The Me Generation Looks Beyond Itself

One young woman carried a handmade quilt. Another had a vial of seawater. A young man carried a toy raccoon, striped and plushy. There were 30 people, and each one was asking to become a CORO Foundation Fellow. They spent the day balanced on a sword’s edge, while they hung out their dreams and their desires and put their ethical and spiritual values on the table for a detached judging by a jury of strangers.

They carried these wildly disparate items because they had been told to bring something that had significance for them. It was a prop for them to hold so that the judges could get their first introduction to the candidates. They looked as if they had come from a highly bizarre yard sale.

I haven’t felt such adrenaline in the atmosphere since the last time I was a judge, and it doesn’t get any easier. To hear the suppressed tremor in a voice, to know the feeling of their clammy hands, even the ones who affect a slouching detachment, is to bleed internally. I want to give them all cookies and milk and say, “There, there, now, now.”

You will be relieved that I did no such thing. A young woman who sat beside me sternly explained to me that I was a judge and must behave like one.

This is the fourth time I have engaged in this exercise in masochism. I am, as you may have noticed, a slow learner. My problem is that I believe in the CORO program and the people it produces.

CORO is an arrangement of letters that has no meaning, a nonprofit, nonpartisan foundation that offers a nine-month internship from September to June, with stints in business, labor, government, political offices and campaigns. The emphasis is on public service.

CORO has offices and programs in Los Angeles, St. Louis, San Francisco and New York. Twelve applicants are chosen for each program from hundreds of applications so that when they get to selection day, there are application letters and essays bulging the discard file.

There were 58 judges this year, about two for each scared supplicant. The judges are academics, business professionals, foundation executives, government workers, legislative top staffers. I have never known why they asked me to be a judge. At first, I thought it was because I make one of the world’s great tamale pies. Also, when they first asked me, Doug was still alive and we lived in a big house that would hold all the interns, as they were called then.

But they haven’t asked me to feed them for years. Either they pay more than the token subsistence they used to, which would be gobbled up by about four days’ parking fees in present Los Angeles lots, or what I have long suspected is true. The CORO board, in solemn conclave, having nailed down 57 citizens who are shining with rectitude and bowed down with well-deserved honors to act as judges, seeks one more judge to make it 58, about the guest-staff ratio in a fine hotel. Then one of the board says, “Remember that redheaded woman who never understood the scoring system? Let’s get her. God knows it will show we are not intellectual elitists.”

And once again last week, I swallowed the sweet bait of flattery. The first thing we were told was to please write legibly on the tally sheets. I can’t write legibly because of years of taking notes that I alone have to read. By this time, I was totally intimidated and ready to leave but, as always, I was so delighted with the candidates, I decided to stay to see how they would comport themselves. This year was a vintage year and I say that whenever I see a candidates’ class.

One man was from Ghana, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate with a degree in electrical engineering and several years of field experience.

A beautiful young woman with skin the color of sun shining through honey and an analytical mind was a graduate of Yale University. Her father is head of the Los Angeles Urban League.

A young man who is in the MBA program at Claremont University was bright, balanced, blessed with humor and does a very good dog bark, which he displayed in one of the skits the beleaguered candidates presented at the end of the day. His father is a Nobel Prize winner. That will not weigh too heavily on the candidate, nor will its distinguished import submerge him. Not as long as he remembers that it is also useful to able to bark like a dog and make people laugh.

One woman who is a graduate of Princeton and of two years with a prestigious investment banking company in New York wants to be a CORO fellow.

So does a young man who played offensive tackle at Notre Dame and whose father is an executive of the Teamsters Union for the 11 Western states.

One Stanford graduate just came back from two years in Africa with the Peace Corps, offering a clear beam of hope that the Me Generation has lived out its hour.

A pretty young woman with a Gypsy fall of black curls came from Iran, grew up in Ft. Wayne, Ind., where her father is a professor of industrial psychology, and speaks five languages, including Portuguese.

I am glad I didn’t have to do the first winnowing out, nor the final selection, which is done by CORO teams from all over the country.

The winners have received their letters by now. I wish them Godspeed. May they hold their banners high. They have already shown they can win through. It is as gallant as being chosen to be a knight of King Arthur’s Round Table, whether it was real or a tale told in a mist.

To the new Fellows: The judges and the CORO people have given their best. And so will you. Don’t forget a lot of high-test people have preceded you in the 45 years since W. Donald Fletcher founded CORO. He was there on Saturday to share his 80th birthday. He has led dozens of young people to pinnacles of great accomplishment. Follow with pride.