Four newly minted Mobile high school graduates gathered recently at Dumas Wesley Community Center, trading good-natured jabs like siblings before heading off in four very different directions this summer. What ties them together is years spent in the center’s Neighborhood Outreach Program, which each credits with keeping them focused and on track through childhood and adolescence.
Thomas Kidd II, who graduated from LeFlore High School in late May, plans to start at Bishop State Community College before transferring to the University of North Alabama to study sports management. Kidd began attending Dumas Wesley’s summer recreation and after-school programs at age 10 and says staff encouraged him to volunteer as he got older, giving him a chance to mentor younger kids while learning responsibility himself.
Kendra Weems, also a LeFlore graduate, is preparing to leave for U.S. Army boot camp this summer. She started at the center at age 8, playing volleyball and soccer, attending summer camp and volunteering in the computer lab. She said the structure the program provided taught her she needed to stay active and pursue a path outside the traditional classroom setting.
Shun Abrams, a Blount High School graduate, is headed to Tuskegee University on a full football scholarship. He began at Dumas Wesley’s summer program at age 5 and later moved into its basketball program, crediting the center with keeping him busy and out of trouble through his teenage years.
J.C. Holder, also a Blount graduate, worked closely with staff to obtain his Transportation Worker Identification Credential, a requirement for jobs along Mobile’s busy shipyards and the Alabama State Docks. Holder started in the center’s basketball program at age 6, and said staff helped him write his first resume and cover letter years earlier, which led to a summer job at Pizza Hut.
A spokeswoman for the community center, which has worked with the four students for years, said the organization serves many families facing economic hardship, and that these particular graduates stood out for refusing to let their circumstances define them. She noted that two of the four were, until recently, still part of the center’s after-school achievement program and had taken part in a weekly empowerment session supported by a local civic organization, where mentors talk with teens about choices and consequences.
Staff presented all four graduates with gift certificates to mark the occasion, calling their transformation from childhood participants to young adults heading off to college, the military and the workforce a rewarding process to witness. The community center’s Neighborhood Outreach Program has served Mobile youth for years, offering recreational activities, tutoring, mentoring and job-readiness support to children and teens across the community, regardless of their families’ financial circumstances.
For the four graduates, the sendoff at Dumas Wesley served as both a celebration and something of a homecoming, a last chance to reflect together on the program that shaped much of their childhood before scattering toward Tuskegee, an Army base, community college and the docks that keep Mobile’s port economy moving.