December 6, 2017
Page 5
State Farm R
Michael E Harper
Agent
Providing Insurance
and Financial Services
Home Office, Bloomingon, Illinois 61710
We are located at:
9713 S.W. Capitol, Portland, OR
503-221-3050 • Fax 503-227-8757
michael.harper.cuik@statefarm.com
J.T. Flowers gives credit to family members, coaches and teachers for his academic success. He
personally thanks his mom, Jeana Woolley (pictured), a grandmother who helped raise him, and a
teacher, Mark Halpern, as the people who motivated and supported him to become the man he is today.
A Rhodes Scholar
C ontinueD froM f ront
I am now. So that’s my mother,
my grandmother, my coaches, my
teachers, my friends, my commu-
nity, and the city at large.”
Flowers said he was only a
“sub-par student academically
when he was heavily recruited for
playing basketball back in high
school. But After a torn ligament
at the beginning of his junior year,
colleges began pulling scholarship
offers. The only school that stuck
with him through the process of
turning his grades around to an
acceptable level for college was
Yale, Flowers said.
An assistant coach there told
him the path he would need to take
to even stand a chance of getting
admitted. That involved perform-
ing at his best during his senior
year, taking advanced courses,
then applying for and attending a
boarding school on the east coast
called Choate Rosemary Hall and
performing well there, too.
“I kind of put my head down,
plowed my way through school
[…] and then ended up getting
into Yale,” Flowers said.
He continued playing basket-
ball at Yale his freshman year, but
sustained another injury, a sepa-
rated shoulder, that rendered him
unable to play. For Flowers, bas-
ketball had been an “escape” from
the rough neighborhood of his up-
bringing, but now it was a burden.
That’s when he said he really had
to do some soul searching.
“Because I had so heavily root-
ed my conception of myself in my
identity as a basketball player that
I didn’t know what I was without
basketball, I had to figure out who
I was and what I stood for, uh, and
what I cared about and what I was
interested in.”
One of the ways Flowers found
his identity was through spoken
word poetry. He joined a group
called Word Performance Poetry.
“That afforded me the oppor-
tunity to take a deep dive, uh, not
only into evaluating and reflect-
ing on the experiences that have
shaped me into the person I am.”
He realized his background of
coming from a low income fami-
ly and black community ignited a
passion in him for studying access
to opportunity and socio-econom-
ic mobility, hence the political sci-
ence degree.
Flowers invested his mind in
academics, created an organiza-
tion, “A Leg Even,” that offers
mentoring, tutoring, and faculty
support to low-income students
like himself at Yale.
“People from my neighborhood
[…] we’re so rarely afforded the
second chance that I was extend-
ed,” Flowers said.
Flowers said the neighborhood
he grew up in was plagued with
gang violence, drug related crime,
and lack of educational and eco-
nomic opportunities for African
Americans like him.
“I remember being in like sec-
ond or third grade and inviting
kids over to my house for a play
date and having them come back
to me and be like, ‘oh my parents
said they don’t feel comfortable
with me going over to [laughs]
to your house...it’s not safe over
there,’” Flowers remembered.
Flowers’ future is bright. He
plans on pursuing two master’s
degrees—one in Comparative So-
cial Policy and one in Public Pol-
icy—and starts his Oxford studies
in October 2018. After his stud-
ies, he plans to return to Portland
indefinitely.
Flowers credits his mother, Jea-
na Woolley, his grandmother who
helped raise him, coaches, and a
teacher, Mark Halpern, as the peo-
ple who motivated and supported
him to become the man he is today.
“I stand on the shoulders of so
many. Know that I will never for-
get that,” he said.
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