Community
Determined to turn around a life, she did
Lalita Booth easily could have allowed life’s circumstances to make her a perpetual victim and a failure. Instead, the 28-year-old single mom has defied the odds and become a role model and advocate for poor people.
Born in Asheville, N.C., Booth had a dysfunctional childhood. Her parents divorced when she was in elementary school. At 12 years old, she began running away from home.
By 15, she had become a chronic runaway. One day, she hitched a ride with a trucker to another state, staying away from home for a month.
Things went downhill from there. The following year, she became legally emancipated from her parents, dropped out of school and began living on the street. She married at 17 and soon became pregnant. Her husband abused her, and she divorced him little more than two years later. For more than a year, she was often homeless. At one time, she lived in her beat-up Subaru.
Then she had an experience that changed her life.
She and her boyfriend, along with her 2-year-old son, moved to Colorado in hopes of finding better jobs. They wound up working for minimum wage and accepting emergency family assistance and a month of free day care provided by the state. Their small savings ran out and so did the free day care. The food they had received from the local pantry ran out, too.
“My son, Kieren, wandered into the living room in a little blue T-shirt and a diaper,” she said. “I remember that I was nervous about the diaper being wet. We were almost out of diapers, and I didn’t have money to buy anymore. He said, ‘Mommy, I’m hungry. What do we have to eat?’ Nothing was in the fridge. We didn’t have anything to eat. I couldn’t figure out how to explain it to him. I put him to bed hungry that night.
“The next day, my boyfriend and I decided to send Kieren back to North Carolina to live with his paternal grandparents. I didn’t want him to go, but I simply didn’t have any way to take care of him.
“I wasn’t going to stubbornly keep him at my house and subject him to going hungry. But I also resolved at that point that I was not going to let someone else raise my son.
“He meant everything to me, enough that I was willing to give him up to see him safe and cared for. I was going to work like hell to get him back and never have to give him up again. He was only gone for seven months, thankfully.
“I think that experience is also the thing that gave me such a strong sense of dedication to empowering the poor. I know how horrible it was for me not to be able to care for my child. Watching his tiny hand wave goodbye was the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced.”
While her son was gone, Booth convinced a financial planner to work with her free of charge. They calculated how much she would need to earn to survive and get her son back.
She read about enrolled agents, a profession governed by the U.S. Treasury Department.
As an agent representing taxpayers before the IRS, she could earn as much as $32,000 a year. She took the training, passed the exam and landed a job.
With a steady paycheck, she got her son back and moved to Sanford, Fla., where she enrolled at Seminole Community College. She excelled in the classroom and in extracurricular activities.
“I think community colleges are a great opportunity for people to get their life back on track,” she said. “I could never have been accepted into a university at that time.”
Having learned the value of research in becoming self-sufficient at Seminole, Booth looked for scholarships that would help her continue her college career. She was awarded a Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Scholarship worth $30,000 to attend the University of Central Florida, where she is majoring in finance and accounting.
Meanwhile, she founded Lighthouse for Dreams, a nonprofit organization that teaches high-school students financial literacy, and she has written a guidebook to help the poor plan their finances.
Last year, again because of research, she became the first UCF student to be awarded the Harry Truman Scholarship, which provides up to $30,000 for graduate study. With a 4.0 grade point average, she has been accepted to the MBA program at Harvard University.
She said that she intends to put her degree from Harvard to practical use.
“I believe financial education can change the world,” she said. “This belief arises not from idealism but from firsthand knowledge of the price that financial illiteracy can exact, especially on the young.
“Although I am now financially stable, my experiences instilled in me a deep dedication to ensuring that the young and the disempowered are armed with the skills they need to become self-sufficient.
“In addition to teaching the art of earning money, we must teach the art of using it wisely.”
Scripps Howard News Service
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Teaching with technology
Technology in the classroom is always changing and one Greenville teacher has spent the last three summers learning new skills through a program limited to a select few.
Jan Abernethy, a fifth-grade teacher at East Elementary School, was one of 75 teachers nationwide chosen to attend the Discovery Educator Network Summer Institute, which is held at a different location each year.
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Actors visit Camelot
The magic and mysticism that abounds in the King Arthur legend has been just as prevalent in the life of a woman who has written a three-part play chronicling the history of Camelot’s famed ruler.
Youngstown native Carol Weakland said she’s been working for 12 years on the play that premiered last weekend: “The Arthurian Trilogy Part One, Arthur and Merlin: The Making of a King.” She was never able to assemble a cast to play the demanding roles or “whittle down” the lengthy script into a compact but complete show. But this year, everything came together.
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Annual senior fair is Friday in Sharon
State Rep. Mark Longietti will hold his fourth annual free Senior and Health Education Fair from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday at the Sharon American Legion, 1395 E. State St., Sharon.
The fair will feature farmers market coupons, free health screenings, about 50 vendors, door prizes and free information and services.
For more information, call 724-981-4655. -
Dolata carves time for local fest
Walter Dolata shows and sells his wood carvings at arts festivals — sometimes large ones — in New York, Maryland and Ohio.
But he always makes time for the arts festival in his back yard: the Hermitage Arts Festival, which runs this weekend at Rodney White Olympic Park.
“I like it,” said Dolata, who lives in Hermitage. “It’s a local festival. It’s a nice little festival.”
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Farmers market vouchers for seniors available
Mercer County Area Agency on Aging Inc. is again offering the Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program to eligible Mercer County Seniors.
This program is made possible through the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Food Distribution.
The purpose of this program is to encourage older adults to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables produced by local growers.
Eligible seniors can pick up vouchers at locations in Greenville, Grove City, Mercer, Sandy Lake/Stoneboro and the Shenango Valley . -
Victorian Weekend begins Friday evening
Step back into a gentler era during the 22nd annual Victorian Weekend Festival, planned for Friday through Sunday on the historic Mercer County Courthouse Square.
The weekend begins with “A Victorian Concert” by the Mercer Community Band at 7:30 p.m. Friday at the bandstand on the east side of the county courthouse; the warmup concert starts at 6.
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Girl Scouting gold goes to RHS grad
Lorrie Lehman, daughter of Dave and Rosemary Lehman of Reynolds and sister of Tommy, was recently awarded the Girl Scout Gold Award from Girl Scouts of Western Pennsylvania.
The Gold Award recognizes leadership, hard work and service to the community and for exemplifying the ideals of the Girl Scout Promise and Law. Only five percent of Girl Scouts nationwide earn this recognition annually.
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Public invited to annual Farm Safety Day
Our annual Mercer County Farm Safety Day will be held from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday at the Leslie N. Firth Learning Center, home of Mercer County Cooperative Extension, and the adjacent 4-H Park, 483 N. Perry Highway, 1 1/2 miles north of Mercer in Coolspring Township.
Our staff, along with event sponsor, the Agricultural Health and Rural Safety Advisory Committee, invite you and your family to attend and actively participate in a full day of safety demonstrations and open dialog on an issue which affects us all. Our goals are to make rural residents more conscience of common hazards, risky behaviors, and cultural traditions which often contribute to farm and rural accidents.
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Urban League offers outdoor movie series
It’s been decades since movies have been shown on a big screen in Farrell.
The Shenango Valley Urban League is changing that this summer, with its “Films in the Square” series, to be held Friday nights at Veterans Square.
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Fourth of July activities
There's no lack of Independence Day celebrations planned in the area.
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Teaching with technology
