Pitre says that being from Louisiana, he loves jazz, so his first fund-raiser was a jazz concert.

He put in 11 years with the Veterans Administration before retiring to work at real estate on his own, at a slower pace. Pitre worked for the post office, sold real estate and worked in the late '60s and early '70s in a Central Area Motivation Project program to rehabilitate houses and sell them to low- and moderate-income families. He earned an accounting degree from Seattle University. They urged him to go sign up, then use the GI Bill to get to college. School to do a little work in the South Pacific.Īfter the war, in 1946, he was working in a Seattle shipyard and met Garfield kids who told him about a new high school, Broadway Edison, for veterans who hadn't gotten their diplomas. But the Marine Corps took him out of high Pitre grew up in Opelousas, La., and thought he might earn a basketball scholarship. 'Our mission is to encourage them to go beyond high school and come back to the community as productive citizens.' Pitre says, 'I've been at Garfield and Roosevelt and seen kids with 3.8 grade-point averages walk away with all the scholarships and the ones with 3.0 feel no need to try. It sounded like just the task for the elder Pitre, who is retired. One of his three grown sons heard that Ken Jacobsen, state senator from the 46th District, had gotten the Legislature to put up some matching money to encourage residents to start Dollars for Scholars chapters and that Jacobsen was especially interested in getting African Americans to participate. Let me tell you now about the African-American Dollars for Scholars chapter.Ĭlayton Pitre is the president and prime mover, the guy who got it going five years ago. Last year, I wrote about the chapter at Marshall Alternative High School. In Washington, the program migrated into urban areas. It started as a program for rural areas, with the idea that a small community could work together to send some of its kids to college, kids who weren't going to get academic or athletic scholarships, but who would do well given a chance. I like the Dollars for Scholars program because it's all about regular people helping regular kids reach higher than they might otherwise.

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