Let’s Hear About Heroics Of Graduates

The nation’s annual focus on commencement mostly centers on the speakers, from Kermit the Frog to the president of the United States.

Too few graduates are recognized, including some who have overcome seemingly impossible odds.

One such graduate is Diane Barnett. She is a young African American teenager with no parents in the home.

Close family members, including her mother and older brother, have been involved with drugs.

Around midnight on Dec. 19, 1993, in the Washington suburb of Landover, Md., Diane was involved in an incident that might have made her one more anonymous statistic in a region where names are replaced by numbers and resumes come in the form of police records.

Police say Diane and a male acquaintance were at a subway stop when they were approached by a transit officer.

According to the police account, Diane’s male companion drew a gun and shot the officer. The assailant returned to his car and left the scene without Diane, then 16 years old.

She says he warned her not to talk or he would kill her.

Diane took the wounded officer’s portable radio and called for help, reporting their position, even administering CPR and offering comfort until paramedics arrived.

The officer was taken to a hospital where he died.

Instead of clamming up, Diane told police what happened and even identified the suspect, who was arrested, tried and convicted of murder.

Diane was labeled a snitch in her community. She says she suffered insults from her friends and others in the neighborhood.

She was given police protection to go to school, but when that ended the pressure resumed. She was involved in fights at school and was suspended.

A group of local men, including a retired Washington police officer, read about Diane in the newspaper.

They contacted her and offered help. Funds were collected for a tutor, which allowed her to catch up on her school work.

She had fallen so far behind because of her suspension and home environment (she lives with eight others in a three-bedroom apartment, making study difficult) that the best she could hope for was to graduate next year.

Instead, she attended summer school and night school so she could graduate with her class. A few days ago, Diane graduated from Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Washington, wearing the white robe and mortar board that symbolize such an accomplishment.

As for the convicted killer, he tried to make good on his threat.

Diane says he sent one of his friends to her apartment, but she talked him out of killing her. He left, warning her not to snitch again.

Diane says she doesn’t use drugs or alcohol, attends church regularly, wants to go to college to become a cosmetologist, with a goal of owning her own beauty salon someday.

This will take money.

Defying stereotype, a few white males who were told Diane’s story by the retired police officer have decided to join the effort to help her.

It’s not charity. It’s not about asking government to cough up money for another program.

It’s an investment in a human being who has shown initiative, tremendous courage and honor in a city and a nation that celebrate too few of those character traits.

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