A program of success at Seton Hall | Di Ionno

In a small third-floor office at Seton Hall Prep in West Orange, college pennants dominate one wall, lined-up like a long rectangular block of triangles.

Princeton, Cornell and Penn represent the Ivy League. Then there are the big eastern Catholic universities — Georgetown, Villanova, Boston College and, of course, Seton Hall. Rutgers, too, and Penn State. Stevens and NJIT cover the technology side.

All are universities that the inner-city scholarship students at Seton Hall Prep have attended, through the Griffin Bridges Program. All except MIT.

“We keep that up there as something to aim for,” said Horton Sears, 26, the outgoing director of the program. “You always need something to aim for.”

The incoming director is LaQuan Ford, 27, who, like Sears, was raised in Newark. Unlike Sears, he is a product of Newark public schools. Sears was a Griffin Bridges student at Seton Hall Prep, then headed off to Providence College.

Still, the two young men are nearly mirror-images; dressed stylishly and impeccably, right to their eyeglasses. With precise diction and word selection, they speak quickly and passionately about the program that has launched more than 100 young men from urban Essex County into the world of business, science, law, medicine and education at the best colleges in the nation. It has a 98 percent graduation rate, and students must maintain a 3.25 cumulative average to stay in the program.

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The Griffin Bridges Program is named for the late Thomas Griffin, a member of the prep’s class of 1959. His sister, Patti Chambers, and her husband, philanthropist Ray Chambers, began and funded much of the program, beginning in 1992, through the Boys and Girls Club of Newark.

The first recipient was Shavar Jeffries, who ran for mayor of the city four years ago. A year later, the program was officially named Griffin Bridges, and administered out of Seton Hall Prep. 

Jeffries, a civil rights attorney and current president of Democrats for Education Reform, is also the program’s first story. His mother was murdered, and he was raised by a grandmother who was a public schoolteacher. After getting help from the Chambers to attend Seton Hall Prep, he went to Duke and then Columbia Law School.     

 All the young men who have gone through the program have stories like Jeffries’ and Ford’s, though perhaps not as extreme. They were serious, studious middle-schoolers, smiled on by fate or good luck to be able to reach their academic dream.

“That’s where the ‘bridges’ part (of the name) comes in,” said Matt Cannizzo, the prep’s director of institutional advancement. “It’s the bridge that introduces them to a world of possibilities.”

 LaQuan Ford was abandoned by his parents and raised by a great-great-aunt, Mary Washington, a retired factory worker who assembled ambulance sirens and worked part-time in a bar.

“The thing she taught me most was resiliency,” he said.

On the streets of Vailsburg he learned another crucial lesson: he could dream his way out.

“I was a dreamer,” Ford said. “I knew I wanted a better life for myself.”

As a boy raking leaves or shoveling snow to earn a few bucks, those dreams were modest.

“I wanted to be normal kid,” he said. “I wanted to go to bed every night knowing I was going to be okay the next day.”

He also wanted other things, even more modest. Heat. Electricity.

When he was at West Side High, he had to move in with friends because his home had neither.

“My friend and his brother were in gangs,” Ford said. “I didn’t want that life, so I spent as much time as I could in school.”

 Around that time, his mother Charlene Ford died in a Newark fire started by candles, also in a home with no electricity. His great-great-aunt later passed away from natural causes.

At this low point in his young life, Ford was led into productive things at school. With the help of West Side career counselor Gail Sherman, he joined Junior Achievement and Junior MBA. He ran for class president and won.

When asked who he shared that news with, he said, “No one.”

But the void of family was partially filled with great mentors, beginning with Sherman. Next it was Nick Scalera, a Seton Hall University Class of ’63 graduate and the former head of state’s child protection services.

After high school, Ford was accepted to Seton Hall University, but a scholarship awarded to him by a group of business associates dried up in the bad economy.

“I thought I had to drop out and go to Essex County (College),” he said.

He was put in touch with Scalera, who was launching a scholarship fund in 2011. Ford was one of the first three recipients and graduated in 2013.

Fords said sharing his experience of having — and not having – financial support will be beneficial to the Seton Hall Prep students he is now in charge of shepherding through the Griffin Bridges program.

“When I was in high school, I wish I had known about this program,” he said. “I know what it’s like to not have the resources, and I know how important those resources are. The guys in this program have a tremendous opportunity to be exposed to people and things I wasn’t exposed to until I went to college.”

The scholarship pays about 80 percent of  Seton Hall’s $19,250 annual tuition.

“The families and the kids have to be somewhat invested,” Cannizzo said. “A lot of our kids work to help pay tuition.”

A side pocket of money, funded by the late Patricia McMahon, the long-time director of development, provides non-tuition support.

“We’ve had kids who don’t have electricity at home, or who need money for food, or for technology,” Cannizzo said. “We have to understand those needs.”

And that’s why the directorship always falls to someone who has walked in those shoes.

“I have a humble understanding of what they need,” Ford said. “But I can also push them to go far.”

Mark Di Ionno may be reached at mdiionno@starledger.com. Follow The Star-Ledger on Twitter @StarLedger and find us on Facebook.