Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 2, 1994 TAG: 9405020076
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Two years ago, Ben Poindexter's future was shimmering out ahead of him like a distant view on a hot summer's day - the details couldn't be made out but there was no doubt it would be warm and bright.
He was going to college. He was armed not only with that mystical quality called talent, but also with brains and a personality that quickly endears him to strangers.
Poindexter tracked into a storm, however, and - though he has no doubt he'll achieve professional success as a musician - his course is less certain today.
The way Poindexter tells it, he has been the victim of a series of misfortunes that have sidetracked him from the goals he expected to meet.
Some friends and mentors say Poindexter bears some responsibility for stalling his career.
In either case, a few wrong choices and some bad luck have this 25-year-old trying to figure out where he's going next.
\ Twelve-year-old Ben Poindexter arrived in Roanoke in 1980 when his mother moved from New Jersey to study at National Business College.
The family moved often and owned a series of houses in the Roanoke Valley, as well as one in Northern Virginia.
Poindexter started school at Fishburn Park Elementary, went to Ruffner Junior High, Northside Junior High, Woodrow Wilson Junior, Patrick Henry High, Blacksburg High and then back to Patrick Henry for 11th grade.
That year he started attending once-a-month camps in Philadelphia to perform with the Crossmen Drum and Bugle Corps - one of a few elite private musical corps that train budding musicians and compete with each other in regional and national shows.
After that, "I lost interest in academics," Poindexter said. He dropped out of school during his senior year.
By 1989, he had moved to Philadelphia, working a series of part-time jobs to pay the fees required to play with the Crossmen Corps.
The corps was the center of his life. He became captain of the drum line, eventually joined the Percussive Arts Society and met a number of professional drummers and other percussionists.
But his personal life took a detour. In 1990, he was convicted in Roanoke of assault and battery after an altercation with a girlfriend and received a suspended sentence of 90 days in jail.
However, his musical career stayed on track. Though obviously talented, Poindexter was advised to go to college to get more training. The place to go was in Kentucky - Morehead State University - one of two or three universities with national reputations for training percussionists.
Poindexter came back to Roanoke from Pennsylvania in August 1990, passed the GED test to receive his high-school equivalency diploma and took the necessary college entrance exams. He also passed the requisite audition and started college in January 1991, aided in part by the first of two scholarships he would receive from the Friends of the Roanoke Symphony, an orchestra support group.
He hadn't been at school long when a professor nominated him to audition for the Walt Disney World All-American College Band. He was selected and that summer played at various sites around Epcot in Florida's Walt Disney World.
He was in Orlando for 12 weeks, making money and contacts that would pay off later.
Poindexter went back to Morehead State and completed the fall semester of '91. Frank Otis, a percussion professor at Morehead State, called Poindexter a "capable person," "a respectful young man" and a "talented percussionist."
But things outside school were consistently distracting him from fulfilling his potential, Otis said, particularly money troubles.
Otis was the person Poindexter called when he was arrested and jailed briefly on charges of bouncing a check.
It was only a $15 check, Poindexter said recently, and "I just blew it off." He acknowledged that was a mistake, but insisted the incident was no big deal. He paid the debt, he said.
He didn't return for the 1992 spring semester at Morehead State "for financial reasons." He owed the school $600.
He had taken out a $1,300 loan, with his mother as the borrower of record, he said. "For one reason or another, all that money got spent," he said, and the school was never paid.
Though Poindexter says the money never went through his hands, his grades were "in limbo" because of the debt and he couldn't go back to school.
He went off to play with another drum-and-bugle corps for a few months - this time in New York - and even performed in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.
After the parade, he called a woman he'd met at Disney World who taught drums at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. She set him up for an audition for a scholarship, which he received in January of 1993.
He went to work with another old Disney contact, supplying wardrobes for various Disney productions and other Orlando attractions. He wanted to venture out on his own in hopes of making more money, so she helped him contact a T-shirt supplier so he could set up his own business.
Since he wasn't planning to start school again until the fall of '93, he decided to head back to the Northeast, maybe to play one more season with one of the drum-and-bugle corps. He got off the train in Richmond, however, where his father lives, and ended up coming to Roanoke to visit his mother as well.
He decided he'd skip the corps and just set up his T-shirt business in Roanoke. He began selling shirts at the corner of 17th Street and Orange Avenue.
It was there, the afternoon of Aug. 2, that he was sidetracked again when he was assaulted by three men who drove up to his T-shirt stand.
"I started to walk up to the car, and before I knew it they were attacking me. I was pistol-whipped, stomped. I had hematomas on both arms, my nose was broken."
Then he heard a gunshot. "My mom started yelling for help," and the men fled. Poindexter says at first he thought he was shot, then he went berserk, chasing the car and taking down its license number.
Poindexter ended up in the hospital - worried that his drumming career was in jeopardy from the damage to his wrists and arms.
Though the men were convicted of assault and ordered to pay restitution, Poindexter has yet to see any money. After losing the only $200 to his name during the assault, he was counting on the restitution to get him back on his feet and back to school, Poindexter said.
Joel Branscom, the assistant commonwealth's attorney who prosecuted the case, said he advised Poindexter that he should go on to school and that the commonwealth would pay for transportation back to Roanoke when he was needed to testify at the trials of his attackers.
But Poindexter decided not to go to school. By September, he could not live with friends or relatives, so he turned to Justice House.
\ Self-described as a community of the poor and a refuge for the homeless, Justice House took Poindexter in.
At first, he and Justice House founder and leader David Hayden got along fine, Poindexter said. But later the two butted heads over policies - and personalities - at the apartment building.
Poindexter says he was depressed by the beating, by career-threatening damage to one wrist and by being diverted from school yet another time.
While he was emotionally down, he says, a friend introduced him to crack cocaine. "I was adamantly against it," in the past, he says.
Hayden later accused Poindexter of having "a crack problem," Poindexter said.
In the meantime Poindexter wasn't having any success keeping work. He lost the T-shirt business after the assault and was fired from a restaurant job when he left work early to play an engagement with a band, he said.
He lost another job after having what he described as a "post-traumatic stress syndrome" episode when he saw men he thought looked like his attackers. He was so upset he just walked away from work and didn't go back that day, he said. He was later fired.
Disagreements also continued at Justice House, and Hayden sent Poindexter a note saying he was being evicted for "failure to meet your financial support agreement" and "disturbing other tenants, loud and obnoxious behaviors." Residents are expected to pay according to their ability, and Poindexter had been paying $75 a month.
He was given seven days to vacate his apartment.
Poindexter denied the allegations and refused to leave. Eviction papers were served on him and a judge ordered him out.
Today, he's found temporary lodging, but isn't sure what will happen next.
He said he believed the scholarship at the Orlando college will still be available to him, but he doesn't have the money to travel and worries about moving without a job waiting for him.
Beth Radock, the percussion professor who helped Poindexter get the scholarship there, now says that dream is over.
Poindexter has "incredible ability . . . great chops," she said, but he just didn't "get his act together." After arranging for the scholarships, she was upset that she never heard from Poindexter when he didn't show up for school last fall.
Poindexter is not one to become too discouraged, though. He always sees alternatives.
He's explored the possibility of joining the Marine Corps to be a bandsman. "I miss the discipline of the drum-and-bugle corps," he said.
Or maybe he'll go to the Art Institute of Philadelphia, which he has contacted about an associate of arts program in music business.
He's sure something will turn up: "Things happen for a reason. Some people are worse off than me."
Keywords:
PROFILE
by CNB