User:Leroy F. Bennett/sandbox

Welcome to the Hotel California the novelLeroy F. Bennett (Born: April 5, 1961) Is an African-American actor, playwriter, director, social critic and author.

Early life[edit source]

Leroy Franklin Bennett is the fourth child born to Samuel F.L. Bennett and Dorothy Bennett in Orange, New Jersey. During his childhood Leroy loved playing football, basketball and performing in school stage productions.

Education[edit source]

As a child Leroy grew up in the predominately Irish and Italian working class neighborhood in East Orange, New Jersey. As a youth he attended Kentopp and Stockton Elementary Schools where he first found his love affair for performing on stage in the school's Christmas plays and spring concerts. He briefly attended Vernon L. Davey Junior High School in East Orange before his family moved to Montclair, New Jersey where he graduated from Mount Hebron Middle School. Bennett often joked about holding the dubious distinction in his family to being the last of his siblings to attend a Junior High School, and the first to graduate from a Middle School. Entering into his high school years the family moved back to from East Orange from Montclair where he attended Montclair High School for a month before being enrolled and graduating from Clifford J. Scott High School. In 1979 he attended Northwestern Oklahoma State University in Alva, Oklahoma where he majored in Journalism and played on the Junior Varsity basketball team before he left school in late January 1980. It wasn't until the fall of 1996 that he kept a promise to his mother that if Bill Clinton won the Presidential election that he would go back to earn his bachelor degree. He enrolled at Allen University in Columbia, South Carolina where he was a student on the basketball team as a player in the 1996-1997 seasson, and as a student assistant coach the following year. While at Allen University he made the Presidents and Deans list Student earning him as an Academic and Collegiate All American by the United States Achievement Academy. In 1999 he transferred to Benedict College majoring in Child and Family Development where he earned his Bachelor of Science Degree in 2003.

Religion[edit source]

Just before reaching his teenage years, Leroy was baptized as at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Orange, New Jersey until his family moved from East Orange to Montclair. While living in Montclair the family were members of Park Avenue Christian Church in East Orange where he was a member of the choir. During his teens through his young adult years he chose to became a member of the Macedonia Baptist Church in Newark, New Jersey and was a soloist on their junior and young adult choirs.

Urban League Affiliates

After leaving Northwestern Oklahoma State University in his freshman year, Leroy returned back to Orange, New Jersey. He work as a cook and a bank teller before he went into a job training program at the ULtra Center with the Urban League of Essex County in Newark from 1986-1989. While training as a student in their word processing program he was informed by his typing instructor that the Urban League needed a receptionist, Leroy took the position and was promoted within a year as the admissions and recruitment director of the ULtra center. It was there at the Urban League that Leroy found his passion of working in the non profit social services in helping people who would work towards selfl-empowerment. As the admissions and recruitment director he was recognized as the employee of the year. The second Urban League affiliate who he worked for was the Columbia Urban League in Columbia, South Carolina. Leroy first became familiar with the affiliate in Columbia when he went to visit his mother during the Thanksgiving holiday in 1987. There he met the executive director to inquire if they had a job readiness training program that was the equivalent to the ULtra Center. During that meeting Leroy explained that the curriculum included mainframe computer operations, word processing, typing, mathematics, language arts and business environment. Nineteen years later and after moving to Columbia, he was employed with the affiliate as a program coordinator from 2006-2008. That last Urban League affiliate Bennett worked at was with the Urban League of the Central Carolinas in Charlotte, North Carolina. Leroy went there shortly after being admitted to stay at the Men's Shelter of Charlotte during a job fair that was being held there.