Tuesday, January 06, 2004

By Johnna A. Pro, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Three teens are offering to help with a task that requires only one. Holly McGraw must make an executive decision.

"Ocka, bocka, ocka, bocka, ocka, bocka, boo. In comes Uncle Sam and out goes Y-O-U!" she says, pointing to one of the teens. "OK, you help set up."

	Holly McGraw gets a hug from Duquesne students Angelo Reynolds, 15, right, and Tiffany Holman, 13, left. (John Beale, Post-Gazette) Click photo for larger image.

That out of the way, McGraw turns to the work at hand -- making sure each of the other nine teens has a job assisting at a Dec. 30 children's New Year's Eve Party at Prospect Park in Whitehall sponsored by the Greater Pittsburgh Literacy Council.

When the party's sponsor put out a call for help, McGraw answered. She and a group of students from Duquesne middle and high schools had been looking for a holiday project. They showed up ready and willing to help manage the party for more than two dozen children, many of them non-English-speaking refugees from war-torn countries.

	More articles on the 2004 Jefferson Awards: The 2003 Jefferson Awards: Seven winners honored for their public service

By the party's end, McGraw and her charges had made bookmarks, painted faces, crafted silly hats, served pizza, macaroni and cheese and cupcakes, rung noisemakers, escorted children home and cleaned up.

All in all, it was a typical day for McGraw, 25, of America's Promise, whose volunteer work with the Duquesne students has made her one of seven local Jefferson Award winners.

"She thinks just like us," said Royden Reynolds, 12, a seventh-grader in Duquesne Middle School. "She's fun to be around. She's got a creative mind. And she's funny."

The Jefferson Awards for Public Service, considered to be the Nobel Prizes of volunteering, are awarded by the American Institute for Public Service. There are 122 media partners in 92 U.S. markets for the awards, which are sponsored here by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Comcast and Eat'n Park with help from United Way.

During a ceremony Jan. 29 in the Carnegie Music Hall in Oakland, each of this area's seven winners will receive a medallion and $1,000 to give to a nonprofit group.

McGraw -- called Miss Holly by the Duquesne students -- was assigned by America's Promise in early 2003 to work 10 hours a week as a teacher's assistant in the Duquesne School District, which has struggled for years with low test scores and financial problems. She refused to believe the naysayers who said the students couldn't or wouldn't care about their school or community.

Her 10 hours began to stretch to after school, evenings, weekends and through summer break. She started a newspaper club, created the first-ever talent show complete with prizes, and organized a summer recreation program. Through that program, students cleaned up parks in Duquesne, visited the elderly and planted flowers.

"When I first started working in Duquesne, I was afraid," McGraw said candidly. "Everybody I knew was very negative. People said, 'Don't do it. Don't do it.' And in Duquesne, people thought I was from the government or a bill collector. Now, I feel like a celebrity when I go through there. The change was amazing."

McGraw is quick to credit the kids and the community. Daniel Horgan credits her.

"She took the initiative way beyond what we expected," said Horgan, executive director of America's Promise/Allegheny County.

The county chapter is based at Robert Morris University, where McGraw was a student. Horgan nominated her for the Jefferson Award.

"She's one of the awesome people who can relate to kids as well as adults," he said. "She got the parents involved and the kids excited. She's really getting out there and effecting change."

McGraw was raised in Port Vue, the youngest in a family of four girls. After graduation from South Allegheny High School, she enrolled at Community College of Allegheny County and earned extra money working at Victoria's Secret. When she was asked to train other employees at the retailer, she discovered a love for teaching, and because she enjoyed business classes, opted to pursue a degree in business education.

It was through a friend that she learned of America's Promise and figured the experience there would provide good preparation for her student teaching requirement. She never expected to "fall in love" with her students.

"Once I got to know the kids, I wanted to be with them more," she said.

A week after the 2002-03 school year ended in Duquesne, McGraw found herself in tears and desperately missing the students she had connected with since the beginning of the year. They missed her, too. And so the summer recreation program was born.

Since then, McGraw has completed her student teaching and earned her bachelor's degree. Even so, she still maintains regular contact with her kids in Duquesne, finding time at night and on the weekends to oversee projects such as writing cards to soldiers in Iraq. She was recently offered a paid position with America's Promise.

"These kids are awesome. And they're not as scary as you think," she said, looking around the party and smiling as the youths patiently helped the young children.

"Whenever you give them responsibility and put them in charge of something, they have so much more self-worth."

This is the first of seven profiles of local Jefferson Award winners.

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