.

One can read about Project Forward Leap at http://www.projectforwardleap.com/.

It took but three hours to launch Project Forward Leap.   Where there is a strong desire, knowledge, ability, leadership and funding, it doesn’t take long to launch an initiative.