Genesis of a Dream : As 6th-graders, they were offered college money if they stayed in school. Where are they now?

Cecil Harrison Jr. wanted to be a dancer. Not the kind who spins delicate ballet moves, but someone cool like M.C. Hammer. “He probably wanted to be a dancer most of his life,” says one of his friends.

Cecil also wanted to get away from gangs. Growing up on the streets of South-Central Los Angeles, he feared getting caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Two years ago, the Dorsey High School student told Newsweek magazine that he dreamed of leaving his neighborhood and moving to Canada. “I’m always looking over my shoulder here,” he said.

Neither of Cecil’s wishes came true. Last November, he was killed by a gang member as he walked home from his girlfriend’s house. A carful of youths pulled up and challenged him because one of them was seeing the same woman.

Cecil, who didn’t belong to a gang, did not respond to their taunts. He was shot in the neck, yet he managed to run the two blocks home, where he collapsed and died in his front yard. He was 16. His 19-year-old assailant faces sentencing this week.

Cecil’s slaying tarnished another dream. He was in the Class of ‘87, one of 207 South-Central sixth-graders promised college scholarships if they graduated from high school. The students, who came from Holmes Avenue and 52nd Street elementary schools, were part of the philanthropic wave inspired by entrepreneur Eugene M. Lang, who offered college scholarships to a group of Harlem schoolchildren in 1981.

In Los Angeles, Win Rhodes-Bea, the granddaughter of a turn-of-the-century oil magnate, joined the I Have a Dream Foundation in sponsoring the Holmes and 52nd Street students. Since 1987, other benefactors have adopted classes and expanded the program to 475.

To earn the $4,000 scholarships, all the students have to do is get through the six years and obtain to their diplomas. That means keeping their grades up and surviving the usual assortment of teen-age Angst. It also means making their way past drugs, sex, gangs and money problems.

The Class of ’87 is near the finish now, most of them entering 11th grade at one of 50 local schools. At least 82% of the original group is still in school. (The graduation rate is 59.1% among all students who entered 10th grade in the Los Angeles Unified School District Class of 1990.)

Of the other Dream students, four are known to be dead, 10 are known to have dropped out and 23 cannot be located.

Educators say the program is making a difference. “A lot of these students live in gang-infested neighborhoods,” says Ernie Chavez, vice principal of Verbum Dei High School in Watts.

“Through field trips and meeting the program sponsors, they get to see a different type of world. Without this program a lot of them would follow their peers. With this program they are able to see they do not have to take that route. They can advance through education.”

The program uses several tactics to keep students in school. The scholarships are one incentive.

“I ask them, if they had $4,000 would they willingly throw it in the street?” says Sheila Simon, a dropout prevention counselor at Manual Arts High School. “And I tell them that if they don’t get through school, that’s what they’ll be doing.”

Another major factor, especially to some who can’t quite focus on college right now, are the foundation’s project coordinators--the drill sergeant-mentors who help the teen-agers get through school.

Each coordinator is assigned to 40 students. They talk to parents. They talk to the schools. And, most important, they scold, cajole and plead with the students--whatever works.

It isn’t always easy keeping the students focused. Some are gifted, others are low achievers. Many are being raised by single parents who can’t afford to send a child to college. Some face the pressure of being role models for their siblings or being the first in their families to go beyond high school.

To bring the students through all of this, coordinators are available almost 24 hours a day. Besides tutoring and counseling, they provide everything from eyeglasses and money for clothes to referrals to Alcoholics Anonymous.

That kind of close support helped Cecil Harrison Jr.

“In the eighth grade his clothes were changing,” says Myrtle Middleton, executive director of the Dream foundation. “He wasn’t absorbed in the gang, but he looked like a wanna-be. We brought him and his mother and dad together and said, ‘What is it you want?’ And he said, ‘I want to be a dancer.’ That’s when he really made a commitment to dancing.”

Middleton says she took Harrison to ballets and to the Dance Theatre of Harlem. She gave him rides so he could make two appearances on “Soul Train,” where he wore the parachute pants favored by Hammer. They also went to auditions.

“He always danced,” she says. “He just loved movement. . . . And he would always practice. Mostly by himself.”

Cecil Harrison says the foundation helped his son “know the value of going to school and of getting an education. And by having all those activities (such as field trips) it showed him the difference in how the other half was living. He wanted to live the way the program was teaching him to live . . .. (He saw there was) more to life than what he found in the neighborhood.”

For instance, Harrison says, his son transferred to Dorsey after a few days at Fremont High School because he thought Fremont had too much gang activity.

After Cecil’s death, Harrison, a custodian, and his wife, Lisa, took an even bigger step to get away from neighborhood violence, moving to Corona.

“I have another son (Zachary) 11 years old,” Harrison says. “I didn’t want him to grow up in that environment. The same thing might happen to him.”

The Harrisons had great hopes for Cecil and tried to help him succeed. “He was a pretty fair student, but I had to stay on him,” his father says. “Sometimes when kids go through changes, they get to losing confidence. I had to stay on him to make sure he didn’t slack up or start falling back.”

Outside of school, Harrison says, his son succeeded in many areas. He sanded down and repainted three bicycles and sold them to friends, and drew cars, robots and cartoons for neighborhood children.

A weightlifter, Cecil was also muscular and handsome, Middleton says. “The girls loved Cecil. He was really friendly. Kind of shy. And I think he was honest. . . . He was a fantastic dresser. He was obsessed with dressing. . . . His appearance was important to him.”

Middleton says she is glad she played a part in Cecil’s life.

“Not often do we meet people who have dreams and become a part of that and assist that person in fulfilling those dreams,” Middleton says. “He knew exactly what he wanted. Not all the kids in my group know even today. And he was pursuing that.

“He would have been successful. He had such a desire to do it,” she says. “When you want something badly enough, you practice and you practice. And he would always practice.”