On Sunday, the organization did the same off the field, along with a group of Bay News 9 employees.
Bay News 9 weekday morning anchor Erica Riggins and other staff members hosted 50 boys from the St. Petersburg mentoring group ‘Men in the Making‘ for a Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ game and pre-game party.
Bay News 9 reporter Trevor Pettiford emceed the event and stressed to the young men the event meant just as much to him as it did to them.
“It’s an incredible honor,” Pettiford said. “To be a part of Men in the Making.
“It’s great to be involved with them, get the young men out at different events and give back to the community. It’s just a win-win.”
The boys were treated to a tailgate party at One Buc Place, played games, engaged in mentoring sessions with Bay News 9 employees and enjoyed a Q-and-A session with former Buc and current team Director of Football Operations Shelton Quarles.
“It’s really important,” Quarles said of lending his time to the men in the Making organization. “Anytime to have a chance to give back, you do. Coach Dungy taught his players that. I try to continue that to this day.”
The group then headed into Raymond James Stadium to cheer on the Bucs against the New Orleans Saints.
Born out of tragedy, the Men in the Making program now mentors approximately 50 young men from south St. Petersburg neighborhoods.
The creation of the group came about after the 2011 shooting death of St. Petersburg police officer David Crawford.
A teenager, Nicholas Lindsey, then 16, was convicted of killing Crawford and is now serving a life sentence.
A need was seen to connect teens with people in the community to keep them on a successful path. Mentors meet with boys one Saturday a month, spending time with them for about seven to eight hours.
Professionals from the community and police officials work with the teens — teaching everything from tying ties and speaking in public to developing writing and critical thinking skills.
The group has had speakers from ESPN, gone to restaurants, visited museums and had demonstrations from St. Petersburg police.
Sunday was a chance to do what only two kids in the group had ever done: attend a live National Football League game.
Kenny Irby, the program director of Men in the Making, said the boys worked hard to earn the honor of attending the game.
“Today is just affirmation of how enriching this activity can be,” Irby said. “Getting these kids to see things outside of their environment is vital.
“But they earned it – with their academics and behavior. They promised they would and it’s a promise that was kept.”
Service…the topic of today’s Men In The Making session. We ended the year strong with one of our most informative gatherings of aspiring young men yet.
A special thank you to BayNews9 anchor, Erica Riggins, who stopped in for lunch to celebrate our program success in preparation for our “Day With The Bucs” next Sunday. Erica graciously serves as a Men In The Making ambassador.
Dr. Ricardo Davis, lead with his talk “My word is my bond. Speaking from the heart” to a room full of captivated youth. Imparting the importance of education and being true to your promises are just a few of the lessons that were conveyed.
TBABJ to honor veteran journalists at Nov. 17 banquet
The Tampa Bay Association of Black Journalists (TBABJ) will honor five veteran journalists next month at its annual Griot Drum Awards & Scholarship Banquet.
Larry Cotton, Dayle Green, the Rev. Kenny Irby, Josh Thomas and Denise White will receive TBABJ’s 2016 Legacy Award at the organization’s banquet on Thursday, Nov. 17, at the Tampa Marriott Westshore, 1001 N. Westshore Blvd. The Legacy Award is a tribute to trailblazing journalists who have made outstanding contributions to Tampa Bay.
Larry Cotton
Cotton retired this year as WFLA-TV’s senior production cameraman and photographer. He also was a restaurant review correspondent of “Larry’s Good Eats’’ for 12 years on WFLA’s “Daytime’’ show. Cotton, who moved to Tampa from Cleveland, Ohio in 1986, worked at WFLA for 28 years and has been in journalism about 40 years. His involvement with the Tampa Bay Association of Black Journalists started when the organization was known as the Suncoast Black Communicators.
Rev. Kenny Irby
Irby was Poynter Institute’s visual journalism and diversity senior faculty member from 1995 to 2015. In 2016, he was hired by the City of St. Petersburg as its community intervention director. Irby also is the pastor of Bethel A.M.E. Church in St. Petersburg. He recently formed Men in the Making, a program that pairs boys with role models. Before joining Poynter, he worked as a photojournalist for Newsday and media outlets in Boston and Michigan.
Dayle Green
Greene came to Tampa in 1972 and became one of the first African-American on-air talents at Fox’s WTVT-Channel 13. He has the distinction of being the first black news anchor in the area. Green also has hosted a public affairs show for Cox Radio. He currently is a career manager at the Tampa Bay Workforce Alliance.
Josh Thomas
Thomas retired from WFLA this year as an anchor and reporter. He began his broadcast career as a reporter in Rockford, Illinois, and worked as an anchor and reporter in Peoria, Illinois; New Haven, Connecticut; Atlanta; Baltimore, Maryland; and Birmingham, Alabama. He became a weekend co-anchor at WFLA in 2003. Thomas won numerous awards for reporting in Atlanta and Baltimore and was named the best anchor in Alabama by the Associated Press in 1997. He also has served as a visiting faculty member at Poynter Institute.
Denise White
After 25 years at Fox’s WTVT-Channel 13, Denise White retired from her full-time position in 2015. It also marked 40 years in the broadcast industry. White left a Miami station to begin her career at Tampa’s Fox network. She was part of the first female anchor duo in Tampa Bay television. For some time in the 1990s, White was the highest-profile minority anchor in the local market and the only black journalist anchoring a weekday evening newscast.
At the Nov. 17 banquet, TBABJ also will present awards for thebest media coverage of people of color and award college scholarships to students studying journalism.
The cocktail hour is at 6 p.m. The dinner and the awards ceremony will begin at 7 p.m. Tammie Fields, an anchor and reporter with WTSP 10 News, will be the emcee. Jarrett Hill, a former Tampa journalist who is now a correspondent with The Hollywood Reporter in Los Angeles, will be the special guest.
Tickets to the Nov. 17 banquet are $30, $10 for full-time students, and $300 for a table. They can be purchased through TBABJ’s website at www.tbabj.com.
Young men reflecting on the importance of learning from their history. Dr. Basha Jordan Jr. was an amazing inspiration and held the young men of Men In The Making responsible for their futures.
We also honored Reverend Williams for making it to Capitol Hill to deliver the Congressional opening prayer. His presence and that of the other accomplished mentors helped solidify a lot of the principals we try to convey each month.
NFL Hall of Fame coach Tony Dungy, Reverend Kenny Irby, and Assistant Chief of SPPD Luke Williams after The Pinellas County Schools Day of Dialogue presentation at Gibbs High School.
“Shiny Shoes” and “We All Look The Same Inside” are just a few of the unique quotes gleaned from Men In The Making’s first session in the 2016-2017 series. Doctor Steven Epstein, a renowned trauma surgeon, gave insight into his profession and was amazed by the pointed questions being asked by the young men of Men In The Making.
Aspiring mentor, Norm Scott, shared a story from his career as an executive with Bank Of America. Following his retirement, Scott was enlightened by a top Bank of America executive who stated, “The reason I initially hired you was your Shiny Shoes”. Further commenting that he and the other executives were so impressed with the amount of care Norm had taken in shining his shoes they hired him on the spot. Doctor Epstein echoed this sentiment by explaining in-depth different medical procedures and the way in which “We All Look The Same Inside”. Doctor Epstein closed by explaining that the amount of care we give to even the most menial tasks defines who we are.
We’re on our way to an amazing start and seeing all the new faces in our ever expanding program is awe inspiring.
Men In The Making’s 2016-2017 sessions are about to begin. Today, potential mentees and mentors met at Greater Mt Zion AME Church to learn more about the program. Following a bit of thought provoking conversation and sharing a meal, the boys signed the Men In The Making Creed confirming their intentions to join the program.
St. Pete Police Department’s assistant police chief Luke Williams holds two young members of the Men In The Making mentoring program. Williams took the boys to the vigil sight where family and friends remembered the boys who lost their lives to gun violence. The boys broke into tears and hugged Williams. (KEYONT’E HOWARD | SNN)
By ALEXIS GARCIA
SNN Staff Writer
It could happen to anyone. In a matter of seconds your life could be changed drastically at the hands of a gun. It doesn’t matter if you’re the person behind the gun or in front of the gun. Anyone surrounding the situation will be affected in some way, shape or form.
This is precisely what has happened in the St. Petersburg area. In the last two months of 2015, seven young males were shot and killed, many of them friends or acquaintances of Lakewood High School students.
The youngest victim was 16-year-old Lenny Acostas.
Shootings occur so often that people have become desensitized to gun-related deaths.
“It’s not worth it. If you take a life you can’t give it back. The pain you cause a family, the pain you cause your family, I don’t think money or disagreements are worth throwing the rest of your life away,” 22-year-old Joshua Walsh’s mother, Christie Dunaway, said in an interview with SNN.
Lakewood junior Cierra Lynch knew Acostas for six years. She was on Snapchat getting ready to go to sleep when she got the phone call saying Acostas died.
“It hurt because that’s someone I knew a long time and for that to happen, it’s unexplainable. He never bothered anyone,” she said.
The other boys were Tyler Lord, 17, Gabriel Wallace, 17, Jerrod Evans, 18, Jaquez Jackson, 18, and Aaron Davis, 25.
Lakewood junior Jeremy Williams said that he knew Lord since sixth grade when they attended Azalea Middle School together.
“We had a lot of classes together and we almost fought each other a couple times, and we played basketball with each other a lot,” Williams said.
Williams said he felt shocked when he found out the news.
“You can want to fight somebody one day, but you don’t want to see them dead,” he said.
These deaths have affected many Lakewood students according to an SNN survey conducted in January. Data from 204 students showed that more than 60 percent of those surveyed knew one of the boys personally or knew someone who knew them. (See charts.)
The data also showed that:
More than 55 percent of students surveyed knew someone who had been killed by a gun.
· About 61 percent of the students surveyed knows someone who was injured by a gun.
· Almost 35 percent of students surveyed say that they have a gun in their home.
One of the reasons for the killings may be the increase in the number of guns that young people have access to. A lot of these guns were stolen from cars, Assistant Police Chief Luke Williams told SNN. The department takes at least two guns off the street every day, 365 days a year.
A lot of the guns are being stolen and used by kids – and a lot of the times they are from unlocked vehicles.
“How irresponsible can a gun owner be?” he said.
According to the Children’s Defense Fund, in 2010, 15,576 children and teenagers were hurt by guns, which is three times more than the number of U.S. soldiers injured in the war in Afghanistan.
Nationally, guns kill twice as many children and young people than cancer, five times as many than heart disease and 15 times more than infection, according to the New England Journal of Medicine.
“We’ve watered down what life is. We used to have fistfights. Now folks are pulling out guns,” he said.
Williams said that from what he sees daily, he thinks that one reason for gun-related deaths is video games.
“But you can’t push the restart button and start over and come back to life,” he said.
Arrests have been made in six out of seven of the St. Petersburg murders that happened in late 2015. Acostas’ killing is the only unsolved case out of the group. Williams thinks that many people who have information about these types of cases stay silent because they’re afraid of retaliation or of being called a “snitch”.
What many people don’t know is that the police will protect those who share crucial information.
“The snitching thing is blown out of proportion,” Williams said. “If you see something say something.”
Williams hopes that these deaths can be stopped by conversation.
“It can be prevented through communication with each other – young and old alike,” he said. “Leaders talk a good game, but this whole community needs to come together to stop the violence.”
Gun safety tips
According to experts, the best way to keep events like these young men’s deaths from occurring is to store guns in a safe, not easily accessible space. Here are some safety tips:
Store firearms in a locked cabinet, safe, gun vault or storage case when not in use, ensuring they are in a location inaccessible to children and cannot be handled by anyone without grown up permission.
Store your ammunition in a locked location separate from firearms.
Always keep the firearm’s muzzle pointed in a safe direction. A “safe direction” means that the gun is pointed so that even if an accidental discharge occurred, it would not result in injury.
Firearms should be unloaded when not actually in use. Whenever you pick up a gun, such as when removing it from or returning it to storage, remember to point it in a safe direction and make sure it is unloaded.
Be sure you know how a firearm operates, whether there’s one in the house or not. Read the manual on the firearm, know how to safely open and close the action of the firearm and know how to safely remove any ammunition from the firearm.
Use a gun locking device that renders the firearm inoperable when not in use. A gun lock should be used as an additional safety precaution and not as a substitute for secure storage.
Young people in a home should be aware of and understand the safety guidelines concerning firearms. Always have an adult unload, clean and place the firearms in their secure storage location.
(To read the full transcript of William’s press conference with SNN, click here.)
For Men in the Making, it’s more than a good idea: It’s a mantra.
Born out of tragedy, the Men in the Making program now mentors 40 young men from south St. Petersburg neighborhoods.
Officer David Crawford was one of three law enforcement officers killed in St. Petersburg during the early months of 2011. Crawford, who was investigating reports of a suspicious person near Tropicana Field, was shot and killed by then 16-year-old Nicholas Lindsey, who is now serving a life sentence.
“There was something we needed to do to keep other youth from falling into that same path,” said St. Petersburg Police Maj. Antonio Gilliam, who works with the program. “We created a program mainly focusing on middle school age minority youth.”
Mentors meet with boys one Saturday a month, spending time with them for about seven to eight hours and teaching life skills.
Dominic Rosado, 16, who has grown up without a father said the group makes him feel like he has several dads.
“It’s provided me with not one father figure role model, it’s provided me with many,” he said. “And it’s really been instrumental in my growth and development.”
Professionals from the community and police officials work with the teens – teaching everything from tying ties and speaking in public to developing writing and critical thinking skills.
“Left to their own devices, young boys will find something to do, often unproductive,” Gilliam said. “If you occupy their time with something positive, you can have experiences that will have a long-lasting affect on them.”
The group has had speakers from ESPN, gone to restaurants, visited museums and had demonstrations from St. Petersburg police.
On Saturday, 40 boys in the Men in the Making program toured the Bay News 9 studio. The teens learned about television and online news, had a Q&A session and enjoyed lunch with Bay News 9 officials.
The teens, as well as mentors, said the experience was beneficial.
Often tempted by other teens or from broken homes and facing difficult choices, several of the boys said the group has taught them how to avoid trouble, to work towards a goal and yes, make the right choices.
“What we are doing is hopefully creating future leaders,” Gilliam said. “We want to fill in the gap for those kids that don’t all have a positive male role model in their life.
“We know that it is critical that they have consistency and have someone they can turn to when they need it. Then during tough times, when it’s time to make difficult decisions, they can revert back to some of these lessons and make the right choice.”