NINETEEN NINETY-NINE WASHINGTONIANS OF THE YEAR: Barbara Patterson and Gwen
Thompson
By Leslie Milk and Ellen Ryan
"The children don't need special services. They just need what everybody else has."
Barbara Patterson and Gwen
Thompson got a call one day from a boy going to a local boarding school with the
help of the Black Student Fund. "I need some money," he said. "I
have to buy a book about a mouse and a man."
Patterson and Thompson were amazed on
two counts--that the boy was about to tackle John Steinbeck and that he seemed
unfazed by the assignment.
The Fund's staff had lined up tutors
to help him. But he never needed them. "If that kid needed help, he would
track those teachers down," Patterson says. "He didn't want to
fail."
Few Black Student Fund scholars fail.
Although the 260 enrolled in 44 schools come from a wide range of backgrounds
and abilities, the Fund has a 99-percent graduation rate. And 95 percent go on
to college; 84 percent earn undergraduate degrees. This year, the Fund's
graduates were accepted to Hampton, Howard, Harvard, and Johns Hopkins
universities, to name a few.
Patterson, the BSF president, and
Thompson, the Fund's director, create a safety net for every student and every
family. They provide whatever it takes--food, clothes, computers, and academic
coaches--to help a child make the grade.
When the Negro Student Fund was
started in 1964, independent schools were virtually all-white. Some of the
barriers faced by minority students are still present--in the name of
"tradition."
Patterson and Thompson are working to
change the environments in independent schools by recruiting more
African-American teachers and teaching administrators.
And they are not shy about speaking
up. Their good-cop (Thompson), bad-cop (Patterson) routine has helped many a
school administrator to focus on "minor details" like applications
that ask about parents' education, or college counselors who treat minority
students differently, or free meal programs that single out kids in need.
Patterson and Thompson are just a
tough on the kids. Thompson points at signs on the meeting-room walls: DON'T
FEEL THREATENED, DON'T BE AFRAID, AND PLEASE DON'T WHINE.
"We don't promise them anything
but hard work," say Patterson and Thompson. "They know our
expectations are high." And for the past 36 years, Black Student Fund kids
have met those expectations and then some.
Copyright 1999 by The Washingtonian Magazine. Used with permission.
