Lakeview person of the year: Sherwyn Besson

Lakeview’s leader of men mobilizes community

Copyright LIHerald.com Suit Our Sons was one of the Save Our Sons Network’s most successful programs. Besson taught his son, Isiah, how to knot a tie.

Copyright LIHerald.com
Suit Our Sons was one of the Save Our Sons Network’s most successful programs. Besson taught his son, Isiah, how to knot a tie.

By Lee Landor

[Note: This article and its accompanying photos and videos originally appeared on LIHerald.com on December 30, 2011. This content is the rightful property of Richner Communications, Inc.]
This article is last in a series of nine written throughout the course of a year as part of an investigative series, which won first place for best in-depth series in the New York Press Association’s 2011 Better Newspaper Contest. Read the previous article.

In the dozen years he’s live in Lakeview and the seven he’s taught at Malverne High School, Sherwyn Besson has witnessed what he describes as the deterioration of his community.

Nights in Lakeview had brought gambling, drinking, drug use and fighting. Some parents stopped paying attention to their children’s education, as Besson sees it, and, as a result, students were content with performing below average. People became detached and passive.

“I saw the degradation of Lakeview taking place,” said Besson, 43. “It was slow. It was subtle, so you really couldn’t pinpoint it. Why wasn’t this community rising above crime? Why wasn’t it rising above all the challenges it was facing, from cleanliness to the nuisances? It just became dire: I saw our kids dying in this very, very acceptable way, and that wasn’t acceptable to me.”

With the help of several community leaders, Besson, a native of Trinidad who came to New York in 1988, formed the Save Our Sons Network, an organization devoted to helping boys become strong men. He held the group’s first meeting in March, and in the nine months since, he has successfully mobilized members of the community — particularly men — and started a movement uniting people in a quest to accomplish one overarching goal: instilling in the youth a sense of value and virtue.

“There has definitely been [an awakening] in consciousness in the community, where we’re starting to see a lot of men step forward and become leaders,” said Besson, a part-time business teacher at the high school. “Although we’ve seen changes in the boys’ behavior, we still have a long way to go. I look at my community’s youth as my children, and I want my children to aspire to more.”

Besson has been inspired by his own son, 11-year-old Isiah, to develop programs for Save Our Sons, or SOS, which is now a state-recognized nonprofit organization. Those programs cover everything from sexting and respecting women to dressing for success, and Besson carries them out with help from neighbor and friend Brian Meacham, Lakeview NAACP President Bea Bayley and several other local parents.

“We realized that we have to work with other civic organizations to make improvements; we just couldn’t do it by ourselves,” Besson said. “For young black boys, the pathology is really dangerous, and very few organizations are working to change that pathology of from-the-cradle-to-the-jail or to-the-grave kind of pipeline. We want to shut that down and put our boys in schools where they can become really productive … citizens who can be doctors, who can be lawyers and more than just your run-of-the-mill young urban person. … It’s possible, but the community has to be a partner with these young boys.”

The only way to really make that happen, Besson added, is to give the children role models — male role models, something Lakeview was lacking. That absence weighed heavily on Besson’s mind, and when he discussed it with Bayley, the idea of the SOS Network was born.

“Someone had to take the initiative and set an example and actually educate people as to what’s the right thing to do and how to go about it,” Bayley said. “On face value, it’s easy to say, ‘Men need to do this or do that,’ but do they have the skills and the tools to do it? I believe [Besson has] encouraged some other men who may not have realized the deficit. Seeing women work in the community, and women forming groups, and women always out there in the forefront, I guess they didn’t realize what impact it was having until somebody actually put it in their faces.”

The SOS Network has not only awakened men in the community, it has also provided significant help to women. According to Besson, 33 percent of Lakeview households are headed by single mothers, and many of them have attended the group’s events, seeking advice on how to motivate their boys to become more civic-minded and academically involved. Besson, a widower who remarried last year, and fellow SOS leader Meacham, a father of four, give those women credit for their efforts, but call on men to step up to the plate. “I believe fathers are the most important thing that society has to offer,” Meacham said. “… I put a lot of responsibility on fathers, and I put a lot of blame on fathers.”

In order for the SOS Network to reach its goal of raising socially, emotionally and intellectually developed boys, it must teach their fathers to be responsible men, according to Besson, who was raised in a family full of coaches and teachers who inspired him to become an educator.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1993, Besson, who has two stepdaughters with his wife, Ulisha, went on to earn two master’s degrees, one in business and information management from the Polytechnic Institute of New York University in Brooklyn and the other in education from the College of Saint Rose in Albany. He taught in New York City schools until his first wife died in the late 1990s.

Then, he said, “I found the Malverne opportunity and I grabbed it, and I’ve been there since.”

Copyright LIHerald.com Lakeview resident Sherwyn Besson is the Malverne-West Hempstead Herald's Person of the Year.

Copyright LIHerald.com
Lakeview resident Sherwyn Besson is the Malverne-West Hempstead Herald’s Person of the Year.

Loving his new home and community, Besson was unwilling to watch crime and apathy destroy it. “We want to keep the history of Lakeview, which was, essentially, a really strong black, middle-class community with values and a very strong sense of community,” he said. “We want to maintain that and improve upon what we have.”

Bayley hailed Besson’s determination as not only inspirational, but contagious. “He’s a gem in our community,” she said. “He has his whole heart in it, and he’s trying whatever he can. He’s not going to quit. He’s not a quitter; he’s not just about his own children. He’s doing it for everybody, for the good of everyone.”

There was never any doubt, according to Meacham, that progress and success would follow his friend throughout his endeavor. “Sherwyn is the star behind this,” he said of SOS. “A lot of the young people know Sherwyn from school. They know his character, they know his heart. His desire is for the good of these kids, whether it’s outside of the school or in academics. So I believe Sherwyn’s relationship with the young people … drives them to come to us and seek our help. He’s a man of character, that’s one thing for sure.”

Humble and focused only on teaching the boys and men of his community to be positive and productive, Besson attributes his dedication to his idealism. “I am a prisoner of hope, like most people who believe that man is virtuous,” he said. “I’m going to stick with it because I live here and I don’t want to be a victim of crime or any other ill in the community because no one stepped up. So I do what we need to do to change the direction of the community.”

Editor’s note: On Dec. 7, Sherwyn Besson filed suit against the Malverne school district alleging employment discrimination. The Herald made its Person of the Year selection before learning of that suit. We based our selection solely on his outstanding work in the community. Whatever its outcome, his dispute with the school district in no way diminishes his impact on the young men of our community and it is for that work that we recognize him.

Read the previous article in the series: ‘Malverne school district racial discrimination suit causes rift’