ORANGE, NJ — Orange High School alumni Reggie Miller and Dwight Holmes have been busy recently.
Miller is the coordinator of the Rutgers Male Student Support Program at Orange Preparatory Academy, which works with district elementary- and middle school-age boys. Holmes is an Orange High School teacher and a former Orange City Council candidate who volunteers with Miller to help at-risk teens in Orange.
On Saturday, May 6, Miller and Holmes participated in the “Boys to Men” Conference on the NJIT campus in Newark. Then they were both involved in separate but interrelated events in Orange High School on Thursday, May 11.
“We went down to NJIT on Saturday; we took a group of students from middle school as well as high school, as part of the Boys to Men mentoring program that was facilitated at NJIT, but it was sponsored by the Montclair Chapter of the Deltas,” said Holmes on Thursday, May 11. “It was a wonderful experience with great speakers. We had Reggie Miller speaking about the ‘Four L’s’: lazy, lying, limited and then you become a liability. And if you’ve never heard Reggie Miller speak, then you’re missing something.”
According to Holmes, Thursday, May 11, was decision day at Orange High School, where he currently teaches, which meant that it was a big day for the entire city.
“We’re here at decision day; First Lady Michelle Obama made May 2 a day, but we didn’t get to do it on May 2, so this is the day that we’re going to promote the graduating seniors’ acceptance to college or furthering their education from high school,” said Holmes. “After high school, they move on to adult life and they’re all here to celebrate. All the students that have been accepted at either a college or university or trade school, they all get recognized and acknowledged for their accomplishments.”
So Miller came to Orange High School to speak to the students in the sophomore class.
Miller said, “I talked to them like, once you blink, in another two years, you’ll be in the same position, and what are you going to be doing? You have a lot of seniors that are going on to college, but then you have a lot that are still unsure about their future. So what I want the sophomores to do is buckle down now, so you’ll have everything in place by the time you’re a senior; then you don’t have to be running around scrambling nervous and unsure about what you’re doing.”
Holmes and Miller both agreed that Orange High School has a bevy of talented young people ready, willing and able to go out into the world and make their mark. He said maybe they will decide to come back home after graduation in four years and work in careers that allow them to give back to their community, as Miller and Holmes have.
“Because I live in this community, I work in this community — I shop, bank, I do a lot of things in this community, so everything that happens in this community affects me,” Holmes said. “My children go to school in this community, so anything that I can do to make this community better is a benefit to me and my family. I definitely encourage everyone — if you live in Orange, even if you don’t live in Orange — come to Orange and help the young men to become men in the community where they are responsible in what they do. I make it my business to get involved in helping to raise men, because if we don’t, we know who’s going to raise them and it won’t be a good look.”
That’s why, Miller said, his assemblies about the “Four L’s” are important.
“We were just talking to the young men and women about this ideology that I came up with about seven years ago called the ‘Four L’s.’ If you start off lazy, you start lying, you become limited and then you’re a liability in society,” Miller said. “I use it in brotherhood, when it comes to the Male Student Support Program, but I go out and speak in different districts, talking about it just trying to get brothers on the right path. I think what was cool about talking to the women was they always hear it from other women, so I wanted the young ladies to get a male perspective on life, the future, being a woman; we went from hygiene to grades and it was cool.”
Miller said he also felt an acute sense of urgency when speaking to the Orange High School sophomores because he wanted to get the “Four L’s” message out to them before the end of the school year.
“The reason I chose to speak on May 11 was, I wanted to wait until we came back from vacation and I wanted to get them in the fourth marking period before it gets warm. I know, in another week or two, it’s going to be 80 degrees and they’re not going to feel like doing homework or this and that,” Miller said. “So I try to let them know I’m there for them and to finish up strong, because it’s critical right now, especially with the way society is going right now. As a male, you have to get all the education that you can get. So I’m always promoting college. I always tell kids: you’ve got to go to college. I’m not the guy that says college is not for everybody. College is for all, especially for minority males, the brothers that I work with, because all of them can go. They’re all sharp.”
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