Laurence Tumpag on a recent trip to India. (Photo submitted.)
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Laurence Tumpag speaks softly and carries a big heart.
A genteel young man, Laurence is slated to graduate from MTSU in May with a bachelor's degree in social work.
He recently was elected second vice president of Phi Kappa Phi honor society.
He is a scholar in the McNair Program for first-generation, underrepresented college students.
Yet these accomplishments don't necessarily make him special to me.
I've interviewed numerous exceptional students.
My unabashed admiration for Laurence stems from the knowledge that he emerged as a brilliant, caring young man from a background that would have crushed a lesser light.
His mother, a single working mother from the Philippines, made some terrible choices in the area of male companionship that were detrimental to her son's happiness.
These men abused Laurence verbally, emotionally and physically.
When Laurence asked for information about his biological father, he was told that the man was a rapist.
Laurence told his story in "O Brother, Where Art Thou?," an essay printed last year in Voices We Haven't Heard, a publication of MTSU's June Anderson Center.
He wrote, "Interspersed throughout my childhood, she would come across men she hoped could be companions, caretakers, role models, father figure(s) … (U)nfortunately, many of them would turn out to be individuals who took advantage of her assets (and) dreams to have a 'whole or complete family,' and finally one would use his own income to give a sense of financial security in exchange for subservience and dehumanization."
Laurence yearned for a male role model.
He found some of his most accessible role models, male and female, among the professors who taught him at Jackson State Community College, where he enrolled in fall 2005.
He told me he considered college a refuge, a safe place, from his hellish home life.
Through education, a sensitive, intelligent young man found a way to avoid the pitfalls other victims of bullying have suffered—crawling into a shell, becoming sociopathic or committing suicide.
He decided to pursue social work as a career, knowing that the profession would take him into some of the most dismal conditions human beings can endure, because he wanted to help others rise above their circumstances as he rose above his own situation.
Today, Laurence interns at the Salvation Army, where he is working on creating a resume workshop to help the unemployed present themselves to prospective employers as professionally as possible.
During spring break, when most students just relax, he went to Chennai, India, to present undergraduate research.
He seems to believe that staying busy is the key to staying mentally healthy.
You won't be impressed by Laurence Tumpag at first.
You have to know the backstory.
Once you know the backstory that I have just told, you can believe that anything is possible.
That's what makes Laurence Tumpag special.
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