MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — For some time, Pat Hawthorne had heard stories about Terrell Chestnut, about how a gifted athlete and smart young man struggled in class, talked back to teachers and punched his peers.
One day, Chestnut sat across from Hawthorne’s secretary desk outside the assistant principal’s office at Pottsgrove Middle School in Eastern Pennsylvania, in trouble yet again. In that moment, she saw something in the sixth-grader’s eyes, a basic goodness and compassion that didn’t befit someone making regular visits to the school’s disciplinarian.
So, in a moment of inspiration, Hawthorne unloaded.
“What are you doing throwing away such God-given talent?