CLEM MURRAY / Inquirer Staff Photographer
Trey McCloud tries to convince his mother, Lynn Sydnor, a minority-job recruiter, that the Scrabble word he has made is real. He wrote of his father: "You say you're a man yet you don't even know my voice." Trey's essay "Man Enough" describes his father's lack of contact with him.
Part 2: Life without a father
Students learn that others have suffered in the same way.
Second in the series
Thursday, March 2 - Fourteen-year-old Benjamin Jones has never told his classmates - or anyone else - how he feels about his father.
Like nearly a third of the students, Benjamin has had little contact with the man who gave him life. Now, he's put down the words in his diary, but can't muster the courage to read them.
So Vanessa Taylor, 14, whose own father died when she was 7, agrees to help.
She opens Benjamin's journal and begins to read aloud: "Growing Up Without a Father."
"I wish he was dead. When I was born, he was there, but after a while, he just left. He would come in and out of my childhood life... . My seventh birthday he was supposed to come. He promised me weeks before. I was so surprised and hurt at the same time."
Benjamin, a quiet boy in class who likes to dance to hip-hop and play football, remains seated and looks straight ahead as Vanessa continues.
"But I got older. I learned it would be better if he was not around... .
"But thanks to my mom and my sister, I'm a very smart, handsome and crazy but a good person without my father."
The 30 other eighth graders in the classroom at Grover Washington Jr. Middle School, in Philadelphia's Olney section, clap loudly.
Sitting at a desk among the students, teacher Michael Galbraith compliments Benjamin, who grins, revealing blue-tinted braces.
"That was most like the stuff in the Freedom Writers' book," Galbraith says, referring to the intensely personal California diary project that had prompted struggling students to love writing, and on which he based much of this class.
"It seemed to have that flavor," he says.
Seven of the 16 students who read aloud this March morning talk of growing up without a father.
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Trey McCloud, 13, a tall, broad-shouldered boy with glasses who rarely talks in class, agrees to read his piece, "Man Enough."
"You don't care about me or mom," McCloud begins. "You say you're a man yet... " The boy's voice trembles. He loses his place, and for a few seconds his words can't be heard.
"You don't even know my voice," he says, again finding his own.
"... When I become famous and have a family, don't you ever come and say you're a father. You don't deserve to be called a human, yet I will forgive you because I'm man enough."
"Wow, Trey!" Galbraith says. "I'm surprised you could read that. Very powerful."
