I fully believed in its mission it was totally congruent with that of LIFE: to maximize the power of education as the building block for equality and the betterment of America and humankind. Powell Center for Leadership and Service to prepare new generations of publicly engaged leaders from previously underserved populations. Powell, his commitment to education led to his creation of both America’s Promise, an alliance of nonprofit, businesses, and government organizations dedicated to improving the lives of young people, and The Colin L. This is what spurred me to establish LIFE, Leaders in Furthering Education, which has provided scholarships for more than 100,000 underserved children to go to summer camp, and to students of color at City College of New York wanting to become primary care physicians in impoverished neighborhoods.įor Gen. His father was a shipping clerk, mine was in the auto parts business.īoth our parents believed in the power of education, instilling in us the conviction that it was the greatest equalizer in bridging social, economic, racial, ethnic, gender and cultural divides that plague our country.
His mother and mine both worked - his as a seamstress, mine as a teacher. It was grounded in our similar upbringing as children of the Depression in urban, often overlooked, communities - he in Harlem and the South Bronx neighborhoods of New York, and me in West Philadelphia. Our mutual dedication to education was deeper than that. More importantly, he and I shared a profound commitment to education - with the memorial, it meant ensuring that current and future generations of people, from our elected officials to society at large, fully grasp the human costs of war. Powell both approachable and an ardent supporter, always willing to provide advice to me, a Washington novice, on navigating what is often a bureaucratic maze. Although that tour of duty was cut short, he returned to Vietnam as a major in 1968, and survived a helicopter crash while single-handedly rescuing three others from the burning wreckage.ĭuring the many years I was raising the funds to build the memorial, I found Gen. As an Army captain serving in Vietnam, he was wounded stepping on a punji stake. Because he had experienced the ravages of battles, he understood the need to recognize those who continued to bear the scars of war long after the fighting on the battlefield ended.
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