PAL Programs Touch Many Lives

By: Keith Mills

Still not convinced high school sports warrants all the coverage and attention it gets? Not sure the relationships made and lessons learned really do carry over when the quarterbacks and point guards of today turn into the adults of tomorrow?

Then check out the story of Chuckie Lee.

Lee is about to begin his 15th year as a Baltimore City police officer. He grew up in East Baltimore, a few blocks from the Madison Square Recreation Center on East Biddle Street, and now runs the Police Athletic League Center out of the Robert Marshall Recreation Center on Pennsylvania Avenue in West Baltimore.

He is also a former high school basketball player who listened to his teachers and coaches. He ignored the temptations of the streets, turned his back on wannabe friends who wanted to bring him down and is now a walking, talking billboard for dozens of men and women on the police force who have changed young lives through their work in PAL centers.

These are youngsters like Darious Kosar and James Diggs, who sat side by side last week at the ESPN Zone on Pratt Street at the annual Ravens-PAL Christmas party.

“Willis McGahee,” said Diggs when asked to name his favorite Raven. “I’ve always wanted to be a running back, and he’s good.”

“Ed Reed’s my favorite,” Kosar said.

Forget that Kosar was wearing a No. 52 Ray Lewis jersey. The time had come for Kosar, Diggs and nearly 100 boys and girls to munch down on pizza and snag some autographs from Ravens tight end Daniel Wilcox.

“They get to see some of their idols,” Lee said. “They get to put some of the names with the faces, reach out and touch them besides just seeing them on television.”

There are 18 PAL centers in Baltimore City, another nine in Baltimore County. Craig Singletary worked at the first one in the northeast section of the city, on Goodnow Road and Sinclair Lane.

Singletary, whose son Craig Jr., helped Dunbar’s boys basketball team win three of the Poets’ 11 state championships, spent 21 years on the Baltimore City police force before retiring last March. He now provides security for the Ravens and volunteers at the Goodnow PAL center three days a week.

Singletary and Lee are just two of countless number of men and women who coach, mentor, guide, preach and teach to the hundreds of kids who come through PAL centers every year. They are joined by officers like Terry Brown of Crispus Attucks, Fred Allen of Fort Worthington and James Washington of Lillian Jones.

Calvert Hall’s Juan Dixon and Lake Clifton’s Shawnta Rogers were two kids who came through Singletary’s program at Goodnow, while Carmelo Anthony, Joey Dorsey, Gerald Brown, Tyler Smith and Omar Strong have passed through Lee’s center on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Dorsey, Brown and Smith all led Frederick Douglass High School, coached by former Dunbar standout Rodney Cofield, to an unbeaten season and a state championship in 2002. Dorsey is now the leading rebounder for No. 2-ranked Memphis, Brown starts for Jimmy Patsos at Loyola College and Smith started last year at Colorado State. Strong is the leading scorer for this year’s Douglass team, again coached by Cofield.

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It’s a mile-and-a-half drive from ESPN Zone to the Madison Square Rec Center in East Baltimore and about a 2-mile drive to the Marshall Rec Center on the west side.

Realistically, though, the ESPN Zone could be on Mars, because rarely do neighborhood kids get a chance to venture far away, much less play the games, open presents and ask the Ravens' Yamon Figurs about the car he drives.

“These kids really deserve it,” Lee said. “They’re hard-working kids. They’ve worked hard in the classroom, they do what they’re told, and this is a reward for the work they do all year round.”

Sounds a lot like a young Lee.

“For me it was the rec centers,” he said. “Walter P. Carter, Madison. Guys like Andrew Boston, Kevin 'Sarge' Anderson. They were very instrumental to me. They were role models for me. They kept me off the streets. It was basketball five days a week, and they taught me how to be a young man.”

Lee played on a rec team in East Baltimore coached by Boston that included four of the five starters from the 1992 Dunbar national championship basketball team, coached by Pete Pompey and Paul Holmes: Donta Bright, Keith Booth, Cyrus Jones and Paul Banks. Bright, Jones (now coach at Dunbar), Banks, Duwad Thomas and George Brandon started, with Lee and Booth coming off the bench.

“We grew up together,” Lee said. “Keith Booth was actually the sixth man on that team and I was the seventh. The reason I didn’t go to Dunbar was that I didn’t think I was going to play.”

Instead, at the urging of the Dickerson twins, Lee enrolled at Cardinal Gibbons. Cleon and Leon Dickerson were great players at Gibbons in the late 1980s. Lee followed his friends to the West Baltimore school, where he played for the late Ray Mullis and became one of the area’s most ferocious rebounders and defenders.

“He was one of the best rebounders we ever had,” said Brian Moorehouse, an assistant at Gibbons who eventually took over the program when Mullis passed away in 1995. “Chuckie was one of those kids who always had a smile on his face. Coach would get on him hard, and Chuckie would just smile and go back out and play hard.”

Lee tore his ACL in 1990 and missed his sophomore season, but returned as a junior to help Gibbons win the Catholic League championship. Lee, Quintin Moody, Casey Musik and Ross Peacock, who won the tournament MVP award, led the Crusaders to a 77-69 win over Loyola Blakefield. One year later, Lee earned the tournament’s Sportsmanship Award after the Crusaders lost to Sydney Johnson and Towson Catholic in the finals, 73-60.

“Coach Moorehouse, Coach Mullis, those guys really cared about us,” Lee said. “Coach Mullis set an excellent example. He talked to me about working hard every day, not only on the court, but in the classroom. He’d call me in his office and ask how I was doing. Ask me if I needed anything.”

Lee does the same thing now for the kids he works with at the PAL Center. He joined the police force after graduating from high school in 1993 and joined the PAL program in 1997.

“I can relate to kids,” Lee said. “I’m one of them. I grew up on the same streets. I had Coach Boston and Sarge looking out for me. They gave back, and they made sure I wasn’t late for practice, made sure I went to a good school. It came to the point where I knew I had to give back. I just had to.”

“It didn’t surprise me at all when I heard Chuckie had joined the police force,” Moorehouse said. “He’s always been that kind of the person.”

Moorehouse, who also played at Gibbons, was standing in the huge gymnasium last Friday night at Mount St. Joseph, where Pat Clatchey’s Gaels had just beaten Gibbons, 66-56, to stay unbeaten this season.

The game was played before a standing room-only crowd that triggered memories of the days when Mullis and Gene Neiberlein stalked the sideline, when Norman Black and Barry Scroggins, the Neiberlein brothers and Quintin Dailey played before huge crowds and raised the level of play in local high school basketball to unprecedented heights.

In the early 1990s Lee and Moody, Pat Young and Darrin Jones of Mount St. Joe helped do the same.

“Playing for Coach Mullis was awesome,” Lee said. “He was a real inspiration to me.”

Now Lee is doing the same for the high school basketball, volleyball, football players and track standouts of tomorrow.

“It’s done a lot to keep our kids away from gangs and the trouble on the street,” Lee said. “PAL is very instrumental, not only as police officers and mentors but examples of how to go about everyday life. Sometimes in my job I have to lock people up. I make sure our kids know why that happens, the dos and don’ts of how to do things and what’s right and what’s wrong. These kids are the future in Baltimore. No matter what goes on outside, we tell them they can make it. You can survive in this world if you put your mind to it and believe.”