Blacks as Role Models: An Up-to-Date Calendar : Images: UC Irvine official says publication will ‘allow us to really highlight a group of heroes for our young people.’

Kenneth Vernon hopes his participation in the 1990 Orange County Black Role Model Calendar will help black youngsters better understand their own potential. He also hopes it will help change some preconceived notions about blacks.

“You see so many negative stereotypes about blacks that I hope this shows that not all blacks are on welfare. Not all blacks are uneducated. Not all blacks don’t have a strong male image in the home,” says the 30-year-old geologist, who has a 4-year-old son.

Vernon is one of 14 nominees included in the calendar, which was created by a group of Orange County black businesswomen. The 12 nominees who receive the most votes from members of the community attending Selection Night today at the Irvine Marriott will be featured on the 12 months of the calendar. The other two will appear in the year-at-a-glance section. The calendar will also include biographical material on each man as well as highlighted black history dates.

Nominees range in age from 20 to 58 and include entrepreneurs, a former FBI agent, a mortgage banker, a salesman and a young man who made his way from foster home care to studies at Stanford University.

Some are married. Some are single. Most have a college degree, though one of the nominees created a successful business in spite of only an eighth-grade education.

The nominees include: Howard Wesley Anderson of Anaheim Hills, 42, a senior special investigator with Rockwell; Darrell L. Armstrong, 20, Anaheim, a Stanford University student in public policy and economics; Nathan T. Edwards, 43, Costa Mesa, owner of Austin Diversified Productions, Costa Mesa; Ronald Harding, 48, Yorba Linda, owner of Ron Harding Moving & Storage, Anaheim; Ottis Lenior, 43, Huntington Beach, a district sales manager with GTE; James D. McClellan, 42, Orange, a salesman with Digital Equipment Corp. in Irvine, and Robert Vernon McDonald, 42, Anaheim Hills, a marketing executive with United Stationers.

Others are: James Edward Myers, 49, Anaheim Hills, insurance investigator and owner of the Vargas Co.; Leo Parker, 40, Tustin, owner of People Security, Santa Ana; Lionel Punchard, 37, El Toro, owner of First Republic Mortgage Corp., Santa Ana; Patrick Rhodes, 52, Lake Forest, an account manager with Digital Equipment Corp.; Anthony Romano, 58, Anaheim Hills, a realtor with ERA, Anaheim; Ron Shirley, 33, a credit manager with Xerox Corp. in Santa Ana, and Vernon, who works for Clayton Environment Consultants Inc. in Cypress and lives in Rialto.

The calendar was the brainchild of a committee headed by Sandra Lynch of S.K. Lynch Productions in Santa Ana. Lynch and her associates came up with the idea after a speech by Thomas A. Parham, a psychologist and director of the Career Planning and Placement Center at UC Irvine.

According to Lynch, Parham challenged members of the Black Business Alliance of Orange County to do something positive to change the lack of visibility of black male role models in the community.

The black male role models are out there, Lynch found. It’s just a matter of taking the time to notice them. She says the calendar is making a statement that even in Orange County--where blacks represent only 1.9% of the population, according to Parham--they were easily able to find more than enough role models.

Sports and entertainment figures were purposely excluded from the calendar. The difficulty with seeing only those people as role models is that it limits the scope of what black youngsters are encouraged to aspire to, says Parham, who assisted Lynch’s committee with the project.

He says the calendar will “allow us to really highlight a group of heroes for our young people. It allows our young people to believe in heroes who are important and significant, not because they can bounce a basketball or because they’re an entertainer, but because they embody those characteristics that are most highly valued in the black community.”

“A role model to me,” Parham says, “is some individual who can provide for and protect his family. A role model to me is somebody who puts his community and his group and his family before himself. A role model to me is somebody with a strong religious orientation. A role model to me is somebody . . . who goes to work every day . . . tries to advance himself and makes money and provides for himself in an honest way.

“It’s important to understand really what heroes are. Heroes are nothing more than symbols, and as symbols, what they represent are the possibilities and potentialities for young people to do the same thing.”

The calendars will be available in early December and will retail for $8.95 each. Distribution plans are still in progress, however. Lynch hopes to be able to sell them in convenience stores and also to make them available to students through some corporate sponsorships. And she is negotiating with a soft-drink manufacturer who is considering using the calendars as a promotional item.

The calendar is a for-profit endeavor for Lynch’s committee, but she says they will be lucky to break even this year.

Lynch’s fellow calendar committee members, who selected the nominees, include: Thelma Cole, owner of Hair Castles, Santa Ana; Joyce Jordan of El Toro, owner of Office Services Unlimited; Marlene Dyce of Westminster, a fashion coordinator; Kathleen Barros of Moreno Valley, president of Access International in Riverside; Gwen McClellan of Orange, a sales representative with Digital Equipment Corp., Irvine; Ernesta Wright of Anaheim, who works for Elite Professional Services, and Tanya Ratcliff of Orange, owner of Tantra Enterprises Wordsmiths.

Lynch hopes the 1990 calendar will be the first of many for Orange County--and that the idea will spread to other areas.

And Kenneth Vernon hopes that people will understand what the calendar project is really all about.

“I guess what I’m trying to say,” Vernon explains, “is that I’m not taking any particular pride in the fact that I’m a black geologist or a white geologist. I just want to get across that it doesn’t matter what color you are. It matters how hard you strive for what you want to achieve, and color shouldn’t be a barrier towards your goals.

“I don’t want to be recognized as a black geologist. I want to be recognized as a good geologist who happens to be black. And if that is significant to black kids who are considering vocations, well then, I think that’s good.”

Nancy Jo Hill is a regular contributor to Orange County Life.