Harold Brooks teaches young people the lessons about education, enterprise, and understanding that he learned growing up during the 1960s in an impoverished neighborhood of St. Louis.
Pushed to excel by his African-American teachers, Brooks worked weekends in the produce department of a grocery store owned by a Jewish shopkeeper, and spent after-school hours in an enrichment program run by Jesuit priests.
Father Pat McCorkle showed the family a film about a Catholic boarding school. The facilities impressed the teen-age boy until he realized that the school lacked an important necessity—teenage girls. "Father," his mother responded, "could you bring the paperwork tomorrow?"
On his last day working at the grocery store, the owner, Harry Kramer, handed Brooks a generous check and said,
"It's just for you. Go out and be successful."
Brooks finished boarding school, studied theater in college, and then auditioned for acting jobs. When marriage and fatherhood required a more stable income, he became a police officer, spending days off and vacations mentoring children. For the last twenty years, Brooks has counseled inner-city foster care youth in Philadelphia.
He also serves as copresident of Operation Understanding, an organization, formed in cooperation with the American Jewish Committee, to promote mutual respect between African-American and Jewish high school students. Brooks recently helped arrange a trip to Senegal and Israel.
