Wes Moore was born in the late 1970s in one of the more poverty-stricken neighborhoods of Baltimore. After his loving father died of a rare and sudden illness when Wes was three, his mother Joy raised him and his two sisters herself. Joy was an immigrant from Jamaica, having arrived in the U.S. as a child so her father could get a college education. The importance of schooling was passed down as Joy also got her degree. But the struggle of raising three children alone wore on Joy and she moved them to the Bronx to get help from her parents.
Living in a tough neighborhood had its effects on Wes, who befriended people from all walks of life playing street basketball. Fearing of the dangers of the public schools she had attended herself, Joy sent Wes to a private school, but that only added to his troubles. At school, he stood out for being poor and black. At home, he stood out for going to a rich school for white kids. He started skipping classes and got caught up in minor street crime.
Seeing where Wes was headed, Joy and her parents scraped together the money to send him to Valley Forge military school in Georgia. Isolated from the streets, taken in by older cadets and supportive commanding officers, he rose through the ranks. He eventually went to Johns Hopkins University on scholarship, studied abroad in South Africa, earned a Rhodes Scholarship, worked on Wall Street, served in Afghanistan, and acted as a fellow at the White House.
Wes Moore was born in the late 1970s in one of the more poverty-stricken neighborhoods of Baltimore. After his father abandoned him before he was born, his mother Mary raised him and his older half-brother Tony by herself. Mary was one of nine children and had Tony as a teenager; she didn't have much support from her family and while she tried to go to college, she eventually had to drop out when government cuts took away her Pell Grant.
Living in a tough neighborhood had its effects on Wes, who befriended people thanks to his skills as a football player. Fearing the streets that turned her older son into a drug lord by the time he was in his early teens, Mary moved Wes around to different neighborhoods. Tony also wanted a different life for Wes, too, but the example he set was different than the lessons he tried to teach and Wes' criminal record began when he was just eight, after he brandished a knife at another boy in a street fight. Wes continued down Tony's path when he began working for drug dealers. He rose through the ranks, making money, friends, and enemies. He dropped out of high school, got his girlfriend pregnant and by the time he was in his early 20s, had four children by two women (one of whom was a drug addict) and several convictions for drugs and violence on his record.
Seeing where he was headed, Wes tried to change his own path by participating in the Job Corps program, earning his GED and training as a carpenter. But a year of the legitimate life made he realize how much money it takes to support his mother, two former/current girlfriends and four children and he quickly regressed. One day, he, Tony and two other men wielding guns and mallets broke into a jewelry store and took almost $500,000 worth of merchandise. They also fatally shot an off-duty police officer.
Around the same time that one Wes Moore learned of his Rhodes Scholarship, the other Wes Moore learned that he'd spend the rest of his life in prison.
How could two men with the exact same name and such similar backgrounds have seen their paths diverge so drastically? There's no way to answer that and Wes Moore (the author) doesn't try to. The closest thing I can really see is the difference in support system. Yes, both men didn't have a father. But Joy had supportive family who cared about things like education and keeping Wes off the streets. When they recognized the warning signs that he might be headed down the wrong path, they did everything they could to stop it - first at the private school and then with military school. Mary didn't have those resources. She knew education was key but with no one to help her out, she could only do so much to support her sons. The other other "parent" that Wes Moore knew was his older brother, who became a player in the drug game at the ripe age of 14. When no one shows you another path, you take the one you recognize.
Still, it's a fascinating look at how our society works. The opportunities afforded to certain privileged people, whether it's because of race or class or geography, make things so much easier for some than for others. Wes Moore struggled to become the man he did, but he was given a leg up thanks to such a supportive family and, later, because of the connections he made at Valley Forge. The other Wes Moore, while he could have taken a different path, didn't really have the opportunity to do nearly as much as his namesake. This isn't to make excuses for the crime he committed - he definitely should spend his life in jail for killing an innocent man - but it's sad that that path was the easiest one for a boy to take.
Just catching up on the blog :) I read this book a couple of years ago, after Wes Moore promoted it on Colbert. I really, really liked it and am so glad someone else has read it. I read the first couple of chapters of Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun by Geoffrey Canada last year, which reminded me of the Wes Moores stories.
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