Walter Dean
Walter Dean
Walter Kevin Dean is an American former football running back. He played college football for the Grambling State Tigers at Grambling State University. In his senior year, he led the nation in rushing and won the 1990 Walter Payton Award as the most outstanding player in Division I-AA football. He played professional football for one season in the National Football Leagueafter he was selected by the Green Bay Packers in the sixth round of the 1991 NFL Draft...
dinner enjoy
I would enjoy having dinner with the poet/playwright Derek Walcott.
dinner poet enjoy
I would enjoy having dinner with the poet/playwright Derek Walcott.
lay
Did you just lay down for him or what?
class grabbed threw
I grabbed a sighted guy, ... and threw him to the ground, and I said to the class, 'Did you see that?'
blind great people wide
Doing anything great is like a pyramid. You have to have a wide base, ... The whole idea is to get 5,000 blind people doing judo.
blind
The one thing you never say to a blind person is, 'Did you see that?'
afraid bang blind hard people
A lot of people are afraid blind people are going to break, ... They want to get out and bang it up just as hard as a sighted person.
dad
My dad was a janitor for U.S. Radium Corporation, and he stayed there for 37 years. So he didn't read.
bad books celebrated felt found include lives mine needed people raised took
I was raised in Harlem. I never found a book that took place in Harlem. I never had a church like mine in a book. I never had people like the people I knew. People who could not find their lives in books and celebrated felt bad about themselves. I needed to write to include the lives of these young people.
books children foreign given hope people sell
People still try to sell books that way - as 'books can take you to foreign lands.' We've given children this idea that reading and books are a nice option, if you want that kind of thing. I hope we can get over that idea.
both cause death dispel either notion romantic vietnam war younger
My younger brother's death in Vietnam was both sobering and cause for reflection. In 'Fallen Angels' I wanted to dispel the notion of war as either romantic or simplistically heroic.
general giving kid mentoring
So many organizations have a mentoring arm, but they don't really do it. Their idea of mentoring a kid is giving them general advice. But what they need to do is read with children.
began causing certain decided good impediment pronounce speech teachers wrote
I was a good student, but a speech impediment was causing problems. One of my teachers decided that I couldn't pronounce certain words at all. She thought that if I wrote something, I would use words I could pronounce. I began writing little poems. I began to write short stories, too.
family fell life troubled understand vocabulary
When my family fell apart, it was such a troubled part of my life... I think I could understand what I was going through, but I didn't have the vocabulary for it.