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Desire Street Academy

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As a kid Oscar Brown dreamed of being the next Michael Jordan, but his life was anchored in the abject poverty of New Orleans’ Desire housing project, one of the nation’s largest tracts of subsidized housing in the heart of the Upper Ninth Ward, arguably the poorest, most crime-addled neighborhood in the city.

Each summer Brown could be found at any functioning basketball goal or open gymnasium he could find. Then at 14 he heard about a place to play ball that welcomed kids of any age at any time and—most importantly—free.

Brown and a friend of his found that hoop—and a lot more—at the Desire Street Ministries, a faith-based inner city outreach that hosted a summer camp.

The ministry offered kids from the projects an after-school hangout away from the dangers of the streets, and served up food, soft drinks, billiards and round ball until late in the evening.

“When you’re treated the right way, you start getting used to that,” Brown says. “Just like kids get used to the projects, the drugs and the killing. Eventually Desire Street was where I wanted to be all the time.”

It’s 9 a.m. on a school day in early September, and Oscar Brown sits frustrated in the principal’s office on the campus of Desire Street Academy, a North Baton Rouge boarding school that’s an offshoot of the urban ministry that became Brown’s adoptive home in New Orleans.

The office door is closed, yet a deep, authoritative voice penetrates the walls.

It’s not Brown who is in trouble.

The 25-year-old is dean of students and official disciplinarian at the academy. He is the perfect example of what interim academy director Leroy Scott and executive director Danny Wuerffel call an “indigenous leader.”

Through the academy, it’s the goal of Scott and Heisman-winning quarterback Wuerffel to raise educated, Christian men who will graduate to make a positive impact on their communities. Brown is one of them, and his impact is being felt in that office as he teaches a tardy student the importance of punctuality. His style: maximum intensity.

“He was making excuses for being late,” Brown explains later. “What I’m trying to show them is that one day they’ll have a family and a baby, and she’ll need something to eat, and they can’t make an excuse because an excuse won’t put food on the table.”

It’s the blunt combination of Brown’s strict regimen and his comedic personality that makes him well respected among the students, and so loved by them. Maybe it’s because 10 years ago, he was them.

“That’s my homey, Big O, right there,” says 18-year-old senior Josh Leavell. “He’s been like a father, a big brother, a mentor to me. He’s from the same place we’re from.”

Most of the academy’s 100 students see Brown, Scott, Wuerffel and other faculty as father figures when many of their own dads have little or no presence in their lives. More than half are from the Desire projects. Every Friday night a bus drives them to New Orleans to stay with family for the weekends, then hauls them back to Baton Rouge on Sunday. The rest of the students are from low-income families in North Baton Rouge.

In August, Desire held an advisory board meeting to discuss fundraising strategies and the ongoing search for a new principal. A pastor, a public relations veteran, an attorney, and others attended, proof that the academy’s relocation has mobilized a diverse group of volunteers to help support the school in Baton Rouge.

“This is a way for me to love my neighbor as myself,” says LSU assistant marketing professor Randle Raggio who volunteers as an ACT tutor at the academy. “We can show the students the importance of an education and show them that their development as men is critical to their futures, their families and communities.”

The students certainly are well fed. The cafeteria spreads look like Thanksgiving feasts compared to public school lunches. Healing Place Church donates all after-hours snacks like Gatorade, chips and cookies. “There’s something good about to happen here,” Scott tells the board gathered in the school’s modest library. “We have a beautiful campus, and God has great plans for us.”

Drawn to working with impoverished, inner city kids, Scott first interned with Desire Street while still in the seminary. He now leads daily chapel services at 8 a.m., and since the departure of longtime principal Al Jones Sr., he has filled the role of interim school director.

Like Brown’s alternately friendly, fatherly and authoritative approach to discipline, Scott says developing young inner city men and disciplining them simultaneously can be difficult. “It’s that balance between discipline and discipleship and giving our kids self-esteem.”

Once a week teachers and coaches each take a small group of students and open up dialogue about girls, drugs, sex, and current events. The recent shootings at Capitol High School come up. If the students are at all reserved about discussing their past, growing up in a rough neighborhood and barely escaping Hurricane Katrina, they show an eagerness to talk about the future. For many, that will include higher education. More than a dozen recent DSA graduates are in college or trade schools across the country. Leavell has his sights set on Syracuse and a psychology major. Devin Harris, a tall 16-year-old quarterback for the DSA Lions, wants to pursue sports medicine.

“There is nothing like graduating a kid from school who you know didn’t have a chance anywhere else,” Scott says. “Some of the student’s stories are so bad, and life so hopeless for them, most people [in those situations] would probably not even come to school. But the thing about these kids is that they do come. They still show up, man.”

Wuerffel manages the ministry, the school and its fundraising efforts from his office in Destin, Fla. He often visits the Baton Rouge campus and the rebuilding efforts in the Ninth Ward.

After Katrina flooded the entire Desire neighborhood, the all-boys school moved temporarily to the shoreline grounds of the University of Florida’s Camp Timpoochee, where Wuerffel played his college football. The Louisiana academy has since settled in North Baton Rouge.

Scott says working for Wuerffel is like playing with a championship quarterback.

“He’s a good leader and humble,” Scott says. “He nurtures his team, and he empowers his leadership. Like a quarterback, he passes and hands the ball off for us to score.”

From the ministry in the Desire projects to the academy in North Baton Rouge, Desire Street is attempting to paint a picture of what effect young black men can have on their own communities, one different than what is seen too often on the nightly news.

Eighteen-year-old Nick Ramsey started in an after-school program at the ministry at age seven. He works as the stage manager for school plays, and will graduate in 2009 with plans to attend culinary school. He wants to open a soul-food restaurant in the area.

“You felt a whole lot safer at the ministry because the adults around were not drug dealers and hustlers, they were real people that were for God and you knew that they cared about you,” Ramsey says. “Desire Street Academy is not a regular school, it’s a family atmosphere. Every student here should feel fortunate.”

Brown hates being the mean guy sometimes. It’s just not his personality. But he believes God put him in this position of authority so he can learn a life lesson. After 18 months in Baton Rouge, he has learned his heart is still in the Ninth Ward. Reconstruction of the ministry on Desire Parkway in New Orleans is set for completion in March, with plans to launch an elementary school next fall.

Brown wants to return. Until then, he will be keeping his Baton Rouge students in line, and mentoring another senior class with its eyes on earning college degrees.

“You get joy out of it,” Brown says. “But once they graduate, you get scared. You start second-guessing yourself—‘Did we do enough? Is he ready? Is he going to make it?’”

Spoken like someone who cares. Spoken just like a father.