Tag Archives: Seahawks RB Thomas Rawls

A young black man and a white commercial boat owner made a deal to go fishin’ for tuition. It shouldn’t have worked.

November 24, 2020   National, North Pacific

First day of a new job rarely is easy. First day of a job on a commercial fishing boat in southwest Alaska is soul-scorching. “I can handle cleaning,” Jawanza Brown said. “I can handle heavy lifting. I can handle the hard work, you constantly get slapped in the face by a fish because it’s still alive and wants to swim away. But in the nitty gritty, I don’t know what it is, when I have to bleed a fish and put it (in the refrigerated saltwater hold) 2,000 times day, then the slime builds up and eventually, you slip, and you’re on your knees. Every June, the young Black man leaves his Flint MI., home to keep his bargain with an old white boat captain from Bellingham: Six weeks of what Brown calls “pretty crude work” in exchange for the income to pay for four years of college and a chance to have a piece of the world. photos, >click to read< , From June 5, 2017, From Flint to Alaska, Fishing for Hope – >click here< 15:08

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From Flint to Alaska, fishing for hope

June 5, 2017   National, North Pacific

The backstory of Seahawks RB Thomas Rawls inspired an Alaska commercial fisherman from Bellingham to go to Flint, Mich., to give a young man a chance to pay for college a hard way. Jawanza Brown recalled the time Seahawks RB Thomas Rawls spoke to the Boys & Girls Club in their hometown of Flint, Mich. Rawls was playing football at the University of Michigan, Brown was a star-struck kid. “I remember he talked about pushing through adversity by saying, ‘I was built for this,’” Brown said by phone the past week. “That quote stuck in my head. I’m keeping that in mind this summer.” Brown wants to prove he is built for something too: Crewing on a 32-foot gillnetter in Bristol Bay, Alaska, home to the world’s largest, most intense salmon fishery. Even though he’s never done such a thing. Even though he’s never been on a commercial boat. Even though he’s left the state of Michigan but once — to Ohio. click here to read the story 16:32

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