THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, October 17, 1995 TAG: 9510170029
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ELIZABETH SIMPSON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 122 lines
THE QUESTION journalist Alex Kotlowitz asked the 10-year-old Chicago boy was not a tough one.
``What do you want to be when you grow up?''
But the answer he got gave him insight into what it's like to grow up in a bullet-ridden housing project.
``If I grow up, I'd like to be a bus driver,'' Lafeyette Rivers responded.
Not when, but if. At the age of 10, Rivers was doubting his prospects for adulthood.
Kotlowitz returned to the boy's public housing project in Chicago's West Side two years later to chronicle the life of Lafeyette and his younger brother, Pharoah. He followed the boys for two years, writing a series of articles for The Wall Street Journal that won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. He later expanded the articles into a best-selling book - ``There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America'' - which was made into a TV movie starring Oprah Winfrey. The book, published by Doubleday in 1991, also won the Carl Sandburg Literary Arts Award.
Kotlowitz will bring the lessons he learned from the two brothers to Norfolk during a free lecture Thursday at the Norfolk Waterside Marriott. The lecture is being sponsored by Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters and Family Services of Tidewater.
Now working on his second book, 40-year-old Kotlowitz speaks across the country about the effects of violence on children.
``I have trust that the American populace believes in a sense of fairness and justice,'' Kotlowitz said in a telephone interview from his Chicago home. ``The challenge is to show what exists in these children's lives is unfair and unjust.''
When Kotlowitz met the Rivers brothers, he was writing an essay to go with some photographs a friend had taken. His interview with the boys lasted only a few hours, but he walked away rattled by the violence that formed the daily fabric of the children's lives:
The shootings that erupted in broad daylight. The drug dealing in the stairwells and vacant rooms of the aging complex. The gang leaders who dominated the neighborhood with threats and machine guns.
The violence the Rivers brothers had seen made them look far beyond their ages. The boys described in vivid but unemotional detail the various killings they'd witnessed.
When Kotlowitz approached the boys' mother, LaJoe Rivers, a few years later about writing some articles on children growing up in Henry Horner Homes project, she liked the idea.
``But you know, there are no children here,'' she told him. ``They've seen too much to be children.''
Kotlowitz figured he'd come up against resistence and distrust when he began spending time in the projects, but he also expected to find a sense of community.
That became one of his greatest disappointments.
He found just as much distrust directed among people within the community as toward him. ``One of the things that most surprised me in doing my research, and still disturbs me, was the unraveling of communities,'' he said.
It didn't take long for Kotlowitz to understand why the children seemed depressed and hopeless. In one two-week period, six people were shot in the complex.
The children had become expert at crouching on the floor of their apartments, away from the windows. They knew to hit the ground when they heard gunfire while outside. And they knew the drill of going to funerals.
Even going to the store to spend $8 in birthday money became a dangerous ordeal for 12-year-old Lafeyette and his 9-year-old cousin, Denise.
``Suddenly gunfire erupts nearby,'' Kotlowitz wrote in his book. ``The frightened children fall to the ground. `Hold your head down,' snaps Lafeyette, covering Denise with her pink nylon jacket.
``As the shooting continues, the two crawl through the dirt toward home. When they finally make it inside, Lafeyette discovers that all but 50 cents of his birthday money has trickled from his pockets.''
Kotlowitz sometimes spent four or five days a week with the brothers. He talked with them in their rooms, shot hoops with them, hung out with them on the street. What he saw and the stories the boys told him will stay with him a long time.
``They have enriched my life and my experiences,'' Kotlowitz said, ``but there are also things that darkened a part of my soul. I experienced things that horrified me and dispirited me.''
The success of the Kotlowitz's book, though, has given him a forum to work for changes in neighborhoods like Henry Horner and in the lives of children like Lafeyette and Pharoah.
In his lectures, he tries to convey several messages to the public. One is that people need to fight against the dismantlement of social programs for the poor. A second is that the country needs to work to increase job opportunities for people. Not just any jobs but jobs with a sense of future to them. Kotlowitz also sees elementary schools as important neighborhood resources that could be expanded to help rebuild communities.
``There's a myth that elementary schools are not working, but what I found was that they are safe places; places of order, cleanliness; places where kids want to be,'' he says. ``We need to find a way to keep them open afternoons and evenings. And have counselors available for children and parents.''
He hopes his lectures will help more people understand the children in ``The Other America,'' places that exist in cities across the country.
The single most important thing he believes people can do is get involved in the life of a child who lives in such a neighborhood.
``It's important for people to get personally engaged. Tutoring. Befriending someone. Volunteering at the Boys and Girls Club. You have the potential to make a difference in the life of one child. And you can't spend time in these neighborhoods and not become convinced that we, as a society, need to do right by these children.''
Kotlowitz has done this. At the risk of being accused of unobjective journalism, Kotlowitz befriended the Rivers brothers, buying them shoes and taking them on weekend outings while doing the articles. Later, he used money he got from awards and proceeds from the book to help send the two brothers to private school.
He still keeps in touch with the Rivers family, who have since moved out of public housing, but he doesn't discuss their lives, except for what appears in the book, out of respect for their privacy.
``I know there are people who will say that I became too involved with the family, that I broke my pact as a journalist to remain detached and objective,'' he writes in a chapter on his reporting methods at the end of his book. ``But in the end, I had to remind myself that I was dealing with children. For them - and for me - our friendship was foremost. Anything I could do to assist them I did - and will continue to do.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
by CNB