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Recalling a man who made a difference for minority students

By Dawn Turner Trice, Tribune columnist

February 16, 2009

In elementary school, my friend Thomas and I were nerdy and in constant competition. I graduated No. 1 in our class, and Thomas was No. 3. In sports, if he was among the last to be picked for a team, I was even last-er.

We attended Hyde Park Academy and during our freshman year we rode CTA buses together to and from school, sharing everything in our lives. So imagine my surprise on the day he told me that he would no longer be able to commute with me because he was joining Larry Hawkins' Office of Special Programs and College Preparation at the University of Chicago.

I knew nothing about the Pilot Enrichment Program (PEP), or "The Program," as we called it. But because Thomas was involved, I had to be also. When we arrived in 1981, The Program had been around for more than a decade. The university recruited Hawkins in 1968 to create educational opportunities for talented minority students who might otherwise miss out on college.

Students spent two days a week in their high school and the rest of the week, including many Saturdays, taking intense literature and math classes at the university. The mission was to make us college-ready.

We spent our summers on campus playing tennis and running track to satisfy the Chicago Public Schools gym requirement because we'd be too busy to take formal gym during the school year.

In the fall, we ate lunch in the university's ornate Ida Noyes Hall. We researched assignments in the Regenstein Library.

One English assignment, which I will never forget, was to write a poem echoing Edgar Allen Poe's macabre style and mine began: "Desperately fatigued I walked into the darkness burdened by my weakness\ my peripatetic soul unable to withstand the bleakness\ cried . . ." (Yikes, right?)

A classmate's mother who was a social worker by profession—she would later become my mother-in-law—read my poem unaware of the assignment and sat me down for counseling.

The Program was Larry Hawkins' baby. But, to look at him, he didn't appear to be the nurturing type. He was tall with a ski slope nose and a beard that resembled buckshot. He walked the university's hallowed halls with his hands stuffed in his pockets, parting crowds. I tried to avoid him.

Hawkins had been a celebrated high school basketball coach. He had earned a PhD. And he was equal parts teacher and tyrant as he gave us a PEP talk every morning before classes began and at 3 p.m. when they ended. He reminded us to be polite; to speak in complete, intelligible sentences; to remember that we were on campus for a purpose, and there was no time for foolishness.

By sophomore year, we began taking SAT and ACT prep courses and traveling to universities near and far. He took us to plays and operas and foreign movies. And he taught us to dance.

Although Hawkins was a black man, over 6 feet tall with a sizable girth, he seemed most in his element when he danced the Hava Nagila Jewish folk dance. It was the only time I saw him let his hair down.

Hawkins' students left him and went to Harvard, Princeton, Morehouse, Spelman, Lincoln University and even the University of Chicago. My friend Thomas went to Northwestern. I attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Hawkins died last month at age 78. He was eulogized Feb. 7.

His death has gnawed at me, because I know I didn't really appreciate The Program as an adolescent. Any warm feelings I might have conjured were tamped down by Hawkins' toughness. But I called him a couple of years ago to thank him for all he'd done for people like Thomas and me—whose families were strong but not necessarily equipped to provide a road map to college.

Hawkins played a major role in the trajectory of my life. I let him know that I was grateful.

dtrice@tribune.com