A Retired State Trooper Brings Skills Learned in Childhood and on the Job to Volunteering

I’ve always believed in hope. I was raised in a small, central Pennsylvania town with a rich, multicultural environment. This was back in the 1950s, before I had even heard about the civil-rights movement.

My father grew up in the Deep South, and he instilled me with pride in my heritage. I traced Dad and Mom’s families back from living in slavery on a plantation to the Ivory Coast in Africa. In doing so, I realized I had the ability to achieve goals that might at first seem unattainable.

Today, I have a greater appreciation for the lessons my dad taught me. I understand why it is important that we all recognize slavery was a condition of economics, not capacity, and that people of color can achieve any objectives they set for themselves.

Nonetheless, I needed to have a lot of hope in order to make my dreams come true. Even as a little kid, I always had a desire to bring peace. At an early age, I discovered I had great negotiating and conciliation skills, and I enjoyed using them to resolve conflicts. I find that the same interests motivate and enrich my current volunteer work with the advocacy group Seniors4Kids.

From the age of 12 on, what I wanted more than anything else was to become a state trooper. At that time, I only knew of one African-American trooper, but I refused to believe that race would be an issue.

I prepared long and hard for the state-police admissions test. I began by reading the dictionary front to back. I went on from there to absorb all I could from every book I could get my hands on. When the test results came out, I had scored a 98. They wanted me to take the test again, to be certain I hadn’t cheated.

When I became a Pennsylvania state trooper, I was one of only 47 minority members of the force. But the numbers gradually grew, and I often served as a mentor to others who were having difficulty. Twenty-five years later, I retired from the Pennsylvania state police as a senior noncommissioned officer.

Because police work had been my passion since childhood, it might seem that retirement would be a difficult transition for me. But I’d always felt there were things I hadn’t finished. Now was the time I could turn my attention to those interests.

Studying to obtain first a bachelor’s and then a master’s degree was at the top of my list in an active retirement. I felt the more I could achieve, the more I could do for others.

Because I was trained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in hostage negotiations and conflict resolution and control, I learned that when issues are keeping people from reaching their goals, one of the most effective techniques is to give them a picture of how things could turn out differently. No matter what age they are, this works if they want it to work.

After I retired from the state police, I used the skills I had acquired on the job to help develop behavior-modification strategies for junior and senior high schools.

I was the director of aday treatment program for youths with drug and alcohol problems, created a curriculum for the Safe and Drug-Free Schools program, and designed a criminal-justice program for a career technology center.

We all have a duty to speak up for those who can’t speak for themselves. That’s why, when Yvonne Thompson-Friend, the Pennsylvania state coordinator of Seniors4Kids, approached me to get involved in a program that brings older adults together to support investment in early-childhood education, I immediately said yes.

Seniors4Kids is working to give all 3- and 4-year-old children the advantages of quality pre-kindergarten programs. Getting on the right track to learning helps give hope to struggling children and families, and Seniors4Kids gives older adults a chance to spread that hope by helping other people excel.

Older adults active inSeniors4Kids advocate for high-quality pre-kindergarten programs, provide training and management assistance to organizations that connect older adults with children, and issue state reports on early-childhood education policies.

As a “Captain4Kids”—what Seniors4Kids calls its volunteer advocates—for central Pennsylvania, I used the district model from my state trooper days to recruit other Captains4Kids throughout the area. I wrote a letter to the editor that was published in my hometown paper, The Sentinel, in Lewistown; I took part in advisory meetings; I communicated with state policy makers during the recent state budget crisis; and I attended community events on behalf ofSeniors4Kids.

I saw from my own experience that if you take kids who aren’t learning and teach them how to learn, they can be successful both now and in the future.

But to get off on the right foot, children need to practice listening skills, to accept discipline, and to respect others. If those qualities become second nature to them by age 5, children will have fewer behavior problems later and can achieve whatever they set out to do.

Yet disadvantaged children are least likely to have an opportunity to develop these critically important qualities. We must invest in high-quality pre-kindergarten programs to give every child the ability to become more productive in ways that benefit all of us economically and socially as well. Pre-kindergarten programs don’t just help individual children and their families, they provide benefits for generations to come through creating stronger communities, responsible citizens, and successful students.

On my most recent birthday, I turned 59. My contemporaries and I do not see ourselves as old. We believe our lives have just started.

We are blessed with wisdom and the experience of long lives, and we have much to give to the generations who follow us. When we see children who are troubled by difficulties in school or in life, we have learned not merely to say, “What’s wrong?” but also to ask, “How can I help?”

Bernard L. Chatman is a volunteer at the Seniors4Kids program that serves central Pennsylvania. More personal stories from people of traditional retirement age who are working for social causes are available on The Chronicle’s Regeneration page. Go to: http://philanthropy.com/section/regeneration/225