For Alphonso Jackson, deputy secretary of HUD, it’s always been about being ...Close to Home

He was the youngest of 12 children, and to his large family, he was “Bo.” While he went to school here, he was known as “Al.” These days he goes by “Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development”—or “the Dep Sec,” as a HUD office personnel often abbreviate his title

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Former student Alphonso Jackson, Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in his Washington, D.C. office.

He is Alphonso R. Jackson, and his year at ET was at the beginning of a long journey that would take him from the family home in Dallas to helping thousands of families find homes through his work in Washington, D.C.

In 1966, Alphonso came to school here, even though he already had a track scholarship elsewhere, because he wanted to be close to home.
“My father was in the end stages of cancer, and I wanted to be someplace that I could go home on the weekends to see him,” Alphonso says. “and I’d been told the track coach at ET, Delmer Brown, was an exceptional coach.”
Alphonso doesn’t mention it, but he was the first African American on the ET team. When asked about it, he says, “Yes, and people were very, very kind to me.” He emphasizes the “very.”
Coach Brown understood about his need to go home often on the weekends, he says, and his teammates “were always very helpful” when his brother’s car wasn’t available for him to take to school and he needed to catch a ride.
Alphonso’s father died in March that year. Al finished up his freshman

year at ET, then transferred. He would get his bachelor’s degree in political science and a master’s degree in education administration from Truman State University. His law degree he earned at Washington University School of Law.

Education was emphasized by his mother, who was a nurse midwife and his father, who worked in a foundry, Alphonso says. “Dad said the only way to fight racism is to be educated.”

“I had teachers who told me not to ever let anybody write me off because of my race and teachers who instilled in me the desire to succeed regardless of the odds,” he says. “The most underpaid professionals in the world are those that impact our future, and that’s our teachers.”
Now as deputy secretary of HUD, he’s tapping into the broad experiencein housing, finance and management that he gained from directing housing in cities such as St. Louis, Washington, D.C. and Dallas.
It’s experience he’s needed more than ever in the months since September 11, which have been the most invigorating of his career, he says. In February, HUD gave New York $700 million, the largest single grant in the department’s history, to help businesses located in Lower Manhattan recover from the terrorist attacks.
“Being there, helping resolve some of the hurt and pain in peoples’ lives …it’s been the most rewarding part of my job since I took it,” he says.

Also rewarding is “just being part of President Bush’s administration,” he says. Alphonso was a strong supporter of George W. Bush while he campaigned for the presidency and participated in an online chat on the Bush-Cheney website during the Republican National Convention.
“The president I consider one of my very best friends,” he says. “We lived around the corner from one another before he became governor. Our families are very close; our wives are good friends.”
He also backs Bush’s initiative to get more faith-based organizations involved in federal projects.
“I don’t see why people have such difficulty with the idea,” he says. “I was raised in a family that said we should behave every day as we behave on Sunday. A community program at a Baptist church in San Francisco was one of the best I’ve seen in this country. I don’t know why people are afraid to have churches and communities working to better serve citizens. I have

please see “American Dream,” page 2

Alumni Calendar

April
19-21—First Last Dinner Dance in Dallas
23—Commerce Area Alumni Chapter Social (tent.)
27—Alumni Association Board of
Directors meeting

May
3—Fifty-Year Reunion on campus
11—Commencement

June
7—32nd Annual Alumni Golf Classic at Sand Hills
14—Foundation’s Golf Tournament at Buffalo Creek