ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, September 29, 1996 TAG: 9609300060
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DIANE STRUZZI STAFF WRITER
They are not the stereotypes. But they could have been.
Vida Harris is a believer who's convinced that hard work will get her a house and a business of her own.
Melvin Journiette considers himself a rebel because he defies people's assumptions about him.
Felicia White is a motivator who speaks from experience and understands that no one ever promised life would be easy.
Public assistance has given all three a leg up and a way out.
Each has received a $1,000 college scholarship from the Roanoke Redevelopment and Housing Authority. Each has used the money to buy a computer and offset college expenses.
Trying is a lot harder than doing nothing, they say. But the payoff can be great.
"If something was to happen to me today, my son wouldn't have anything," Harris, 24, remembers thinking before she went on public assistance and decided to go back to school.
"I realized every day that came and gone I should have been preparing for the future. I know in order for him to have what I want him to have, and more than I had, I have to work for it."
Says Journiette, 23: "People waste their lives worrying about things they have no control over. You have to work with the hand you're dealt."
The believer: Faith in 'something I can't see'
Vida Harris looks to her 4-year-old son, Norman, for strength. The boy has a smile that inspires, a mischievousness that challenges patience and an insight that amazes his mother.
"I think I've learned more than I've taught," she said of her relationship with her son. "Patience. Sacrifice. Everything has to center around Norman."
Harris got pregnant a year out of high school. She was in Georgia, living with her mother. After Norman was born they moved to Roanoke to live with a sister. Harris got a job and thought she'd be able to make it.
But then the relationship with her sister disintegrated and she found herself, along with her son, at the Rescue Mission in Southeast Roanoke.
"I know anything that doesn't kill me makes me stronger," she said.
It did make her stronger.
She applied for assisted housing and got her high school equivalency diploma.
"The city was going to provide day care and transportation," she said. "I figured I had no excuse."
Now, she is taking advantage of college courses that the Housing Authority offers through Virginia Western Community College. The classes this semester - computer keyboarding and life skills - are taught at a community room at the Lansdowne Housing Development.
She wants to own a restaurant one day, specializing in food for diabetics. She wants to own a house with a yard where Norman can play.
"The definition of faith is to believe in something I cannot see. My restaurant. My white picket fence," she said.
"Lots of times the media's big thing is to portray [welfare mothers] as a statistic and sometimes [the women] get into this thing that, 'I'm just a statistic, I can't do any better.' If I was going to be a statistic I was going to make it."
But reality is always right around the corner.
When she quit her job because someone else got a promotion she felt she deserved, she also lost Norman's day care. The parent must be working to get day care from the Housing Authority, she said.
"I know I'm allowed to make mistakes," she said. "I know the system has its glitches, but I'm hopeful."
The rebel: 'Doing what people don't expect'
Melvin Journiette grew up at the corner of Burrell Street and Gandy Drive Northwest. It was a time when the news media portrayed the Lincoln Terrace Housing Development as a drug-infested war zone.
But Journiette had expectations that transcended the hopelessness the media saw in the projects. He sought out role models like his teachers. He took the advice of one who told him to stop goofing off and study.
"I didn't have anybody I knew who did a professional job," he said. So in deciding what he wanted to become, Journiette looked to his childhood for direction. He remembered building dams in nearby Washington Park. He thought of Interstate 581, which hemmed in his neighborhood, creating a barrier between it and downtown.
Infrastructure reflects society's thoughts, priorities and hopes, he said. Engineering became a natural career choice for him.
After graduating from William Fleming High School in 1991, he entered Virginia Tech with the help of eight scholarships. Now he's majoring in engineering and urban affairs.
"I come across as someone you wouldn't expect coming from the projects," he said. "If you have assumptions and a paradox, the paradox throws into question your assumption."
Journiette now lives in Roanoke County and is working in the city's engineering department as part of a cooperative with Virginia Tech.
When he talks of his old neighborhood, he lists the kids on his block who made it. One of them became an accountant, another a biologist, another a nurse.
"We didn't know we were poor," he said. "We didn't allow it to overwhelm us."
"I consider myself a rebel. I'm rebelling by doing what people don't expect."
Role model: 'Raised to not settle for less'
5 Felicia White never doubted she was going to college. But then she discovered she was pregnant.
"I thought my dreams were smashed, torn to smithereens," said White, 24.
Her son, Kenneth-Christopher, is 5 now. White keeps a regimented schedule of work, internship and school. She is there when her son comes home. They spend some time together, and then it's off to her mother's before White begins her night job as a counselor at Total Action Against Poverty's transitional living center.
Nearly four years ago, when her son was a toddler and she had no money, she met with a social worker about public assistance. The social worker asked White: If she could go back to school, would she?
White did. She started taking classes at Virginia Western Community College and moved into a government subsidized duplex. Then she started investigating her options. She didn't wait for people to call her. Instead, she rang up the public housing authority, school and acquaintances with questions about scholarships and career opportunities.
By the time she graduated from Radford University last spring with a bachelor's degree in social work, she had an impressive resume: She was a member of Gov. George Allen's citizen empowerment commission that dealt with welfare issues; she had addressed groups about poverty and public assistance; and she had done international research on social issues, even meeting South African President Nelson Mandela's campaign manager.
"If you look out for yourself, people are more willing to look out for you," she said.
But getting there was by no means easy. It took support - from her mother, friends and social workers.
"So many times I called and said, 'I'm tired and I want to quit,''' she said. "Sometimes it did get frustrating. And if you're not doing anything, there's no struggle at all. I was raised to not settle for less. I didn't want a check ruling our lives. What role model would I be if I let the system dictate our lives?"
She doesn't consider herself a success just yet. But she's on her way.
While she's no longer dependent on AFDC, she still relies on transitional Medicaid. She views the system as a helping hand pushing her forward, not keeping her down.
"[But] just because you're trying to make a change for yourself, that's not necessarily good for everyone - like the old boyfriend who wants to keep you down or others in the neighborhood who say you're uppity," she said. "It helps when you get around people who are motivated."
White has become a motivator herself. She was the featured speaker at the Housing Authority's scholarship awards banquet this year. She wants to be an advocate for those who need a nudge to keep going. And she is planning to start work on a master's degree in social work.
"I was lucky because people took an interest in me," she said. "But none of that would have mattered if I didn't care where I was going. I wanted a better life for me and my son."
LENGTH: Long : 155 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: NHAT MEYER/Staff. 1. Vida Harris and her son, Norman, 4,by CNBsmile from their Roanoke home. Vida is earning her college degree
through a housing program. 2. Melvin Journiette, 23, grew up in
Lincoln Terrace. He is earning a degree in civil engineering and
urban affairs at Virginia Tech. 3. Felicia White and her son,
Kenneth-Christopher, 5, hug outside their Roanoke home. White
currently works at Total Action Against Poverty. color.