Mcleod Reeves gets the youth love for caring

Roberta McLeod Reeves, director of the Blackburn Center at Howard University, sits on a bench with a co-worker in the center. She is venting to the co-worker about how a young man had just disrespected a visitor and her."He was outside showing out and when I talked to him, he started to show out with me," Reeves is recounting. Her coworker gets up and tells a security guard standing nearby."He's out there!" she says with a sense of urgency.

Reeves' co-worker and the security guard scurry outside after the scoundrel. Minutes later, they both deliver the rascal to Reeves, still sitting on the bench taking a call from an old student friend.

"Excuse me Ms. Reeves. Can I talk to you?" the young man mumbles in an apologetic demeanor. "I apologize for disrespecting you even though that wasn't my intention. So I'm sorry."

Reeves responds lovingly but sternly,"That's alright." For all her almost 25 years Reeves has been director of Blackburn Center at Howard University, she has been correcting, guiding and teaching teenagers and young adults good manners and proper decorum.

Stories abound at Howard of Reeves chasing young men out of Blackburn Center if they were inappropriately attired or using gutter language. They used to get into the fountain outside of the student union building and steal the change. Then they would come into the center, feet wet leaving unsightly footmarks on the floor and somehow on the walls, too.

The indomitable but caring Reeves would chase them out of the pool, telling the rogues not to steal the pennies out of the water. "If you need anything I'll give it to you," she would offer. "And stop coming in here causing trouble!"

Reeves said she is simply living out her aunts' and grandmother's principles of kindness and caring. They raised her on the belief that an act of kindness is worth more than money. From them she learned that everyday she should perform a random act of kindness to someone because you don't know how that person will impact your life down the line.

Angela Mills, a graduate student in African Studies at Howard, has known Ms. Reeves for almost 20 years. She described her simply as "loving and caring." "She will go that extra mile to help you," said Mills who studied fine arts as an undergraduate.

Mills and other local up-and-coming artists know too well how difficult it is to get gallery space to exhibit arts that do produce no or little revenue to the gallery - so does Reeves. Years ago she founded

Blackburn's art gallery which exhibits the works of prominent and not-so-prominent artists, including homeless and D.C.-area middle school students.

Brett Williams fondly remembers the day he first met the woman he said "is always willing to lend a helping hand." Williams, a senior at Howard majoring in film production, was just walking near the campus after work. Ms. Reeves was driving and must have sensed Williams was tired and probably needed a ride home. She stopped and asked: "Do you need a ride?"

A surprised Williams readily took the offer. "She didn't know me; she just saw me as another Howard student," Williams recounted.

Williams took more than just a ride from Reeves, he said. "When I got into the car, she asked me would I like something to eat and she took me to the Florida Avenue Grill and bought me lunch," he said, adding that Reeves consistently sees great possibilities in people she encounters.

One story Reeves tells that shows her uncanny eye for possibilities in everybody is of six boys she had a run in with at Blackburn. Instead of just chasing them away from the center, she turned them into a tutoring group with her as the tutor.

"I had them show me their report cards every marking period and I would tutor them," she said. "If they needed money for the prom, class fees, the movies or an amusement park, I would give it to them."

Reeves watched the boys grow into young adults and go in different directions - some to the military and some to college. "All of them made it but one," she said. The one who did not make it was shot and killed on the sidewalk on his block.

Girls, too, have benefited from Reeves' giving heart. She founded Essence of Africa, a rites of passage program in Prince George's County, Md., for girls from 8-18 years old.

"Essence of Africa teaches the girls how to respect themselves as a lady and how to make others respect them, table manners, how to budget personal money, how to dress for work and take care of personal hygiene," she described with pride on her face.

Chris Buckner, one of the student leaders at Howard University, said of Reeves: "She is one of the people walking around here that actually cares about the students and I appreciate having someone around like that.