Professor Dies, Leaves Former Student Surprise Inheritance

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MICHEL MARTIN, host:

Now we open up the pages of the Washington Post Magazine, which we do just about every week to find interesting stories about the way we live now. Today, two stories about education and how it can change people's lives outside of the classroom. One of those stories is about Trevor Young. He's a 33-year-old University of Maryland senior born in Sierra Leone.

His parents sent him to the United States to live with relatives during that nation's civil war. When he returned to Sierra Leone, he saw the damage it had done. The nation's poor infrastructure lingers, dragging down efforts to rebuild the economy and people's lives. An English assignment at Maryland got him thinking about what he could do.

And Trevor Young joins us now to talk about it. I'm also joined by freelance writer Karen Houppert who wrote about Trevor's story and she has her own story to share, as well.

Welcome to you both. Thank you for joining us.

Mr. TREVOR YOUNG: Thank you.

Ms. KAREN HOUPPERT (Freelance writer, Washington Post Magazine): Thanks.

MARTIN: Karen, as I mentioned, you have a unique story of your own which you told in the magazine. But Trevor, we're going to start with you. In the piece, you call yourself a nontraditional student. Tell us a little bit more about that. You're a little older than some college students.

Mr. YOUNG: Yes I am. Because I started, initially, college, right after - out of high school, I wasn't very successful. I was not the most focused student. But I came back in 2005; I definitely saw the importance of acquiring some type of academic skill, something that would be beneficial in rebuilding the country.

MARTIN: And why do you think that is? Is it because you saw so much devastation there or need there, you thought, wow, if I have the ability to do something I really owe it to myself, to my country, to do it?

Mr. YOUNG: Yeah definitely. I mean you go back with the whole zeal. Like okay, I want to do something. I want to help out. But you're almost handicapping yourself if you don't have a skill set. You know, you go back to Africa, you really see how much of an educational opportunity you have here in the states.

MARTIN: So what are you studying?

Mr. YOUNG: I'm actually in environmental economics. It's the School of Natural Resources at the University of Maryland, College Park.

MARTIN: So what's your big idea?

Mr. YOUNG: The problem I identified was lack of electricity. We're focusing on Western and Central Africa because I'm most familiar with that region. One-point-six billion people in the world do not have access to electricity. We identified a crop - palm oil. It's an ideal biomass fuel source. So we're focusing on the waste in the palm oil processing cycle and how we can generate energy from that.

MARTIN: So when do you hope that this idea could actually start generating electricity?

Mr. YOUNG: We have an 18 month timeline, right? So...

MARTIN: Mm.

Mr. YOUNG: ...in 12 months is our goal to get the plan fully operational, that we can put in place the waste products and see exactly how much electricity we can produce in the initial phase.

MARTIN: Well that sounds very exciting. This isn't all you do. I noticed that you have - you are wearing a wedding ring.

Mr. YOUNG: I am married.

MARTIN: And you have...

Mr. YOUNG: Four children.

MARTIN: ...four children, so you're not - the time you're spending on this project you're not doing frat parties, I assume.

Mr. YOUNG: Oh well, that's what was my problem the first time.

MARTIN: Okay.

Mr. YOUNG: So now I'm a happy father, a happy husband, and I'm really trying to you know, make an impact.

MARTIN: All right. Well check back with us in 18 months so I can could see what's going on.

Mr. YOUNG: I will. I will. I will.

MARTIN: So Karen, what attracted you to Trevor's story?

Ms. HOUPPERT: Well, I just thought it was really interesting to see someone that was applying the lessons they learned at school in a really practical way, and that he was going to go on and go back to Sierra Leone, and I thought that was very inspirational.

MARTIN: You also wrote an interesting piece about an experience that you had. You were left a fairly nice - I don't know what all is to say - a windfall?

Ms. HOUPPERT: Yeah.

MARTIN: Would it be a windfall?

Ms. HOUPPERT: Yes. A huge chunk of change.

MARTIN: Huge chunk of change. Do you mind if I tell people how much?

Ms. HOUPPERT: No. Please.

MARTIN: Seventy-five thousand dollars from a former professor of yours at Bennington College. So tell us a little bit more. How did you meet this professor and why do you think she left this left this money to you?

Ms. HOUPPERT: Well, I met her when I was at Bennington College as a freshman. One of my friends had taken a class with her and just said oh, she's a great teacher. You should take her class - and she was a history professor there. And then I continued to take classes with her, more or less, every semester - or every other semester while I was there - and kept in touch with her over the years, and we became friends, but not like really, really close friends. Like, I would see her maybe once every other year. And then...

MARTIN: And was it that still that same professor-student relationship where you had a hard time calling her by her first...

Ms. HOUPPERT: Yeah.

MARTIN: What is her name, by way? I don't know, is it Marcia or Marsha.

Ms. HOUPPERT: Her name is Marsha Carlyle.

MARTIN: Marsha Carlyle.

Ms. HOUPPERT: And...

MARTIN: But was it one of those things where it took you a couple of years to stop calling her Professor Carlyle?

Ms. HOUPPERT: It was a while for the relationship to shift, but at Bennington College it was very casual and hippie dippy.

MARTIN: Oh.

Ms. HOUPPERT: So she was always Marsha. But then one day - I had just heard that she died about two weeks earlier - and then I got this letter in the mail from Phillips Exeter Academy where she taught. And the letter was, you know, from some administrator at the school saying they needed my Social Security number and a little bit of information.

I called the school. I'm like; why are you asking me this, and they said that she had left me the beneficiary of her life insurance policy. So, you know, I've spent the last few years puzzling over why she left me this money.

MARTIN: What have you come up with? Why do you think she did?

Ms. HOUPPERT: In my essay, what I do is I kind of go back to our time at Bennington and the "History of Feminism" class that she taught; we spent about three classes at least talking about Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own." The essay is most famous for the idea that an artist needs a room of one's own in order to create.

But what she also does in the essay, that's less familiar, I think, to people is she makes a case that without having money, people are generally too angry to create good art. And she talks a lot - Virginia Woolf talks a lot about an aunt who suddenly left her 500 pounds a year and how that changed her art because she no longer had to work for irritating people.

(Soundbite of laughter)

MARTIN: No comment.

Ms. HOUPPERT: So - right.

MARTIN: Well, you know, what about it? I mean being a freelance writer is not easiest thing to be these days. Has it made a difference in your life? Did you get a room of your own?

Ms. HOUPPERT: I think I used about the first 15,000 to pay off my credit card bill and then I used it for a down payment on a house. So, and for the first time, I actually have a room with a door that I can shut. And I also used the money to take a little bit of time to craft this essay.

MARTIN: Freelance writer, Karen Houppert. She wrote two pieces in this week's Washington Post Magazine. One was about a former professor who left her a wonderful gift of $75,000, allowing her to do some things that she was not able to do before. And the other is about the University of Maryland student who's working on an ambitious plan to light up rural Sierra Leone. Trevor Young was here with us in our Washington, D.C. studio as well.

Congratulations to you both.

Ms. HOUPPERT: Thanks for having me.

Mr. YOUNG: Thank you very much.

(Soundbite of music)

MARTIN: And if you want to read the pieces we were talking about in their entirety, we'll have a link on our Web site. Just go to NPR.org. And remember, we welcome your comments about what you hear on the program; whether it's today's moms discussion or my commentary yesterday on President Obama's male-only pick-up basketball games.

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And that's our program for today. I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. Let's talk more tomorrow.

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