When Crystal Easter’s younger sister, Andrea Easter, got asthma attacks last year, her mother didn’t know how to help her.
“She was wheezing, and [my mother] almost had a heart attack,” Crystal said.
That was until Crystal, who graduated this year from Vivien T. Thomas Medical Art Academy charter school, began studying asthma at her paid internship at the University of Maryland, Baltimore.
“She had the paperwork and started walking and talking with the doctors,” said Rhona Wallace, Easter’s mother.
Easter, 18, is finishing her second summer at the university, working with children who suffer from asthma, and she will start at Stevenson University later this month in the hopes of becoming a pediatric nurse.
She praised the internship program for not only allowing her to get hands-on experience, but also for connecting her with professionals who can help her in the future.
For Rep. Elijah Cummings, who also suffers from asthma, the program represented an opportunity he wished he had growing up in Baltimore.
He told the students Wednesday about how he dreamed in high school of becoming a lawyer but had to settle for working muggy summers in the polluted air at a Bethlehem Steel plant. “We got off at 4. We were ready to get out of there at 3,” he said.
Cummings told the students, seated in front of him in a small conference room in white lab coats, that completing the internship put them at an advantage.
He related their struggles growing up in the city to his own.
“I used to get whipped, beaten,” Cummings said, “just because I wanted to be the best I could be. All kinds of stuff, teased. They said, ‘Black boys aren’t supposed to be smart. That’s sissy stuff. That’s girl stuff.’ But I had the last laugh. Because when I became a lawyer, many of those guys became my clients.
“Popularity ain’t always it,” Cummings continued. “I mean you all had a job this summer. Can I tell you something else? Those boys on the corner with the white shirts and the jeans, this is a far better job than what they have.”
The program is in its second year working with students at Vivien. Of 25 spots, 12 students participated and only 10 completed the program.
Cummings expressed frustration that more students at the school didn’t take advantage of the internship, and he urged those who did participate to recruit more classmates for next year.
“What I’m saying to you is you all are on a great path,” Cummings said. “I’m begging you to stay on that path.”
