Wes Moore was in The Baltimore Sun for being involved with a robbery-homicide that resulted in the death of a father of five.
Wes Moore was in The Baltimore Sun for being a prestigious international scholar.
Two men, one name and paths that seemed to start in the same way – yet, one was rewarded with opportunities and the other was not.
“I’m a very firm believer that potential in this country is universal, opportunity is not,” said Wes Moore, a best-selling author who spoke before a crowd at Alumni Arena Wednesday.
Moore, the second speaker of this year’s Distinguished Speaker Series, targeted his speech toward students, encouraging them to help others who aren’t as privileged. The Army combat veteran and youth advocate talked about the importance of using opportunities in higher education to combine passions with the needs of those less fortunate.
He discussed how his own journey led him to write his book, “The Other Wes Moore,” – which embodies a similar theme to the speech he gave – and helped him realize society’s collective goal is to fight for the “others” who all deserve a chance to succeed.
Moore said there are some people who are standing at a “ledge of greatness” every day. The problem is, they don’t even know it. These are the “others.”
They are the ones who are not able to have the same higher education opportunities, and Moore said it is up to those more fortunate to walk through these communities to make an impact.
“The most important question you’re going to be asked will not be what is your major, because that is ephemeral and that question will fade,” he said to the crowd. “The question that you will be asked not just now, the question you will be asked for the remainder of your days on this planet and the most important question is going to be: ‘Who did you choose to fight for?’”
Moore said buying a new car is like the opportunity to go to college. Some choose the “fastest car” yet only drive it at 20 mph. The car has more potential. Students do, too.
“Step on the gas,” he said to students.
He pointed to the audience and said there is enough “intellectual capital” in the room alone to solve any problem in Buffalo.
“If the university felt the pinnacle of your life was to be a Bull – that’s the highest thing you can accomplish – then I can guarantee you that you would have never been accepted in the first place,” he said.
Moore said the question now is how students are going to use the opportunities before them, unlike those who are never even given the chance to have them to begin with.
“The thing you have to figure out and factor in is not about what is your GPA, but what is your personal GPS,” he said.
Moore wants to make the reason he wrote his book explicit: It was not to create “sympathizers” or to “reexamine fate.” He said he wanted to understand why the other Wes Moore’s fate was “sealed so long before Feb. 7, 2000” – the day of the crime.
When Moore was studying abroad in South Africa after receiving the Rhodes Scholarship – which is considered the “world’s most prestigious scholarship” by Time magazine and the Associated Press – he received a phone call from his mother that would spur his eventual book. His mother said there were wanted posters in his Baltimore community seeking “Wes Moore.”
The Wes Moore in the posters was a man who was part of a four-person team that robbed a jewelry store and killed a police officer.
Moore talked about the group that entered the store with guns and mallets, smashing at the glass encasements of jewels while pointing the guns at people to keep them on the ground. The four men left the store with a little more than $400,000 worth of jewelry and headed to the parking lot.
An off-duty police officer was in the store and working security because he needed to support his five-child family that just welcomed triplets. Moore said the officer went into the parking lot, kneeling next to cars to see if he could stop the robbers. But the officer didn’t realize he was next to the robbers’ car. The men shot him three times and the officer died instantly. He was a three-time recipient of police officer of the year.
Moore started to look into the life of the other Wes Moore and noticed a lot of similarities. Both grew up in Baltimore without a father figure and moved to New York City. Both suffered through academic and social problems at a younger age.
Moore had questions for the incarcerated man that he knew only the other Wes Moore could answer. He decided to write him a letter. He did not expect to hear a response, but one day, he received a letter from Jessup Correctional Institute in Maryland.
If the letter that was sent back had been poorly written, Moore would not have continued with the communication.
“The problem is that the letter that I did receive from him was one of the most interesting and articulate letters I’ve ever received in my life, and it only led to more questions,” he said.
After dozens of letters and visits, Moore has now interacted with the other man for more than a decade.
Moore said he wanted to explore in his book the difference between “potential and where we all end up.”
He said his book is not meant to show the reader how to definitively change a person’s life. He said he wants us to recognize we all have “dichotomies” and “doppelgangers” that need our help, and to start that, we need to do a better job of answering “How did they get there?” To be successful in doing that, more fortunate people need to take it upon themselves to use their knowledge to help others.
“It’s when your greatest passions and skillsets intersect with the world’s greatest needs, and then you actually do something about it,” Moore told The Spectrum. “That’s success, that’s when you’ve taken something you’ve been given and do something with it.”
Miriam Debrah, a junior pre-pharmacy major, found inspiration in Moore’s talk.
“Anybody can get a degree, but what you do with it, I feel like is what really matters,” she said.
Moore’s comments about reaching out to the community resonated with Afia Adomako, a senior health and human services major.
“We see these young people on the streets right now, why don’t we take initiatives to speak to them?” she said. “Maybe we’re the only person who has asked them, “How’s your day?’”
Moore said he guarantees students are going to hit obstacles in their lives, and the best way to prepare for that is to not rush their decisions. He said people should always be prepared to “react to contact,” a term used when he served in the military. Our responsibility is to go through the “maneuvers” of life, and hope that we are prepared to respond to problems.
Moore said we should find our “passion point,” which is our “personal gut” telling us the right place to belong,” and then find individuals who are doing the same things to model off of.
“The name is completely irrelevant, because the truth is that there are Wes Moores in every one of our communities,” he said.
email: news@ubspectrum.com
