Derrius Quarles leans back in his seat and methodically debates Aristotle’s theory of truth during freshman honors English class at Morehouse College.
He strides across campus in a navy blue tailored suit and a bold red sweater handing out business cards that boast “Student/Entrepreneur/Leader.” But behind the 19-year-old’s dauntless appearance is a past that few on campus know. When Quarles was 5, the state took him away from his mother. He spent his childhood bouncing from home to home before ending up on his own at 17 in an apartment on Chicago’s South Side.
His arrival at a prestigious, historically African-American college — with more than $1 million in scholarship offers — is a story of inspiration and anguish. And it’s a testament to his determination to prove that he is better than his beginnings.
“You can’t go around thinking you are inferior just because you didn’t have parents,” he says. “For me, it’s about knowing where you are from and accepting it, but more important, knowing where you are going.”
Despite his polished veneer, sometimes there are glimpses into a more complicated young man.In sociology class, when students discuss their childhood dependence on parents, the usually verbose Quarles withdraws from the lively discussion and doodles in a notebook. When a tutoring coordinator asks students about the “caring adults” in their lives, Quarles mumbles something about an aunt.
He rarely talks about his childhood, but when pushed, the words tumble out.
“I’ve had people tell me that I ain’t never gonna be s—. That’s not a scratch, that cuts deep,” he says. “After so many people put me down, I said, ‘I’m gonna show you.’ “
Quarles made good on that promise when he won more than $1 million in scholarship offers, including a full ride at Morehouse. A graduate of Kenwood Academy High School in Chicago, he is one of about a dozen students nationwide to garner such a bounty, according to Mark Kantrowitz, who runs the Web site Finaid, which tracks college aid.
He won full scholarships to five universities, the Gates Millennium Scholarship worth $160,000 and the Horatio Alger and Coca-Cola scholarships, each worth $20,000, to name a few. He’ll use most of it to pay for advanced schooling.
Now, Quarles hopes to weave a new family narrative at an all-male college known as much for molding brotherhood as for molding scholars.
He is searching for a band of brothers who will not abandon him, as so many others have in the past. Left alone When Quarles was 4, his father was stabbed to death with a pocketknife in a fight on a vacant lot. His mother struggled with drugs.
Quarles doesn’t remember much about those years, outside of being left alone with his brother for long stretches of time, pilfering bread and snacks from a convenience store. “We had to fend for ourselves the best we knew how,” he says. “My brother really stepped up as an older brother. He never left my side.”
This connection to his brother was a sustaining one. But it would not last. When Quarles was 5, officials placed him and his brother in a temporary foster home, then with an aunt. Quarles remembers this as a period of calm. He learned to read sitting in his aunt’s lap, paging through her favorite Bible passages. He recalls eating around the dinner table with more food than he ever imagined.
read the rest of the article here.
Sometimes you think you have it hard and then reality hits you and you realize you have nothing to complain about. Derrius found a way to sum up his own story as it pertains to me, he says “Pure Imaginations” and for me he “Pure Inspiration”. This young man’s quotes regisitered harder than Gandhi’s to me. “Know where you’re going” and “I do it to show myself”. Words that I will start to live by. Wayne G