Today is Memorial Day. Though our sons consider the day canonized as a mark towards school ending, and us too many times as a three day weekend for summer clothes and those lucky for their beach houses (we stay in our city save for Fay Howard memorial boules tournaments--more on that someday), we regularly ignore the dedication, commitment and sacrifice, often ultimate, of those for whom the day is truly memorialized.

In a different struggle, but with far too many lives at risk, I want to send love to a very living friend, Davon Russell, proud graduate of Kingston College, Kingston, Jamaica - "Fortis Cadere Cedere Non Potest" - "The brave may fall but never yield." And in memory, Davon's grandmother, raising him and his sister in a two room home dedicated to love and learning.

Davon was coached for speed at Kingston by George Thompson, of legend (know to KC boys as George T or Mr. T.), who taught him the 100 and 200 meters and an unrelenting striving for excellence marked by a love for humanity. Davon later ran for George Walcott at the University of Oregon.

And he has dedicated his waking hours since to minimizing, dare we think "erasing"?, poverty among the next generation here in New York. Davon is the Vice President of Programs at WHEDCo.

He is also a guiding part of summer at Camp Excel, another true effort to break the learned cycle of urban poverty.

Davon thinks Leslie and I are nuts (that's not a technical term) for opening our family to our five bigger boys. But people like Davon open the years of their lives to thousands of children in silent, salient, singular ways, re-tracking lives to participate in the depth of this country.

So today, to Davon Russell, and to his grandmother, his mother sending half barrels home, to George Thompson. To every human being, who helps. May inner-city, class based poverty become a bad memory.