these kids. Like all of the children running around UK's Haggin Field Saturday, Mack Owens grew up the projects.
Mack stares across the green picnic table at Ricky and says he sees himself in
these kids. Like all of the children running around UK's Haggin Field Saturday, Mack Owens grew up the projects.
He faced the temptations so many outsiders just see in movies, but his family stepped in, and in three years he'll walk away from UK with a business degree.
Now he wants kids like Ricky Hill, an eighth-grader who lives in Lexington's Bluegrass-Aspendale housing projects, to see that you don't have to be a drug dealer to succeed.
That's why Owens and about 20 other UK students took an afternoon off from college life to participate in a Field Day with the Bluegrass-Aspendale Teen Center.
"With some of them, they look around and see this dude on the corner making a thou(sand dollars) a day, and they think `Why? Why am I spending all this time in school when he's making a thou a day?' And they want to drop it, but things like this (Field Day), let them meet a whole lot of males who are in school and not dealing," Owens said.
About 30 boys and girls from Aspendale played kickball and volleyball, ran relays and stumbled through three-legged races with more than 20 members of Phi Beta Sigma social fraternity, Zeta Phi Beta social sorority and UK's Black Student Union.
Some of the youths laugh and talked, others remained silent, but that's part of it, said Owens, who acts as an adviser to the fraternity's Louisville-based Big Brother/Little Brother program.
"Some (of the kids) are hesitant to open up to us because its not safe to do that where they're from," he said.
But most of the children opened up by the end of the afternoon, hugging their three-legged race partners, saying thank you and goodbye.
Saying goodbye is the hardest part of community work for Zeta member Cycely Truitt, a telecommunications senior who participated in the Field Day.
"I was tutoring a little boy in math, and he looked at me and said `Are you coming back?' People come and go in their lives," Truitt said. "There aren't many stable people around them."
The desire to do more, however, has prompted the coordinators of Saturday's event to schedule an Easter Egg hunt in a few weeks, and as the students moved the picnic tables back into place several mentioned that they wanted to do this again.
Sigma president Lezell Lowe said that reaction alone made the event successful.
"Anytime you see 30 kids smiling and asking when are we going to do this again, and 20 (students) doing the same thing - you know it was a huge success," Lowe said.
The day began with introductions and a game of Red Light, Green Light. Kickball followed, and after a series of foot races, the entire group sat down to hot dogs, chips and soft drinks.
"I loved the way we interacted with the kids," said Wallice Malone, a communications freshman. "I hope they remember this when they get older."
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