His Scholarships Aid Sixth-Graders : Program for Ghetto Students Finds Nationwide Echo

The telephone call surprised New York entrepreneur Eugene M. Lang.

“I can’t go on with my life so I’m going to jump out the window,” the high school girl on the other end told the balding millionaire.

Lang knew the girl’s father was a religious fanatic. He knew that two of the man’s older daughters lived on the street and had illegitimate children, so the father allowed his youngest daughter to leave the house on her own only to attend school. If she went elsewhere, her father took her.

Life Ahead of Her

Lang told the girl over the phone that her life remained ahead of her, that she was reaching the age when she could make decisions for herself and that she should not be afraid. “I told her I would make sure she had a job, a place to live and could stand on her own two feet,” he recalled. She listened and agreed, and for Lang it was another in a series of success stories.

Six years ago, in an unpremeditated gesture, Lang, now 68, walked to the podium to give a commencement address at an East Harlem grammar school and promised each of the 61 sixth-graders a college scholarship if they earned the grades to qualify for higher education.

He hired a counselor for the students and became available to them 24 hours a day for listening, counseling or emotional support. As their trust in him developed, his relationship with them grew and he began to see large differences in their lives.

One student earned a high school diploma while imprisoned for armed robbery. Another will start college this year after having a baby. Ten of the 61 students moved away, but Lang believes that 48 of the remaining 51 will graduate from high school and two-thirds will go to college.

“The commitment I made was like getting on a tiger, but I don’t want to get off,” said Lang, whose 12-hour-a-day, seven-days-a-week work schedule includes 40-50 hours on the project he calls “I Have a Dream.”

High Level of Nobility

“I’m happy to get my five hours of sleep and keep going. There are so many warm spots from the experience. You are meeting people at their highest level of nobility.”

Among the people Lang ranks as most noble are those copying his program in cities across the nation in an effort to reverse the growing dropout rate among inner-city youth. Since he began his program, Lang says that 100 people have contributed scholarships for 4,000 sixth-graders in 15 cities.

The philanthropist visited Los Angeles recently to watch Win Rhodes-Bea of Los Angeles donate $1.5 million for scholarships for 200 graduating sixth-graders at the inner-city 52nd Street Elementary School and Holmes Avenue Elementary School.

Rhodes-Bea is the granddaughter of Mericos Hector (Max) Whittier, a turn-of-the-century oil magnate and one of the founders of Beverly Hills.

The Belridge Oil Co., started by Whittier and run by his family after his death in 1925, was sold to Shell Oil Co. in 1979 for $3.6 billion, at that time the highest-priced acquisition in business history. A family business, the M. H. Whittier Corp. in South Pasadena, continues to deal in oil, real estate and venture capital.

“This is an alternative to selling crack and dropping out, and I believe we’ve got to educate the people who are our future citizens so we can all coexist,” Rhodes-Bea said at her large French Norman home on a lush, quiet street recently.

” . . . (They) have to be educated into responsible citizens. Besides, there are lots of kids who are gifted, and without an opportunity like this they might end up being dropouts or non-readers.”

Rhodes-Bea will run the program, supervising its counseling, tutoring, field trips and other activities. She also supports a six-person home for the wheelchair-disabled in Paramount.

Many Preparations

The former Win Woodward graduated from University High School in West Los Angeles and the University of California at Berkeley. She became interested in “I Have a Dream” when she saw a “60 Minutes” segment on Lang’s program. She flew to New York last October to meet Lang and begin preparations.

The completion of those preparations brought Lang to Los Angeles for the dedication of the program here. The fast-moving investor, whose business is developing new technologies, spoke impromptu one evening for 45 minutes to supporters of the local program at the Challengers Boys and Girls Club in South-Central Los Angeles.

The next morning he introduced the program to sixth-graders at the two graduations and attended a luncheon for the program staff before rushing to the airport for an afternoon flight to New York.

Heard King Speech

During the visit, Lang recalled being in Washington, D.C., on business and attending Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963.

In 1981, as he prepared to address the graduating class at P.S. 121, a school he had graduated from decades earlier, the King speech popped into his mind. Wanting to say something that would “establish a wavelength between me and these children,” he dropped his original platitudes and promised each youngster a college scholarship.

It was a pledge he could easily afford. The entrepreneur said he no longer knows how much money he has because “it doesn’t matter. I have enough so I no longer am obsessed by making it. . . . I have no patience to know how my money is invested. Managers do that. That’s a waste of my precious time, which grows shorter and shorter.”

Gave Away $25 Million

Lang says he doesn’t believe in inheritance and has given away more than $25 million.

“I think people should earn what they have,” he said. “And beyond providing for the security of my family at rather nominal levels, whatever surplus I have should go back into society where I got the resources to begin with.” He plans to leave most of his money to education and health care.

He came to these philanthropic beliefs through his father, a socialist who came to the U.S. from Germany in 1911 to avoid being arrested for his political beliefs.

Eugene Lang’s wife of 41 years, Theresa, is a trustee of two hospitals and “just as my commitment is to education, her commitment is to hospitals. . . . Every one of my three children has one area of social responsibility they commit to. . . . “

For Lang, that commitment brings intense personal rewards. “You’re on a constant high,” he said. “We’re making productive citizens of those that would be outcasts and pariahs. When you do that, you raise the whole aspiration level of a community. When a kid feels better, everyone around that kid feels good.”