News Story about Jabari Bell, Class of 1999

[Heather Earp]

This was a story in the News and Observer today about Jabari Bell, Class
of 1999.

The funeral services are today at 2 pm in Garner.


Heather Earp- Class of 1999


http://www.newsobserver.com/news/saunders/2007/story/576599.html

Here is the story below-

Speed Trumps an Ace

Barry Saunders, Staff Writer
Ask anybody. Jabari Bell had a lot going for himself. Good-looking and
popular, with loving, educated parents, he was also smart. He'd
graduated from the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics and was within
seven hours of doing the same from N.C. State University.
He wanted to be a real estate tycoon and make a lot of money, his
mother, Cassandra Atkinson, said.

He also wanted to help other young men like himself, his mentor, Grova
Bridgers, told me.

Yes, in the game of life, Bell, 25, had a winning hand.

The problem was his foot. You see, his right one kept pressing the gas
pedal farther and farther down, giving his car more and more gas,
costing him his license and racking up numerous speeding tickets.

His need -- and that's what he told his mother it was, a need -- for
speed cost Bell more than his license last week. It cost him his life
when his Honda Accord hit a utility pole on Erwin Road in Orange County
about 4:15 Saturday morning.

Police said the car was going so fast when it left the road that it
traveled more than 500 feet. It took police three hours to find the car
and Bell's body.

"We knew he had a proclivity for that," Atkinson told me Monday. You
could hear sadness, but also resignation, in her voice when she talked
about confronting him after one of his speeding tickets. "He just said,
'I like to speed,' " she recalled.

I apologized for calling Atkinson, head of the public administration
program at N.C. Central University, and intruding upon her grief.

"That's all right," she insisted. "I love talking about my son. ... We
just lost a young black male who was going to be great. He inspired
people. ... He had a lot of options when he came out of the School of
Science and Math, but he loved N.C. State. ... [H]e was recruited by a
lot of top colleges: Harvard, MIT, North Carolina A&T." He chose State
because his parents and other relatives went there, she said.

It was no accident that Bell was already a mentor to young men.
Atkinson, his father, W. Donnell Bell, and Bridgers made sure he knew he
had a duty to others.

Atkinson said: "Grova and I started this journey of closing the academic
achievement gap for young black boys a long time ago. I recognized
professionally and personally that something needed to be done" to help
her son and others' sons.

I met Bell in 2005 when I spoke at a minority male mentoring program at
Johnston County Community College. Even though Bell was only 23, he ran
things that day.

Bridgers, coordinator of the program, said: "I wasn't there that day,
but I could count on him. ... He had tremendous potential.

"His death has really thrown me. I just realized that the tremendous
future I'd envisioned for him and all the good things he could've
accomplished are no longer possible."

Moments before I called Bridgers, he said, one of his students had come
into his office to inform him that he'd be absent. "He said he had to go
to court for a speeding ticket," Bridgers said ruefully. "I told him:
'Slow down, son. I'm dealing with a huge loss right now because of
speed.' "

So are a lot of people, many of whom never even had a chance to meet
Jabari Akins Bell. 



Ms. Heather M. Earp
West Johnston High School Science Dept
5935 Raleigh Road; Benson, NC 27504
Ph.  919-934-7333    FAX  919-934-6906  
heatherearp at johnston.k12.nc.us

"A person should never walk so fast that the wind cannot blow away his
footprints." (Jamake Highwater, Blackfoot)