"Baltimore Sons." Wes Moore says that could have been the title of the combined autobiography and biography that he wrote about himself and a different Wes Moore. Both Wes Moores come from Baltimore. But one has become a Johns Hopkins University graduate and global-banking strategist, while the other is serving a life sentence for the murder of a security guard (an off-duty policeman) during the robbery of a Pikesville jewelry store.
On December 9, 2000, one Wes Moore was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship. On February 7, 2000, another Wes Moore was committing a heinous crime. Seeing his own success story and his doppelganger's deplorable acts chronicled in the Baltimore Sun set off an urgent fascination in the Moore who went to Hopkins.
That fascination has grown into the book, "The Other Wes Moore: One Name and Two Fates —A Story of Tragedy and Hope," a moving and tough-minded account of growing up in volatile urban spaces. It contains nuanced characterizations of supporting characters, like the author's mother, Joy, and the other Moore's mother, Mary. But what makes it so provocative is the insight and energy it derives from the twin narratives of the two young men at its core. It's a tale of two inner-city destinies.
Moore took time this week to answer questions about himself, the other Wes, and what he hopes readers will take from "The Other Wes Moore."
Q: What beyond the coincidence of your names ignited your ambition to investigate this other man's life — and your own early life?
A: When the stories started coming out early in the investigation, and reported that his mother had started to co-operate with police, and was making public statements to Wes and [his half-brother] Tony, saying, "come home, I'm worried about you, turn yourself in" — just knowing the community, I guessed that the mother was the only parent in the house. And that was confirmed pretty quickly when I started corresponding with and talking to Wes. It resonated with me. I had seen my mother's pain when she had to do things on her own.
Q: Your father died young, when you were 3. The other Wes Moore told you, "You're father wasn't there because he couldn't be; my father wasn't there because he chose not to be." Did you see the parallels as well as the differences, immediately?
A: Even when I was young, there were times I could tell my mother wasn't handling my father's death well, but she was trying to make life for us as normal as possible. She was shielding us from loss and the meaning of loss, though she ended up losing control of her own life in many ways. That was the impetus for her calling up her parents and saying, "I need help." Her kids were getting older, ready for school. We had a lot of relatives from my father's side of the family in Maryland, and she had lots of college friends; everyone was being very supportive. But she found something compelling about the idea of going to live with her parents, at the home they had lived in for decades in the Bronx.
Wes' mother Mary didn't have that option as a single parent. Her own mother died when Mary was a teenage mother herself, and that death devastated Mary's father. Mary did what she could do, moving to different neighborhoods, from Pennsylvania Avenue and Cherry Hill to Northwood and Dundee Village. But the challenge of being a mother is so daunting.
Q: The Bronx wasn't the answer for you, even when your mother sent you to Riverdale School in the one plush part of the borough. Isn't part of the book's point that when you're trying to course-correct the lives of "at-risk" kids, you can't just take them back and forth between some protected enclave and the streets?
A: Sometimes you think the answer is plucking kids out their communities, but that can be almost the worst thing. The Riverdale story illustrates that. It's a beautiful school, and my mother knew all about it from the time she was a girl; she knew that JFK went there. She thought that would be it: that's where I needed to go. But that's where I got lost. Unless you have help making that transition, that kind of move can be counter-productive. You need to have people who can make the ties between what you learn in a place like that and how you experience life in your neighborhood. There's got to be a more holistic way to address coming to adulthood. Transplanting is not the solution.
People ask me, "Wasn't the answer for you being sent to Pennsylvania [to the Valley Forge Military Academy]? That's missing the point. The important change wasn't the physical change. It was the psychological change. It was a growth in understanding about personal responsibilty, leadership and accountability.
Q: Isn't part of the point of the Valley Forge story that your mother made sure you had people in your corner there, making you want to succeed?
A: Exactly right. Many kids are simply looking for some kind of acceptance. They're looking for someone to "bring them in." My mother says kids need to think you care before they care what you think. If they don't sense that you share a vested interest, they're not going to pay attention to your advice. And if we're not willing to do it, the "corner boys" will take them in.
Q: Does Wes recognize that that is part of what happened to him? Does he still seem like a traumatized, arrested adolescent or is he a man trying to come to grips with what he's done in life?
A: When I first met him, it was definitely both. But from the start I knew I was dealing with someone who was much smarter than I expected. Wes is not a learned man – he doesn't have a bunch of letters after his name. The highest he got was a GED. But he understood the pressures of different circumstances, he understood the various cultures of communities – he was very insightful on that. He knows he's had a traumatized existence and he's disturbed by the life he's led, the things he's done, the decisions he's made. And Wes in many ways has grown in this process. I see it in the way Wes thinks about the family of the police officer.
One time he asked why there was so much sympathy toward the police officer's children and no sympathy toward his children. I took a while to explain that to him. We should have sympathy for all children, but in the case of Wes's children, they can still see his father, even if it's not too frequently. I came at it from the perspective of someone who grew up without a chance of seeing my father again. I told him what that feels like. I tried to convey the pain that Sgt. Bruce Prothero's family felt when they learned he was never coming back to them — and the unexpected pain and pressure of feeling you have to pick up all the pieces.
My heart bleeds for Sgt Prothero's family. Here was a 13-year veteran of the police force, his wife had just had triplets, they had five children in all, and he was working an extra job to make some money — and he doesn't come home. And it's because of an outrageous act, the kind of nonsense violence that has taken over parts of Baltimore and so many cities. I say at the start of the book that the only victims on February 7, 2000, were Sergeant Bruce Prothero and his family.
Q: In a way, was that part of the reason for you doing the book, too?
A: Remember what Edmund Burke said? "All it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing?" If you can help people understand the ramifications of what they're doing, if you can help readers understand the neighborhoods in which these decisions are made, you have to do it. You have to help people make better decisions in lives than walking into a jewelry store and killing a cop. And you have to help children understand that going to prison is not a game or a joke. It's not fun being locked in a six foot by eight foot cell.
Wes had two reactions when he read the book. First, he was amazed I got all the facts right. Second, he wrote me in a letter that it was tough reading it, because when he got the chance to see his life laid out like that, it highlighted how little he had done with it. I found that really heartbreaking. When I go to see Wes, he just wants to hear me talk. He asks me questions: ‘Where have you traveled?' ‘How is your wife doing?' He's curious about all things. He tells me his life was the same as last time. There's nothing new.