Chess and the Meaning of Life
In the fall of 1995, Jenkins, then a sixth grader, was feeling dejected. He had just been cut from the basketball team for being too small. Carroll, whose father was in jail and whose mother was not around, wanted to find a way to use the smarts he knew he had. And Durant had just been in a fight at school and was waiting for his punishment to be meted out.
That’s about the time they all encountered Thomas-El, then a Vaux educator and chess coach.
He recruited all three to play chess, and by the next school year, they were part of the Vaux team that won the national middle school championship in Knoxville, Tenn.
