Student’s Spirit of Generosity Speaks Volumes

When Dorsey High School teacher Alfee Enciso wrote an opinion page essay urging wealthy donors to spread their wealth to impoverished inner-city schools, he had no idea how quickly his prayer would be answered.

Or that manna would be forthcoming not from a Bill Gates or a Rupert Murdoch but from Julie Byren.

Who?

The Hermosa Beach 13-year-old, an avid volleyball player and rock climber, read Enciso’s plea and was the only one to respond. She turned over $800 of the gift money she received at her recent bat mitzvah, on the condition that the funds be used to buy books for Dorsey classrooms bereft of reading materials.

So on Wednesday, about 20 Dorsey students, mostly ninth-graders, went on a book buying spree at nearby EsoWon Books on South La Brea, which features an impressive array of books by and about African Americans. Each student selected a book to take home, and their two teachers, VonGretchen Shepard and Anita Wisner, chose volumes for their classroom libraries.

Exhorted by Enciso to pick a book, any book, many of the wide-eyed teenagers made beelines for slender tomes about R&B-pop; singer Brandy, or moody looking bios of slain rap star Tupac Shakur, or coffee table gems about hoop star Michael Jordan.

If the teachers would have relished choices by James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry or Toni Morrison, they veiled their disappointment.

“One of the best ways to get kids involved in reading is for them to read something they’re really interested in,” Shepard said. “[In school] they’re very conscious of having to read.”

As it was, a few of the students had to be talked into making the two-block walk to EsoWon (from an Ethiopian word meaning “water over rocks”), even with the promise of a free book. Although most of them live close by, only two had ever ventured inside the shop. These are students, after all, who once complained that a 20-page short story assigned by Shepard was too long to be called short.

But once there, every student became absorbed--in something.

For Osborne Lopez, the draw was “For the Love of the Game,” a glossy volume about Jordan, complete with a page of portraits of the various Air Jordan shoes that the basketball legend has worn or endorsed through the years. Osborne and a buddy, Durrell McKnight, eagerly pointed out pairs just like the ones they have owned.

Of all the students, Osborne waxed most eloquently about the joy of reading.

“Reading puts me in another world,” he said, “and makes me forget about being tired or hungry.” His mother, he added, read Dr. Seuss to him when he was a toddler and still reads aloud stories about “great people.”

Left to her own devices, Tangapaul Reyes, 14, likes reading romance and nonfiction books. Her EsoWon pick was “Brandy: An Intimate Look.” She praised Shepard for making reading fun.

Omejia Dotson, a 15-year-old classmate, seconded the Brandy vote. She said she usually prefers spending her money on shoes or getting her nails done. But reading is all right, she added, “once we get into it.”

By the time Shepard had ordered 25 paperback copies of Alex Haley’s “Roots” and she and Wisner had selected anthologies of classic short stories, a book about the Harlem Renaissance, Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” and even a cookbook by singer Patti LaBelle, the tally had risen a bit above $800.

“That’s OK,” said James Fugate, EsoWon co-owner, “we’ll eat the difference.”

One student, Immanie Kisling, spoke for the group in saying of Julie’s donation: “I think that was very kind of her.”

Julie, who attends eighth grade at Chadwick School in Rancho Palos Verdes, intended from the outset to donate part of her bat mitzvah proceeds to further literacy in some way. After she read Enciso’s September essay, published on the Voices page of the Los Angeles Times, she called the school and arranged for her family to meet him in his English class.

Steeped at her school and her temple, Congregation Tifereth Jacob in Manhattan Beach, in the importance of community service, she previously tutored a first-grader in reading at a neighborhood public school. She also gave a sizable chunk of bat mitzvah money to her synagogue for a capital improvement project.

Literacy is a favorite cause. The favor from her bat mitzvah, a Jewish rite of passage, was a gold-plated bookmark, and the party’s theme was “Reach for the Stars.”

“If you weren’t literate, it would ruin your life,” Julie said.

Laurie Byren, Julie’s proud mother, said she likes to think of the gift as having come from “a lot of people who celebrated the bat mitzvah with her.”

And if the Dorsey students enjoyed Julie Byren’s generosity, she reaped benefits too.

“It was such a great experience, really uplifting,” she said.