On the nights when David Boone had no where else to go, the high school senior slept on a bench at a local baseball park.
Now, through perseverence and hard work, the homeless student has won a full scholarship to Harvard:
There wasn't much the then-15-year-old could do about the hookers or drug deals around him when he slept in Artha Woods Park. And the spectator's bench at the park's baseball diamond wasn't much of a bed.
But the aspiring engineer, now 18 and headed to Harvard University in the fall, had no regular home. Though friends, relatives and school employees often put him up, there were nights when David had no place to go, other than the park off Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.
So he says he made the best of those nights on the wooden bench.
His book bag became his pillow, stuffed with textbooks first -- for height, he says -- and papers on top for padding. [...]"I'd do my homework in a rapid station, usually Tower City since they have heat, and I'd stay wherever I could find," he said.
Patrick O'Donnell of The Plain Dealer has the inspiring story: Link (Photo: John Kuntz/The Plain Dealer) - via The Grio
New York Times hails it as "Slumdog Millionaire" meets "Pursuit of Happiness"
TIME magazine says its the Drama of the century.
Don't miss this shoo-in Oscar-winning film Directed by Martin Scorsese (Goodfellas and The Departed) starring Omar Epps (Foreman on House) as David Boone. Narrated as a flashback by Morgan Freeman.
He shouldn't have been left homeless in the first place.
The US of A at large seems perfectly content to just throw good kids like this to the dogs instead of trying to help feed, cloth and educate them.