The King Foundation For Social Justice

The Courier-Journal

"I don't think that just giving somebody something works. There have to be consequences. And you have to reward discipline and perseverance." — Nick King

One man's Vision
Needy children found path to bright future in program offering chance at college, support

By ANDREW WOLFSON
awolfson@courier-journal.com
The Courier-Journal

Growing up in Southwick, one of Louisville's toughest neighborhoods, Adrianne Tyson had to help raise three younger siblings while her mother struggled with an addiction to crack cocaine and other drugs.

"A lot of kids from my neighborhood didn't make it out," she said.

But Tyson did far more than that: She graduated last year from Kentucky's prestigious Centre College with a double major in English and anthropology, after studying abroad in several countries. Today, she works in a management training program, owns a home, and is planning to pursue a master's degree in business administration.

Tyson, 23, credits her success, at least in part, to a Louisville lawyer and his vision that even the neediest children could have a bright future with the right opportunity and support.

Eleven years after Nick King and his wife promised to pay for 38 mostly poor sixth-graders to go to college — if they met twice a week for six years and finished high school — the program they called Project Vision has paid remarkable dividends, educators say.

Thirty-four of the students graduated from high school five years ago, and half are on schedule to have earned degrees from four-year colleges or universities by May. Two more have finished vocational school, and eight have gone on to graduate programs, including a pair who earned their MBAs this week.

Tomorrow, in a celebration planned by the students and their parents, they will gather at the Glassworks in downtown Louisville for a reunion and to give thanks to King and his wife, Carol Zurkuhlen King, who died of cancer in 1999.

King, 58, a former trial lawyer who bankrolled the program with some of the $6.4million he won when a defective shotgun blew off part of his hand, said their goal was to give students a fair chance to fulfill their abilities, whatever they were — not to see how many they could ram through college.

"We knew high school graduation was the best some could ever hope for," he said. Some joined the military or found jobs after getting just a taste of college.

Now, King said, "They are overwhelmingly living good, productive lives. They have jobs, they pay taxes, they contribute to the community and they bring joy to those around them. And that is a wonderful standard of success."

Experts say the graduation rates alone make Project Vision one of the nation's most successful examples of personalized philanthropy, in which wealthy individuals offer to help low-income children, often in inner-city schools.

The Project Vision numbers, both for high school and college graduations, exceed the rates for all students, even though most of the Visionaries, as they are called, came from single-parent homes, lived in public housing and qualified for free and reduced-price student lunches — all considered risk factors for dropping out.

Joseph Kahne, director of the doctoral program in educational leadership at Mills College in Oakland, Calif., who has studied such programs, said Project Vision shows that "with supportive relationships and modest resources, poor kids in difficult circumstances can do phenomenally better than they are currently doing."

Bob Sexton, executive director of Kentucky's Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence, said the Kings' program "demonstrates the power of high expectations and encouragement."

King acknowledges that some of the Visionaries are still finding their way, and others have stumbled.

One got pregnant in high school. Another has struggled with learning disabilities. A third is serving a 10-year prison sentence for armed robbery, which King described as "hugely, terribly disappointing."

Still, he said, "I will emphatically say that I am proud of each and every one of them, including the one in prison. I am proud of them for their effort. All of these people are my friends, and I love them."

Overcoming obstacles

The Visionaries — some of whom haven't seen each other for years — can share remarkable stories of perseverance in the face of tragedies and obstacles to success.

One went off to college just as her brother was shot to death. She lost her scholarship, then won it back and is now pursuing a graduate degree in mental health counseling.

Another, Arivia Brown, who grew up a few hundred yards down the railroad tracks from Cotter Homes, described herself as a holy terror in middle school, where she said she was suspended for fighting.

"I was a discipline problem at home, at school and in Project Vision," she said. "I would fight at the drop of a hat. I didn't want anybody telling me anything."

But Brown, who graduated from Murray State University last week with a degree in education, said King kept after her. "He knew I would do better later. He knew I had potential."

Robert Milan, neither of whose parents graduated from high school, struggled academically but fought his way through Murray State and now works as a guest services manager at University Hospital in Louisville.

"There were some moments where I almost broke down and quit," said Milan, who recently bought his first house. He said King implored him to keep going. "He was like an angel sent to give us a chance to do something in life, and I wasn't going to mess that up."

And there is Tyson, the Centre graduate. A gifted student at Central High School, where she was named a Governor's Scholar, she said she would have attended college without Project Vision, but perhaps not a private school where the tuition is $24,000.

"When I had a chance to go to the South Pacific, he said, `Go!'" she recalled of King's willingness to pay for her to do research projects in Fiji, Tonga and Western Samoa.

Steadfast support

While the lure of free tuition, books, room, board and expenses would seem a sure-fire way to keep children in school, other ventures fueled by philanthropists haven't been nearly as successful.

For such programs to work, Kahne and others have found, the benefactors must build long-term relationships with the students marked by caring and trust.

Some of those chosen for Project Vision said they initially were skeptical when the Kings stood in front of hundreds of children and their parents at the DuValle Education Center and made their remarkable offer.

"It was somewhat shocking at first to see they were a white couple," recalled Kurshanna Gipson, a Project Vision participant who attended Jefferson County Traditional Middle School and won her MBA at the University of Louisville this month. All but one of the 38 selected for Project Vision are black.

"I thought maybe they were doing this for some kind of recognition."

But she said any doubts were quickly dissolved by the Kings' genuine commitment.

"They opened their home to us, opened their arms to us and showed they really cared," Gipson said. "Either Nick or Carol was at every meeting" — the mandatory sessions where students learned how to balance a checkbook, control their anger, study for tests and steer clear of illegal drugs and sexually transmitted diseases.

One or both also were there when the Visionaries toured 20 college campuses, visited Washington, D.C., Chicago and Atlanta, rappelled at Daniel Boone National Forest, and volunteered at the Wayside Mission or the Salvation Army. When students got in trouble, the Kings went to their homes and comforted them, counseled them and cajoled them to do better.

"Any time I felt discouraged, I called them on the phone," said Tyson, who struggled as a freshman at Centre but eventually made the dean's list.

Idarion King, who grew up in Newburg and is pursuing a master's degree in communications at Murray State, agreed that Project Vision was about more than free tuition and $500 a semester in expense money.

"In my neighborhood there weren't a lot of people going to college or encouraging you to go — you either went to work or got in trouble," he said. "Project Vision gave me the vision. It taught me right from wrong."

Helping kids out

For Nick King, who served as Jefferson County commonwealth's attorney, then a state Supreme Court justice for the first years he ran Project Vision, the program was like raising three dozen teenagers.

He broke up fights, drove kids to the doctor and extricated them from danger.

"Sometimes we would both call him on the phone when we were down," said Sylvia Milan, Robert's mother.

King, for his part, said he tried hard to defer to parents — "As much as I loved these children, I realized they weren't my children."

He said he tried not to impose his own values on them. When one girl got pregnant in high school, he said, "We didn't make any judgment about it, we just tried to help her the best we could."

Still, King had to enforce the rules.

He expelled three children when they were in high school, for failing to attend sessions and other violations. "Sometimes you have to look them in the eye and be the Dutch uncle," he said. And he took away their college scholarships when their grade-point averages dipped below 2.0, even for a single semester. To regain them, students had to pay their own way for a year and earn at least a 2.5.

"I don't think that just giving somebody something works," King said. "There have to be consequences. And you have to reward discipline and perseverance."

A record of success

Even if it had ended in high school, Project Vision would have been a staggering success, according to a report prepared in 1999 by the Jefferson County Public Schools and other data.

Ninety percent of the original participants graduated on time from high school in 1998, compared with 60 percent for all African-American students in the district that year. One hundred percent went on to college, at least briefly, compared with 60 percent of students of all races who were in college a year after they graduated from high schools in the district in 1998.

Although there are differences between the programs, the graduation rates for Project Vision surpass those of the I Have A Dream Foundation, in which benefactors adopt an entire grade from an elementary school or an entire age group from a public housing development.

Last year, about 75 percent of 500 children in 17 programs across the United States graduated from high school or received their equivalency degrees on time, according to Noelle Dong, a spokeswoman for the New York-based foundation. Kahne reported in 1998 that between 50 percent and 60 percent of students in I Have A Dream generally graduate from high school and one-third to one-half attend college.

In Louisville, businessman R. Gene Smith adopted a class of 58 fourth-graders at Engelhard Elementary School in 1992 as part of an I Have A Dream project. Eight years later, 34 had graduated on time from high school or earned an equivalency certificate. Executive director Marilyn Foulke said last week that 45 eventually graduated and 32 went on to college or vocational school. Two of those have graduated and between 13 and 16 are scheduled to graduate next year, she said.

The two programs are not directly comparable, Kahne and others say, because of differences in how students were selected. For Project Vision, more than 100 students from over 15 schools were interviewed and chosen based on their ability to envision themselves as successful.

By picking children motivated to succeed, Project Vision probably started with an edge, Kahne said.

But King said Project Vision didn't consider the students' grades or test scores — "We did not cherry-pick." And he said he thinks only about three or four of the 38 children would have gone to college without the program.

`Filled with pride'

King said he's never regretted sponsoring Project Vision, despite his own trials, which include the loss of his seat on the Supreme Court in 1996 and his wife's death three years later. "I lost my partner, and the students lost her unbelievable enthusiasm and support," he said. "But it had to continue because we had made an irrevocable commitment to it."

He said watching the students grow up and succeed has been magical.

"You see your child get a college diploma knowing the journey they've been through and you are filled with pride," he said.

He said his only regret is that none of the dozens of people he's talked to about launching their own version of Project Vision have done so, even though sponsoring a smaller group wouldn't take a lot of money. "What really makes me mad is when people say, `I'd like to do this to — if I ever win the lottery.'"

King, who no longer practices law, works full time on Project Vision and four other scholarship programs that he's started, including one that is paying for 31 students to attend Sacred Heart Academy and college if they graduate.

He said he knows that none of the ventures will wipe out poverty or cure other social ills. But citing an adage attributed to Helen Keller and others, he said: "Because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something I can do."

Experts such as Kahne say children helped by programs like King's should be able to better provide for their own children, and that Project Vision may offer lessons to schools on how to establish meaningful, lasting relationships with students at the greatest risk of failing.

"This is not just a feel-good thing," said Sexton, of the Prichard Committee. "It is real. It shows that if a young person has an adult who cares about them, they can succeed. What Project Vision did is keep kids from getting lost. And the schools can do that too."

The Courier-Journal

Students recognize 'angel'
Project Vision beneficiaries honor Nick King for generosity

By DARLA CARTER
dcarter@courier-journal.com
The Courier-Journal

The song "Wind Beneath My Wings" said it all last night as students who got a chance at a free college education — thanks largely to Louisville lawyer Nick King — came together to show their appreciation for his generosity.

The students, who are part of a program called Project Vision, gave King a standing ovation after a guest singer altered the closing lyrics of the song to say, "Thank you, Nick. Thank God for you. You were the wind beneath my wings."

Also on their feet were members of two newer scholarship programs tied to King and his wife, Carol, who died of cancer in 1999: the Carol Zurkuhlen King Scholarship Program, which benefits 32 students at Sacred Heart Academy, and the Nativity School Scholarship Program, which aids two sixth-graders.

More than 100 people attended the celebration at the Glassworks downtown. The Project Vision students presented King with an award of appreciation, and the King Scholars contributed to a breast cancer foundation in his wife's honor.

"They have given these students an opportunity to shine, to fulfill their dreams and to make a difference in this community," said Priscilla Kidwell, a co-chairman of the event and parent of a student in the program. "It's not every day you find" a Nick and Carol King.

Project Vision began more than a decade ago when the Kings promised to pay for 38 students — mostly poor sixth-graders — to attend college if they met certain conditions, such as attending regular meetings.

Thirty-four of those students have graduated from high school and half are expected to graduate from four-year colleges and universities by spring. Two more have finished vocational school, and eight have gone on to graduate programs.

"I'm filled with joy and happiness and pride for their achievements," Nick King said in an interview yesterday. "In 1992, when the program started, they were 38 young children with potential. Now, they are adults with a documented record of success and accomplishments, and they have exceeded my expectations."

The program was never about preparing a child for college, however, King said in his remarks. "It was about preparing a child for life," he said.

The evolution of the students from cute children to mature adults was evident in a video that showed then-and-now pictures of many of the participants and their recorded comments about how much the program has meant to them.

Though King keeps in contact with many of the students, a lot had not seen one another for some time. So hugs and tears were as much a part of the night as the praise for King, a reflection of the bonds they formed.

"We're like family that hasn't seen each other in five years," said Jamil Anderson , 23, a psychology student at the University of Louisville.

She and others stressed that it was not just the financial assistance that improved their lives but the support they received from King and other adults in the program, which also included field trips and college visits.

"I wouldn't have learned as many life skills or been exposed to different cultures," Anderson said. "I think it made me a more well-rounded person."

Some students also spoke of the practical advice that they received, from learning about finances to etiquette.

These things taught "us a lot about life," said Shawn Gray, 23, who completed electronics school after graduating from Fairdale High School.

"Without it, I don't think I would have made it through college," he said.

Others praised the program for teaching them how to set goals and to handle the distractions of life.

Project Vision "taught me a lot and kept me off the streets," said AlgernonShaw, 23, who had traveled from Japan, where he is serving in the Navy, to attend the event and celebrate the holidays. "It let me know that I did want to do something in life."

Daschanda Stroud, who parlayed her Project Vision experience into a career in television production in Los Angeles, said she probably would not have attended college without the program. Before a relative pushed her into the program, "I wasn't motivated," she said. "I was living in the moment. I wasn't really thinking about my future."

But knowing that her education would be paid for gave her the incentive to "take a stab at it," she said.

King brushes off the notion that he did anything extraordinary for the students.

"I never gave anybody here a doggone thing," he said during the program. "You earned it."

But students like Rozalind Kidwell, a graduate student at Western Kentucky University, say different: "He's been an angel."

The Courier-Journal

Attorney pledges additional $500,000 for scholarships

By Holly Coryell
The Courier-Journal

Lawyer and philanthropist Nick King has committed an additional $500,000 to continue a scholarship program he started two years ago to help financially disadvantaged girls attend Sacred Heart Academy.

King said he was moved to extend the Carol Zurkuhlen King Scholarship program because he's been impressed by how well current grant recipients are doing.

''These 18 girls have been an inspiration to me, and I've just been overjoyed with the results of their time at school,'' said King, 56, a former state Supreme Court justice and former Jefferson County commonwealth's attorney whose late wife, Carol, graduated from Sacred Heart.

''I've been overjoyed not only with their academic accomplishments, but with their social accomplishments, their ability to build bridges'' between people of different backgrounds.

As part of the deal, Sacred Heart, one of the five Ursuline Campus Schools in Crescent Hill, must raise $250,000 by the end of next year.

The girls' families also must pay what they can, based on a financial report they submit as part of the admissions process. And the girls themselves each contribute $250 each year, which they earn through work they do on the Ursuline campus.

''My experience has taught me that people who get something for nothing don't value it,'' King said. Requiring all parties to contribute ''makes us partners where everybody has a commitment, everybody has a responsibility. It doesn't have that patronizing tone of charity.''

The cost of tuition, books and uniforms totals about $7,000 per student; the scholarship money comes through the King Foundation for Social Justice, which the Kings started in 1991 with their personal assets.

Before starting the program at Sacred Heart, King and his wife helped shepherd 34 sixth-graders in the Jefferson County Public Schools through high school with the promise of a college scholarship. The first ones will graduate from college next spring, King said.

The King Foundation initially intended to sponsor 15 girls at Sacred Heart. But 13 have attended Sacred Heart over the past two years, and six more will start Aug. 23. Only one has decided to leave the program.

In that case, King said, the girl, an African American and one of the two original scholarship recipients, said that when she went home to her neighborhood, friends told her she was trying to be white.

'' 'What good is it if I'm happy when I come to school and I'm miserable when I come home,' '' King recalls the girl telling him.

That's why one of the five criteria for admission to the King scholars program is ''the ability to bridge economic, social, racial and cultural chasms,'' King said. ''Those criteria aren't meaningless words.''

Other criteria include financial need, motivation, a support system and academic ability. Applicants must also take a placement test.

The King Foundation also provides a tutor for each student and has held summer enrichment classes.

King and others from the foundation also meet regularly with the scholars to introduce them to things they may be unfamiliar with, such as a theater performance, a new food or a fine point of social etiquette.

Trips to Actors Theatre of Louisville and Kentucky Center for the Arts are common, King said. King recently took 16-year-old Patty Streeter to lunch at the Uptown Cafe on Bardstown Road, where they discussed her studies.

Patty, who will be a junior, said attending Sacred Heart has been a combination of joys and challenges.

''The hardest part about being a King scholar is I am the first one, and I have to break the ice for everyone,'' Patty said.

While her friends outside Sacred Heart can't understand why she would want to go to a high school without boys, Patty said that has helped her focus on her studies. She's also made a lot of friends.

''It's like being around a big clubhouse with all your girlfriends,'' she explained.

The scholarship program supports the Ursuline Sisters' mission to educate students of all economic and racial backgrounds, said Charlie Francesconi, president of the Ursuline Campus Schools. ''That's difficult, both because of our location and because of the high cost of private education,'' Francesconi said. The scholarship program ''allows us to break through one of those major barriers in extending that openness and to being more inviting, and it does it on a permanent basis.''

If Sacred Heart is able to raise the $250,000, the school will have ''a sizable endowment to keep this going for many years,'' Francesconi said.

King is trying to persuade other individuals and companies, both locally and nationally, to start similar scholarship programs. Anyone who wants more information about the program, and any girls in sixth through eighth grades who would like to apply for a scholarship, can contact the King Foundation for Social Justice Inc., P.O. Box 5129, Louisville, Ky. 40255.

The Courier-Journal

By JENNIFER C. SMITH
jsmith@courier-journal.com
The Courier-Journal

A mock drunken-driving case, a visit to a TV station and meetings with local attorneys aren't listed on most teenagers' summer social calendars.

But many of the 42 Catholic high school juniors in the Quest Leadership Program said they were thrilled to debate media ethics and sit in a courtroom this week.

It was all part of a program sponsored by Nick King, a Louisville philanthropist and former Kentucky Supreme Court justice.

The summer session focused on media and the law.

One student said the program changed her perspective on the court system.

"One thing that I always used to think was that everybody in (jail) was a hard-core criminal," said Michelle Harpring, a 15-year-old Assumption High School junior. "But a lot of guys in there were my teenage cousin's age."

The participants, drawn from the four all-girl Catholic schools in Louisville — Assumption, Presentation Academy, Mercy Academy and Sacred Heart Academy — met for the final time yesterday at Spalding University.

King said the Quest program offered an understanding of leadership roles in the media and in the legal professions.

The program included excursions to The Courier-Journal and WHAS-TV; local law offices such as Middleton Reutlinger, Stites & Harbison; the public defender's office; the Jefferson County Youth Center; and the Old Jail Building at Sixth and Liberty streets, where grand juries meet and the commonwealth's attorney's office and the Jefferson County law library are housed.

Jim Williams, a partner in Middleton Reutlinger, said the students' enthusiasm and their career drive impressed him.

"When I went home I was so pumped up I couldn't get to sleep," he said. "I was so excited" by the girls' enthusiasm.

King said he chose Quest as the program's name to symbolize "the quest for life, the quest for fairness, the quest to succeed and the quest to lead."

Ten themes, ranging from health care to politics, were originally proposed, he said.

"What narrowed it down to law and media was that these were the two most visible social institutions," he said. "Everyone is exposed to the paper and everyone is exposed to TV. If you're exposed to that medium, you're exposed to law."

King's Foundation for Social Justice, which offers mentoring and tutoring programs, funneled $7,000 toward the program, he said.

Students paid $200 to participate, and nine students were offered scholarships of $175, King said.

He said that enrollment would stay the same next year but that he hopes to double the number in two years.

King said the idea of Quest surfaced 1½ years ago, when he pondered the traits of successful people.

"Was it because of great intellect, they attended the finest schools, had a great personality?" he asked. "I thought of those who I knew, such as lawyers, judges, policymakers. The people most fun and effective to work with had great leadership qualities."

Youth leadership programs foster business and culture in Louisville, said Rick Tabb, the program director of civic organization Leadership Louisville.

"In terms of reversing the brain drain, it seems like when you show young people the inner mechanisms of the city, they can get involved," he said.

"Louisville has a reputation for being dull and not a place for young people, but they learn to see that isn't true."

Courier-Journal