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Elmer Smith | Wilson Goode's personal quest to help kids with parents in jail

NOBODY HAS TO tell the Rev. Wilson Goode how it feels to be ostracized when other children find out that your father is in jail.

NOBODY HAS TO tell the Rev. Wilson Goode how it feels to be ostracized when other children find out that your father is in jail.

He knows how it feels to have your future discounted by people who are quick to conclude that you came from nothing and you're headed nowhere.

He suppressed those feelings as his life and career took the upward arc that culminated with his election as the city's first black mayor. Even years later, when his father returned to the family and lived long enough to see him become mayor, the feelings were too raw for him to share in public.

But those suppressed slights and the cherished memory of the pastor who made him believe in his life chances have become part of Goode's narrative as he challenges men to step up and become mentors for the children of incarcerated parents.

Today, Amachi, a mentoring program for the children of incarcerated parents that he conceived along with the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Southeastern Pennsylvania, is reaching 75,000 potential mayors in 48 states, 213 cities, including five cities in Canada.

His partnership with Big Brothers Big Sisters takes on new intensity with the announcement today of Goode's election as the organization's board chairman. It brings him back to the place where he started out on the mission that he expects to be on for the rest of his life.

"I never talked about my father the whole time I was mayor," Goode told me. "I just kind of put it out of my mind. I was in denial about it.

"It wasn't until one day I was making a speech about Amachi that it just came out. I didn't plan on saying it.

"But I realized that this program I was working on really is what my own life is about.

"When my counselor at John Bartram High School said not to even think about college, my pastor at the First Baptist Church of Pascall, Rev. Willam H. Lemon, said, 'Yes, you are going to college.'

"The intervention of that local congregation changed my outcomes."

That's why his message resonates with the men he targets in his Amachi appeals. It's also why he refuses to take credit for Amachi's success.

"In my wildest dreams," he says, "I could not imagine it would be anywhere near where it is. What that says to me is that it's not a question of our leadership, but the compelling nature of the problem."

The nature of the problem is that the children of incarcerated parents are far more likely to be incarcerated than other children, less likely to graduate from high school and more likely to be poor. But what may be even more compelling is the difference the intervention by an adult mentor can make, even when the deck is stacked against a child.

"We find consistently that two-thirds of the children we reach get better grades and improved attendance," Goode said. Even their behavior improves.

"When men learn that incredible things can be done with the investment of one hour a week for a year or two, they start to respond."

Big Brothers Big Sisters has seen the same kind of success through its mentoring. But it has had only mixed results in enlisting men, especially black men in urban settings.

This is true even though the local chapter has worked to recruit men from every segment of the community, including men who have had slight brushes with the law.

"My primary reason for taking this on," Goode told me, "is that I admire greatly what Marlene Olshan has achieved as executive director here. I felt that together, we could take it to a new level.

"What we have to do is work with the congregations and black fraternities, Masonic orders, any organization, to just tell them what we need."

He can tell them that this is not just some son of a jailbird we are asking you to mentor. This kid could become mayor of a major city. *

Send e-mail to smithel@phillynews.com or call 215-854-2512. For recent columns: http://go.philly.com/smith