They were smart kids with bright futures and an old-fashioned sense of brotherhood: When one messed up, they all paid a price.
But early Friday, some of the teens who made up Minority Men, a leadership group at Chicago’s North Lawndale College Prep, made a mistake from which they could not recover.
Three of them drowned in the Fox River in Algonquin after sneaking out of a camp lodge and dragging paddle boats to the frigid, swift-moving water. The boats, which had been set aside for the winter, had holes in the bottom where drainage plugs had been removed.
Two teens couldn’t make it to shore when their boat began to sink, officials said. A third jumped in and tried to save them. All of them died.
The tragedy crushed the high school’s community, from the group’s surviving members to the victims’ families to all who knew and loved the teens.
“He was always helping,” sophomore Datashia Warren said of her friend Melvin Choice III, 17. “When you needed a shoulder he was right there.” The other victims were Jimmy Avant, 18, and Adrian Alexander Jones, 16.
They were among 31 North Lawndale teens who went to YMCA Camp Algonquin last week for an eight-day retreat organized by VisionQuest International, an Atlanta organization that trains young people in ethical leadership.
It was just another trip for Minority Men, a program for high-achieving students aiming for success in college and beyond. Brigette Jones-Cooper, Jones’ mother, said the group toured college campuses in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.
“They get them ready for life as young leaders,” she said. “They help them with their classwork. They make them well-rounded young men: no gangs, no drugs.
“All of them were good kids.”
Accountability was the group’s hallmark, said Jones’ sister, Chimere.
“If one has bad grades, they all have to study together,” she said. “If one … has a Saturday detention all of them have a Saturday detention.”
Still, as the camp came to a close, officials said about half of the group sneaked out of the lodge early Friday, apparently undetected by nine chaperons in the building.
The teens had been warned to stay away from the water, YMCA officials said. But in what seemed to be a late attempt at unauthorized fun, they hauled six 300-pound paddle boats about 150 feet to the river.
They likely didn’t realize the boats had been prepared for winter, their cork-sized plugs removed to allow precipitation to drain. The boats went into the 42-degree, pitch-black water, and at least one — occupied by two victims — began to submerge.
“I heard people running and yelling on the shore at around 1:30 in the morning,” said Pam Shumway, who lives across river. “I heard them yelling, ‘Get out of the boat! Get out of the water!'”
A third teen leaped into the water and tried to save the others, authorities said. But the current was strong, and he went under too.
Firefighters and rescuers scrambled to the river, but it was too late. They found the first body just before 6 a.m., 50 feet from shore in 10 feet of water. About five hours later, they recovered the other two.
Amid talk of re-examining school policies, some relatives questioned why the camp hadn’t secured the boats. Some students, meanwhile, noted that risk-taking was part of being young.
“They didn’t know what they were about to get into,” Walter Anderson, 16, said. “We are going to be kids.”
JIMMY AVANT
In sea of violence, he stayed on track
Nicholas Gowdy knows how easy it is for a young black man to fall prey to violence in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood.
In the last three months, police reported at least eight murders within a half-mile of his family’s home, where Gowdy had watched his younger brother, Jimmy Avant, blossom into a college-bound, trouble-free kid.
“I wanted to see him do so well,” said Gowdy, 31, surrounded by relatives Friday after learning his brother had drowned in the Fox River. “With his heart, he wasn’t going to do nothing but succeed.”
Avant, 18, a senior at North Lawndale College Prep, was leaning toward attending Eastern Illinois University.
He had received dozens of medals and a had cabinet of trophies for his athletic and scholastic achievements, including one for being the valedictorian of his 8th-grade class.
His mother, Sharon Gowdy, recalled how her son tried to give her his entire paycheck from a summer job.
“He never gave me one day of trouble in his life,” she said.
— Azam Ahmed
MELVIN CHOICE III
Teen was pumped about trip, college
The last time Jarvis Pledger saw Melvin Choice III, his friend and classmate was nearly giddy about attending a leadership retreat near the Fox River.
Choice eagerly anticipated how it would help him academically, Pledger said.
“The last thing I remember was him just talking about how good he wanted to do in school,” Pledger said of his friend, a junior.
Known as “Lil Melvin,” Choice was the youngest of four children. He was a star athlete whose trophies in basketball, boxing and football take up several shelves in the family’s Near West Side living room.
Efram Lee, 23, said his brother was focused on a career in sports or music, but his foremost desire was to go to college.
The teen enjoyed his father’s cooking and was looking forward to chowing down on his family’s regular Friday night dinner of catfish and spaghetti, said Leonard English, his uncle.
“He was a stand-up guy,” English said. “He just respected everyone.”
— Carlos Sadovi
ADRIAN ALEXANDER JONES
Straight-A student saw bright future
Asked to depict himself as he thought others saw him, Adrian Alexander Jones designed a complicated face mask in his favorite shade of blue. At Camp Algonquin, the 16-year-old wrote his priorities in life on the mask: Go to college, start a business and have a baby girl.
“He was so proud of that mask,” said his mother, Brigette Jones-Cooper, 46, of Chicago, wiping away tears. She had planned to attend an honors program celebrating her son’s achievements Friday, but instead found herself at the McHenry County coroner’s office, surrounded by grieving relatives.
One of 12 siblings, the North Lawndale teen was a disciplined straight-A student and avid reader who devoured Harry Potter books, his mother said.
Jones, a member of the tight-knit Minority Men club at school, was a junior lifeguard and spent the last two summers working at the Adler Planetarium.
“I never saw him frown,” said his grandmother, Fannie Jones, 65. She noted he was excited about Barack Obama’s presidency. “He said, ‘Granny, I’m going to be somebody too.'”
— Lisa Black
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lblack@tribune.com
sschmadeke@tribune.com
See related story “2 teens foundered; 3rd dived in / Retreats aim to forge new leaders” News section, Page 11
