#rameck hunt

Plot:

 Growing up from broken homes in Newark, New Jersey, there was not much expected to come from Sam, George and Rameck. Smart in school, their parents pushed for academic excellence, but it was not cool to be smart. Skipping classes, hanging out with guys older than them, the three of them faced a lot of peer pressure growing up. Drugs, domestic abuse, lack of father figures, lined the streets for these boys, as the easiest way to make money was to sell drugs on the street corner, cash these boys needed to stay alive. In grade seven, Sam and George got accepted to University High, a school built because the government realized that public schools were not preparing their kids to accept jobs beyond just manual labor. Rameck did not join them until freshman year, and did not become tight with them until junior year. After all, just because Rameck was going to a different school, does not mean he was going to leave his friends in Plainfield behind. Yet once those boys got Rameck arrested after beating up a crackhead, Rameck began to leave them behind and hang out with Sam and George. The design that changed their life was a presentation they could either go to, or stay in class. Going to the presentation was from Sexton, University and their Pre-Medical/Pre-Dental Plus Program, under their Educational Opportunity Program (EOP), created from the back community rioting for civil rights. This program was to help minority students finally through school, creating summer programs to help them catch up with their peers before fall semester starts. Where George was instantly hooked, a side dream of always wanting to be a dentist, the other two were more hesitant. That was their pact. No locking hands, or signing a contract, just the three of them agreeing to apply, and stick together until the end.

Thoughts: 

This book defines the power of friendship. The Pact, described the promise between George, Sam and Rameck made with each other to apply to the Sexton University’s medical program, and see it to the end where all three of them become doctors. Which they did, and even though you knew that since the first page, it is still hard to believe. They were tempted with so many things, from drugs, crimes, even a musical career halfway through their undergrad. These three boys, who people believed could do nothing right in their life, are saving lives today (or giving them a really nice smile). This story is beyond inspiring, as the story jumps around between Sam, George, and Rameck about their life at that time, sometimes going backwards, overlapping, but most of the time going through the days one by one. Where the writing was not the best, as it did not really capture the pain these boys were going through, and often skip probably the boring days of these boys' lives. Medical school must have been incredibly hard, yet they did not dwell on the study, as looking back you talk about what you did on Friday nights, and not the Monday to Thursday where you studied all day and all night. Even the ‘bad’ parts of the story, when they described their fights, their arrests, were glossed over, because it was not truly the point of the story. The story was about the three of them making their way through medical school, adding in the arrests and the bad parts as a: this is what happened, how I felt afterwards, how I moved on from it. Where the three of them wrote more books together about their struggles growing up, this one starts as kind of a beginning, as it goes into their early childhood life, how they met each other, their pact, and ending with them walking across the stage accepting their degrees and their new names of Dr. Sampson Davis, Dr. George Jenkins and Dr.  Rameck Hunt.  

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