Hank Sanders: Senate Sketches #1512: It’s graduation time!

  It’s graduation time - high school graduations, middle school graduations, elementary graduations, kindergarten graduations, college graduations. It’s graduation time.

  I was the commencement speaker at a kindergarten graduation, but I’m not going to write about that graduation. I attended an elementary school graduation, a first grade graduation, a second grade graduation and a community college graduation, but I am not writing about these graduations. I am writing about one graduate - an extraordinary graduate. It’s graduation time.

  This graduation story commenced in 1951, nearly 65 years ago. The Graduate was one of eight children – seven born in the marriage of Elvira Harrel and Arthur Coleman, Sr. and one outside the marriage. Seven of the children, a mother and a father, lived in a three room shotgun house – a kitchen, a middle room and a front room - in Marion Junction, Dallas County, Ala. The Graduate’s family was not just poor; they were “po.”