DATE: Wednesday, May 28, 1997               TAG: 9705280002

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B9   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Opinion 

SOURCE: Glenn Allen Scott

                                            LENGTH:   86 lines

AT U.VA., ONE FAMILY'S SUCCESS IS A BEACON TO ALL

Happy news about the University of Virginia's May 18 graduation ceremony, at which 4,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students were awarded diplomas, was upstaged by the news about the shocking balcony collapse on The Lawn. It killed a woman present for the graduation of her grandchild from the U.Va. medical school and injured 18 others.

Most of the 30,000 people on The Lawn were unaware of the balcony horror until after the ceremony. But for all assembled on May 18, graduation day 1997 at Mr. Jefferson's university will be forever linked in memory with the deadly balcony accident.

That will not license us to forget that each graduate - at whatever college, whatever the year - is a success story, all the more so when the story is of success achieved by overcoming daunting obstacles.

Each graduation provides such stories. But few could be more remarkable than the story of the Jeffrieses, two of whom gained diplomas this season from U.Va., two of whom graduated from Temple University in Philadelphia, and one of whom is scheduled to enter Harvard next fall in pursuit of a doctorate in divinity and education - she earned her undergraduate degree at Haverford College in Pennsylvania.

There were 10 children in the Jeffries family. They lived in impoverished North Philadelphia. Their parents instilled in them a belief in education as the surest way up and out of their surroundings. But the parents fell apart when their oldest daughter, age 20, committed suicide in 1985.

Gail Jeffries, the mother, who has a history of depression, drew deeply into herself. The father, Rafiq, a leader in Philadelphia's Nation of Islam and one of the founders of a parochial school, lost his job and became a drug addict.

The nine remaining Jeffries children clung together, striving to help one another rise through education. Evicted from their home in 1993, the Jeffrieses were scattered about Philadelphia. But this spring:

Rafiq Jeffries II received a master's degree in teaching and a bachelor's degree at U.Va on May 18, having double-majored in African-American studies and English.

Rafiq's brother Jeremiah collected a bachelor's degree in psychology from U.Va.; he minored in religion.

A sister, Bayyinah Jeffries, graduated cum laude from Temple with a B.A. degree in elementary education.

Brother Lovell got a master's degree in health care and financial management and a health-administration MBA from Temple.

Before entering U.Va., Rafiq and Jeremiah worked two to four jobs each while attending George Washington Carver High School of Engineering and Science, taking college-level courses at Temple in their senior year. Each racked up a 4.0 grade-point average at Carver.

Still in high school are Mikal, Gabriella and Eva Marie. Brother Lorenzo works to support his mother, whose depression has eased, and her mother. Mikhal lives with his father, who has completed drug rehabilitation.

Some saga, and not yet ended, of course. Rafiq was a campus standout at U.Va., involved in the honor society, student council, residence staff, University Union and the 13 Society, whose members are tapped because they display outstanding service and leadership. Jeremiah, a research assistant at the U.Va. site of a national child-care study, promoted cross-cultural understanding through Mosaic House, a residence hall, and Bridges, a student organization.

Crime and drugs are among the deadly options that too many choose in the mean streets of North Philadelphia and other rotted-out urban areas. The Jeffrieses opted for schooling.

The heartbreaking, ugly stories of America's inner cities are told again and again, in fact and in fiction, on television and in print. The Jeffries' story, which is much like novelist Charles Dickens' tales about poor youths in industrialized Victorian England, is nonetheless a very American rags-to-riches story.

Dickens' characters inhabited the British Isles. But countless American families can identify with the Jefferies' yearning for a striving to reach sunny uplands from the depths of poverty and and its perils. The achievements of the Jeffries children merit not only wide circulation but also repetition. The lessons in it are immediately grasped and true.

Dickens' stories of the pain, the deprivation, the struggles of the disdvantaged in 19th-century England inspired - still inspire - millions.

If the Jeffrieses' overcoming of severe hardship similarly lifts the hearts and sights of the millions who are learning about it through newspapers, magazines and television, lives will be enriched, as will the United States. Especially if the Jefferies' drama touches and motivates the too many young who do not know or believe that America still is, despite its glaring flaws, a beautiful land of immense promise for the energetic, the enterprising, the focused. MEMO: Mr. Scott is associate editor of the editorial page of The

Virginian-Pilot.

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