Dr. Derrick Griffith: A Blessed Heart & Fond Farewell.

"I was chasing down the days of fear, chasing down a dream before it disappeared."
- Bono (U2, 'The Miracle of Joey Ramone')


I woke up last Thursday to an empty room. My girlfriend Jasmine had left for work already and I was running late for work as usual, having snoozed my cell phone's alarm several times already. It was a normal, routine morning until I checked my Facebook notifications and saw that I was tagged in a post made by my brother. My heart pounded as I further ascended out of the haze of sleep to realize that it was regarding the death of my former High School principal. His name was Derrick Griffith.

The post didn't specify exactly how he died but to merely hear of the news made me sorrowful, as one could imagine. Unfortunately, at this point in my life, hearing of a person who I'd once known at some point in my life no longer being a part of reality on this planet anymore wasn't as much a shock to me as it would've been years back: In 2002, when I was ten, a female classmate of mine died abruptly of a heart condition; In 2007, when I was fifteen, I was the last person in my family to see my cousin Carmelo Medina before he was shot and killed days later; In 2010, when I was eighteen, I was the one to close my great-grandmother's eyes after she passed away on my grandparents' living room floor.

It wasn't until I pulled up Google on my cell phone and searched Mr. Griffith's name, as I walked across the bridge to work, that I learned that he'd been a victim killed in the Amtrak train derailment just two days prior. I felt my feet stop, my knees weaken, and the swell of tears begin to choke me up as I realized it had only been a day since I first noticed the mass steel wreckage sprawled across the television screen at work the previous morning leading to a conversation with my co-worker Ann Marie and I about how horrible the crash looked, all-the-while not knowing that I had a personal connection to it. After all, what were the odds?

In 2003, my brother Lavonn was apart of the inaugural class to graduate from Mr. Griffith's brainchild that is CUNY Preparatory Transitional High School, otherwise simply known as CUNY Prep. The school began and still does function as an alternative to traditional High Schooling and the majority of the students there are mostly dropouts who, for whatever reason, didn't mesh well with their first High Schools. The thing that was different about Mr. Griff's project, though, was that it didn't focus on blaming the students for not being successful their first time around. Instead, the school which he founded in his early thirties, acknowledged the failures of the system and aimed to encourage it's students to aspire for more than what was traditionally expected of them.

It was late autumn in 2007 when I'd finally given up on my first high school, Herbert H. Lehman, and simply dropped out. I found myself not giving a damn about graduating on account of that school's corruption at that time and saw no incentive in going back to it: I'd go to class and they'd still mark me absent, I'd pass my mid-terms and finals (which counted for 65% of the grade) and still somehow fail the class. It made no sense to me, not until about a year later when my grandfather handed me a cutout from the New York Daily News which reported that the then-principal Robert Leder and his vice principals had all been fired for manipulating students' grades and other paperwork in a scheme to make the school look like a failing one in order to bait money from the federal government which they'd been using for their own, personal, gain. It confirmed everything I'd suspected, naturally, but that's a story for a different time.

What's important was the fact that despite me dropping out from Lehman High School, there was still an alternative for me in the same form of cavalry as it had come for my older brother years prior: That alternative was CUNY Prep and my mother was hell-bent on signing me up for it. Like most things in life, though, it didn't happen quite as smoothly as it should've. I went on an interview and was deemed "uninterested". Now, what would've given them THAT impression? Could it have been my shyness? Or perhaps my disgruntlement over my experiences with Lehman High School? Or maybe it was just the average angst of being a teenager. Maybe it was a hybrid of all three, who knows? But it didn't stop my mom from taking me there herself a week later and personally enrolling me, something that I was none-too-pleased with. They didn't want me, I figured, so I didn't want them either.

I began my classes at CUNY Prep in January of 2008. I had to be up early in the morning once again (which I hated), there was a uniform code (which I hated), we couldn't leave for lunch (which I hated), and I had no choice in any of it because I was sixteen.... which I hated. But there I was in the bitter cold of the new year, sitting in the deepest corner that I could find in the furthest part of the back of a cafeteria that I'd rather have been anywhere else instead of, listening to the upbeat small man with a joyfully loud and carrying voice from my brother's graduation years back, as he welcomed a fresh new class into his school. Or more importantly, into his community.

He introduced himself to the shy room full of lost teenagers: "Mr. Griffith," he told us his name was. "You're here because we're all about new beginnings here at CUNY Prep," he told us. "Whatever problems you had, whatever it was that lead you here, we're glad that they did. We take all of you as you come, we embrace you here."

And embracing his students was something that he stayed true to. It's the only reason why I got another chance to return to the school the next fall after dropping out of CUNY Prep mid-way that winter after realizing that I wouldn't have been able to take the GED test with my class the first time around because I was too young. When I came back at the age of seventeen that September, I did so with a renewed sense of purpose and stuck it through, resulting in me passing the GED test on my first attempt and graduating seven months ahead of when I would've had I theoretically graduated on time from traditional High School.

None of that would've been possible for me without Derrick Griffith.

He was a man of diligence who founded a school before his thirty-fifth birthday, became the Dean of a major college before his fortieth birthday, and earned his doctorate before what would've been his forty-third birthday. He was driven and expected the same from his own students.

Whatever I've accomplished afterwards - emancipating my blog from MySpace.com, becoming financially independent through my current job, winning a grant from New York Film Academy - none of it would've been possible had one man not given me the opportunity for a second chance at completing my education. At the end of his life, he probably didn't remember every single one of the thousands of students who's lives he touched along the way but we'll always remember him and the positive effect that he had on us for decades to come. That, in itself, makes his memory everlasting proof that one man can make all the difference.

Thank you, Dr. Griffith.