Audio File
Transcript
My name is Pernell Blackburn, Jr. I’m 12 years old.
My name is Sekou Brown. I’m 10 years old.
My name is Ross Tedder. I’m 14 years old.
We interviewed Melvin El on August 14th, 2014.
It was a good childhood, even though we didn’t have much money, but I didn’t know not having enough money made you poor. Sometimes they saved the 2 o’s out of it. But it was a childhood that gave me an opportunity to grow up with some good influences. My mother and my sisters were a very big part of my life as I grew up. But the one big significant thing in my childhood was music. I started playing trumpet in the third grade.
I met someone when I was in 10th grade. His name was Charles Cooper. Charles Cooper was the first brother drafted into National Basketball Association. He grew up in East Liberty. He also went to Westinghouse High School and he graduated from Duquesne University. And this man here was the first man who came into my life and showed me that there was a different way of living there, a different way of life, and had had confidence and gave me the will to want to do right. He took me to a community meeting. And at that meeting, it gave me an opportunity to see there was people in the community trying to improve the conditions of the community, but they didn’t have any youth involved. And so I became one of the youth who became a youth voice in my community. So that shaped me to want to go do something, to give back to the community. From there, I was able to meet a man named Hiawatha Fountain, who was a director of a program that they called Community Action Pittsburgh. And at that time, Hiawatha and another person named Gabby Russell gave me the opportunity to learn how to be a leader in the community on our Youth Council. From that point, I met Roger Thomas. He’s another man who gave me the leadership bug and pushed me onto school and become a teacher.
My community influence as a child gave me an opportunity to see where I felt conditions could be better. I grew up in a neighborhood, matter of fact, grew up in East Liberty, right on Larimer Ave. between Metal and Carver St. and attended Larimer School. It was growing up in that atmosphere in the 50s and the 60s and the 70s that I realized that my community needed someone or some people to come back and do something to improve it. So just the conditions of the community just showed me that I had to go on and do something and come back and be productive.
It’s changed quite a bit since I I grew up in this area. One of the main differences is that when I was coming up as a child, you could walk straight down Larimer Ave. and you could walk to the library that was there. There were shopping centers. As a matter of fact, it was a big business district up in East Liberty. Most of you heard of streetcars before? Well that’s what I rode when I was coming through. I think the biggest difference is that you had a center of business and you had residents there.
I think what I like to see them look like in the future is a community that has opportunity for everyone. Everyone who has a college degree, who even has a doctor’s degree down to those who are high school graduates, they’re common and as well as professional. The hard working people of this community. I want this vision for them is to make sure they have a place to stay, food in their cupboards, and able to maintain their families.
Right now I’m working in state government. I’m the chief of staff for State Representative Ed Gainey. And it’s just a opportunity to serve the people from a different platform. My experience really in state government has been the last two years that I’ve been in this position and I think we are taking good care of our community. Now for 30 years there was someone else who was taking care of our community. I think there was some good days and some bad days. But I think we have a lot of good days now.
My future goals is to just get better at what I do, what I mean by getting better at what I do, it means getting better trying to be a better person, trying to be a better father to my children, a better husband to my wife and a better servant to the people that I work for and work with. And those goals all center around the whole idea of my faith and making sure that I’m doing the things that will help others.
The main ingredients in being successful is believing in yourself because when others don’t believe in you and others don’t want to give you the opportunity. If you believe in yourself, then you can take the necessary steps to be successful. Believe in yourself, work hard and be honest with yourself and know your limits and capabilities. And if you fail, get up, then keep trying and never give up.