Sixers' Harris invests in the future

THEY STOOD along the side wall and shifted in their shoes. They looked at each other and crinkled their noses. The taller ones draped their arms over the shoulders of the shorter ones, played with their hair, placed their hands on the sides of their heads, made them shake and nod. They did what kids do when you ask them to be still.

One of them, a skinny, little wisp of a thing, maybe 6 or 7 years old, pulled his arms inside his T-shirt and stuck his elbows out his sleeves. The adult in charge shot him a sideways glance. The kid smiled, then heeded the call.

This was 851 Tioga St., yesterday morning, a recreation center in a place called Harrowgate. A man worth a billion dollars stood at a podium. He made his money investing in distressed assets. He is the owner of the Sixers. Yesterday, he donated $3.5 million to the Police Athletic League, which operates the recreation center and 17 others like it across the city. Before his gift, the organization's annual budget was $6.3 million.

The kids swayed from side to side against the wall, perpendicular to the dais. In front of the kids were rows of adults attached to metal chairs. The adults faced forward and sat straight and listened attentively. The kids peeked out at them with bashful eyes. The adults clapped, and the kids followed, tentatively at first, as if to ensure the accuracy of their appraisal.

They are sponges, little surveillance drones, scoopers of signals from the world around. They are blank hard drives deriving their code from the bigger versions of themselves. Kids, just the same as anywhere.

Out on Kensington Avenue, you cannot see the sky. The blue above is made of rusted steel. It rumbles every now and then. God is not a bowler. He drives a SEPTA train.rush. They drift like ghosts down the sidewalks, past the bodegas and the pawn shops and the trash between the pillars. Past the corners where everything is for sale.

Beneath the tracks, the dead walk among the living. They have distant eyes and blank faces. They sway unsteadily on their heels as they step off the concrete steps and into the lunchtime rush. They drift like ghosts down the sidewalks, past the bodegas and the pawn shops and the trash between the pillars. Past the corners where everything is for sale.

"Every night when I send them home, I say a prayer," officer Frank Rivera said.

He was walking down a hallway, pointing at pictures. The building feels like an elementary school. There is a classroom and a multi-purpose gymnasium and pictures everywhere: kids dribbling basketballs, swinging bats, studying homework. Kids like the ones that were standing against the wall.

He grew up in the neighborhood. American and Allegheny. Twenty-seven years on the force, 21 with PAL.

The kids in the photos are adults now . . . She's a doctor . . . He's a police officer . . . She's a nurse.

The police officer was a pet project of Frank's as a kid.

"A little tough guy," he said.

The kid is a supervisor now.

The doctor went to undergrad at Harvard, medical school at Georgetown. She is finishing up her residency at Temple. In sixth grade, a friend introduced her to PAL. They played quiz bowl. She grew up in a neighborhood safer than this one. It isn't complicated.

"You have to give kids something positive to do," she said.

Four blocks from the rec center, just past Scanlon Playground, a seventh-grade girl sat on her porch in late May. A stray bullet tore into her stomach, another unintended consequence of somebody else's fight. As of late June, she was still in critical condition, the detectives still waiting for somebody to talk.

It was not front-page news. There was no outrage, no shock, no collective introspection about our turbulent times. Tragedy in the American sense is suffering where it doesn't belong: on an airplane, in an office building, on live TV. It is the shaded area of concentric worlds that rarely overlap.

They called the kids up to the front of the podium. They were black and brown and white. They shuffled unsurely as the adults looked on. They clasped their hands and twisted their heads and flashed their shy, little smiles. This is what the money means, the police commissioner said. Officer Rivera stood behind the swaying herd. As he turned his head, the light sparkled off the moisture in his eyes. For a moment, you wondered how much it would cost to build each of them a wall to keep the world from getting in.

Blog: ph.ly/HighCheese