Aug. 26, 2008 — It's located in North Carolina's back-of-beyond, and its facilities need help. Not many students attend the school — only 60 to 70 on any given year. But as much attention as it may need and as small as it may be, Laurinburg Institute has an impressive roster of alumni. And if the school's president has his way, more of those alums will come from the Virgin Islands in the years ahead.
Located in the town of Laurinburg on the border of South Carolina — "The town itself is this big," explains alumna Carol Callwood, snapping her fingers — Laurinburg Institute hopes to engender its name in the local lexicon as the go-to place for students who need a second chance.
Frank "Bishop" McDuffie Jr., the school's president, spoke Tuesday night to a scant gathering of people at Bertha C. Boschulte School as part of a three-day swing through St. Thomas. He's in the territory to launch an alumni association and a "friends" group, and to spread the word about his school as it prepares to open for its 105th year.
"We are working hand in hand with our graduates and local citizens here to create one more opportunity to save one kid," McDuffie said. "If we save one, he might end up leading you to a land you did not know existed."
Founded by McDuffie's grandparents at the urging of Booker T. Washington, Laurinburg — which caters predominantly to African-American students — has chugged along for decades on a shoestring. It's the "lowest-cost boarding school in the United States," according to McDuffie, at $16,000 a year, of which the average student pays about one-third, courtesy of financial aid.
While the school's facilities suffer, McDuffie confessed, that doesn't stop students from across the United States from attending, nor students from Germany, England, Africa and the Caribbean.
Among its graduates is Sir John William David Swan, premier of Bermuda, whom McDuffie described as the first black man in the western hemisphere to head a nation. And, while the state of its gymnasium has recently forced Laurinburg to practice in facilities of rival schools, its emphasis on athletics has produced NFL and NBA players, such as Sam Jones of the Boston Celtics, in addition to basketball great Charlie Scott, the first African-American scholarship athlete at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an Olympic gold-medal winner in 1968. Poet Maya Angelou's nephew attended Laurinburg, as did the grandchildren of baseball great Jackie Robinson, according to McDuffie.
Perhaps the school's most famous alum is one who earned his nickname courtesy of the mantra that Laurinburg friends and faculty used to say upon hearing him play his signature bebop music.
"You must be dizzy to play that kind of music!" was the phrase, McDuffie said, that got repeated to jazz legend Dizzy Gillespie, a 1936 graduate.
"We're a little country school in a country community, and there's nothing to do at all except go to school," McDuffie said, laughing. "When you get there and the best basketball player is going to college, or the best musician is going to college, you say, 'I can do that too,' and you find a way to get it done. We use anything we can to engage kids in education. Whatever it takes."
Steven Jones knows that well. He's the territory's assistant commissioner of property and procurement, and a 1975 graduate of Laurinburg. He chatted with McDuffie Tuesday night, recounting a conversation he once had with McDuffie's father.
"I remember your dad coming to me and saying, 'You gonna graduate this year?'"
"'Yeah,' I said."
"No you're not. Basketball season is finished. You need to play tennis. If you don't play tennis, you're not graduating."
"He wouldn't let me graduate without playing some kind of sport during the year. It was good, it was good!" Jones said.
Laurinburg has an important role right here in the territory, said Carol Callwood, the new head of the school's V.I. alumni association and a BCB teacher.
"I know for a fact we have at least 50 students removed from the system this year," Callwood said. "Where are they going to go? We may have an option for them to use."
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