A commencement message: Invent the future

Dorothy's Word

By Dorothy Word

Purple and gold. Purple and gold are the school colors on the graduation announcement that arrived from Jonathan Mark Kraft a few weeks ago. I knew Jonathan was in Castle High School in Newburgh, Ind., but I didn't think graduation would come around so quickly!

I had to look again at the purple and gold "Class of 2007." I opened the announcement and had to grab Jonathan's senior picture before it hit the floor. What a big, handsome guy in his dark blue cap and gown with a subdued smile! I'm sure Mom and Dad are smiling from cheek to cheek.

I read the formal information written in attractive, black, finepoint print: "The Senior Class of Castle High School announces its Commencement Exercises Monday evening, May twenty-first, Two Thousand Seven, eight-fifteen o'clock. Castle High School Stadium."

I'm sorry I couldn't be there in person but I was there in spirit. I'm sure the high school band played the old traditional favorite, "Pomp and Circumstances." I'm sure there was a sea of blue caps and gowns moving slowly, deliberately up the aisles and into the rows of waiting chairs. I know Jonathan's parents, Mary and Tony Kraft, and brother Matthew were there in the bleachers on that long-awaited day.

"Proud Mom" Mary taught across the hall from me in one of Evansville's elementary schools. And at that time, Jonathan was attending an excellent pre-school, The Stark's Nest. He "graduated" from The Stark's Nest in 1993. He was five-years-old. His graduation photo shows him in a dark blue cap and gown with a very proud smile on his face.

Jonathan was the first child I tutored after my retirement. We had a good time of learning that spring and summer. He was such an agreeable student, I was convinced that tutoring could be an ideal teaching situation. And now "my first tutored student" has graduated from high school. Something to celebrate!

Commencement speakers say basically the same things but in a variety of ways. Some speakers will challenge the grads to think big. Some might remind the graduates that the root word of commencement is "commence?to start, to begin." Start new goals, begin one's own business, or even invent something that satisfies a need in America or around the world.

If Jonathan would be interested in following in the footsteps of modern black inventors:, "they're out there!" In an October 1998 Ebony magazine, Joanne M. Hayes-Rines, president of United Inventors Association of U.S.A., said, "Everyone always thinks of an inventor as an old white man." Times have changed. Today there are many modern-day black inventors and they are making groundbreaking, significant contributions to society.

Inventor Dr. Patricia Bath, an ophthalmologist, in 1988, patented her laser device called the Laserphaco Probe. Before her invention, cataracts could be removed only by an instrument that would mechanically grind away the lesion?a process that is disruptive to the eye. Dr. Bath's device makes cataract removal a much more accurate and less bothersome procedure. Dr. Bath did not stop with that one invention. She kept on working to develop some other devices.

Meet Inventor Dawn Francis from Detroit. She invented a fertilizer to help food and plants grow larger. She is a molecular scientist and she calls her invented-nutrient "Way-t'-GRO!" The nutrient is a single molecule compound fashioned from non-toxic, all-organic components. Francis received a patent in 1990 for her fertilizer.

Inventor Dennis Weatherby created the lemon formula in Cascade dishwashing liquid while working as a process engineer at Procter & Gamble Co. in Cincinnati. His invention is now the basis for the composition of all "lemon" cleaning products that contain bleach. Weatherby discovered a unique category of dyes that successfully gives a non-staining yellow color to detergents that contain bleach. Before Weatherby's unique category of dyes, pigments that stained dishes and dishwasher parts were being used.

Inventor Mark Dean is best known for co-creating the ISA systems bus, an interface that allows multiple devices, such as a modem and printer, to be connected to a personal computer. Dean, an electrical engineer, holds more than 20 patents, including three of IBM's original nine PC patents.

In 1997, Dean received the Black Engineer of the Year President's Award, the Ronald H. Brown Innovators Award and became the third African American to be inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Dean is an IBM Fellow, the first black to achieve the company's highest honor. And, Dean is one of only 50 fellows among IBM's 200,000 employees.

If being an inventor is not Jonathan's "thing," maybe being an entrepreneur like Lady Sala S. Shabazz would be an appealing job. Shabazz is a founder and curator of a Black Inventions Museum in Los Angeles. She has recorded the achievements of African American inventors for many years and she shares that information by taking her mobile museum to schools, churches and cultural gatherings throughout the U.S. and also Africa.

Jonathan Mark Kraft: The sky's the limit?so commence, start, begin!

(By the way?I'm proud of you!)

This is part of the May 23, 2007 online edition of Frost Illustrated.

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