When Leo Hall was 8 years old, his mother sent him to a tutoring program that served the African American and low-income neighborhood of the Cabrini-Green public-housing projects where they lived in Chicago. There, he met a volunteer tutor, Daniel Bassill, who helped him with homework, played chess and backgammon with him, and talked about growing up.
"Dan was there as a male friend, a mentor, somebody I could talk to," Hall recalled. He was "a father figure, a big brother, a friend."
That was 44 years ago. Since then, through several years at the tutoring program and a long friendship, Hall and Bassill have stayed in a relationship that transcends their differences in age, race (Hall, 52, is black and Bassill, 69, is white), and geography. Hall continues to invite Bassill to major family events, such as his college graduation and his wedding; he even gave Bassill an airplane ticket from Chicago to Nashville, Tennessee, so his former tutor could attend his 50th birthday party.*
[For more of this story, written by Larry Gordon, go to https://www.theatlantic.com/ed...mentors-fail/510467/]
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