Staff Writer
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Zach Boyden-Holmes/Staff
Kobe Patterson, 12, looks toward his mother, Carla Cleare, on Wednesday afternoon during a ceremony recognizing two Cherry Tree Crossing single mothers for keeping their sons focused enough to be accepted to A.R. Johnson Health Science and Engineering Magnet School next year. Kobe will be start seventh grade at the school next year.
Zach Boyden-Holmes/Staff
Elline Ivey helps her son Brandon, 11, with his cuffs Wednesday afternoon during a ceremony recognizing two Cherry Tree Crossing single mothers for keeping their sons focused enough to be accepted to A.R. Johnson Health Science and Engineering Magnet School next year. Brandon will start seventh grade at the school next year.
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Zach Boyden-Holmes/Staff
Elline Ivey looks towards her son Brandon, 11, Wednesday afternoon during a ceremony recognizing two Cherry Tree Crossing single mothers for keeping their sons focused enough to be accepted to A.R. Johnson Health Science and Engineering Magnet School next year. Brandon will start seventh grade at the school next year.
Kobe Patterson is too young to drive or stay up past 8 p.m., but he’s old enough to know about survival.
He knows to lie on his belly when he hears the gunshots and to keep walking when men gather on his street corner to fight.
At his house, his single mother, Carla Cleare, says the place they live in Cherry Tree Crossing, one of Augusta’s most violent housing projects, is not a home but a stepping stone.
“It’s rough here, but this is not permanent for us,” she said. “We’re going to do better, so I talk to him about what you don’t do, and what he needs to do to get out — and that’s school.”
Cleare knows a sure ticket to better things is education. She makes Patterson and his brother, Anfernee, work on homework every day, study for tests and not get distracted by what’s outside their window.
Several families in Cherry Tree Crossing are taking a particular focus on education to steer their children away from the violence in their neighborhood and on to a better life. Two rising seventh-graders — Patterson, 12, and friend Brandon Ivey, 11 — have been accepted to A.R. Johnson Health Science and Engineering Magnet School despite the distractions beyond their control. Both are sixth-graders at Collins K-8 School.
Augusta-based Men’s Awakening to God organization awarded Cleare and Ivey’s mother, Elline, plaques at a quiet ceremony Wednesday in Cherry Tree to recognize them for keeping their sons on a positive path.
“We think that’s a big accomplishment for them to do that,” Men’s Awakening Director Vernal Nelson said. “We got guns out here in Cherry Tree, you have stabbings here in Cherry Tree, you have shootings. With all of that, these beautiful mothers here beat all the odds in helping their children focus.”
Violence is a regular occurrence in this housing project, where many families have school-age children. The Richmond County Sheriff’s Office was called to Cherry Tree 2,357 times in 2011, an average of six calls a day, for shootings, assaults, burglaries, drugs and other offenses.
Ivey said staying focused on school is hard, but his new opportunity at A.R. Johnson is motivation to maintain the A/B Honor Roll he has kept through seventh grade.
“This is an opportunity to prepare him for college and better things in life,” Elline Ivey said of A.R. Johnson.
Both boys were accepted based on Criterion-Referenced Competency Test scores and grades and said they hope to use their A.R. Johnson education to continue to college. Richmond County school system social worker Rochelle Brown works with parents in Cherry Tree weekly and says a common thread among successful children is supportive parents.
“Parents are the key to the success for all our communities,” Brown said.
District 1 Commissioner Matt Aitken, who attended the awards ceremony, said it’s easy for children to go wayward when they don’t have fathers or safe neighborhoods. But these two mothers are an example of what’s possible.
“We can’t expect the law to do it all,” Aitken said. “The community has a place. Moms have a place. When we get all of the major things in their place, you’re going to see things happen.”
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