On a Wednesday in April, a group of third graders are saving Fred. They poke at Fred with paper clips, and they discuss the various possibilities for staging a rescue.
Fred is a multicolored gummy worm. He is perched atop an upside-down plastic cup, meant to represent his boat. The boat/cup has capsized, trapping his gummy life vest. The students’ mission is to reunite Fred with his vest using four paper clips, their collective wits, and advice gleaned from a team of STEM professionals. It’s a critical thinking activity that highlights the fun side of STEM, and produces a sense of joy and wonderment among the students that perfectly embodies the event’s inspiration: Dr. Craig Yennie.
Dr. Yennie was an extraordinary scientist and scholar, and one of the founding members of COMPASS Youth Collaborative. He passed away unexpectedly in 2016. It is in his spirit that COMPASS Youth Collaborative launched the First Annual Dr. Craig Yennie STEM Day, because prior to his passing, Craig was a beloved adjunct professor of Organic Chemistry at Brown University. He was an accomplished scholar who published in academic journals. He was a hometown hero who never forgot his Hartford roots and a die-hard Whalers fan. Craig did so much during his time on earth and had so much left to do, that it is now a collective responsibility to carry on in his stead.
To continue his legacy, COMPASS Youth Collaborative teamed up with the Yennie family. The STEM Day on April 25, 2018, brought together COMPASS students and STEM professionals from United Technologies. The professionals imparted their passion for STEM with the kids; in turn, the students saw tangible examples of a STEM career. It was also a day to honor Craig’s love of life and learning – hence, a Whalers colors theme, and hands-on activities to spark student creativity.
In the words of COMPASS CEO Robert Pawloski, who gave the keynote address that day, “We are here to remember a person who blazed an incredible trail during his lifetime. We honor him today not just as a scientist and scholar, but as an individual deeply committed to helping others.”
To understand what made Craig so unique is to first acknowledge that he came from a truly special family. His mother, Hyacinth, is the definition of a committed community activist. She leads innumerable community initiatives, is a fixture at municipal meetings, and may well be the pied piper of Hartford’s South End.
Hyacinth describes herself in three ways: “I’m a multi-tasker, I am very curious, and I want to know everything.”
She adds this last bit with a big laugh. Everyone who knows Hyacinth knows this; her morning walks around the neighborhood often take hours, because she stops to check on the welfare of her neighbors, always at the ready to lend a hand or give an ear.
Hyacinth’s primary passion is promoting education. She instilled a love of learning in each of her three children. The oldest, Charley, earned her doctorate in medicine and is a family practitioner at a clinic in Hartford’s Blue Hills section. Craig, the middle child, received his PhD from Brown and planned on attending law school. Her youngest, Melissa, is a teacher in Hartford Public Schools and on the cusp of earning her PhD from Central Connecticut State University. All three grew up trailing their mom to community meetings, pitching in for the cause de jour, and each found their own ways to make a difference.
Craig’s calling came early. By his 10th birthday, many of Hartford’s streets were rife with gang violence, and it threatened to engulf the city’s youngest residents. In response, Craig joined a local youth group. The kids successfully lobbied for a youth center, a place for peace and positivity, a respite among the chaos. Craig was among the youth panelists who hired Bob Pawloski as the Center’s Director. Thanks to the efforts of young people like Craig, a drop-in recreation center became an organization that has, for the past 22 years, improved the lives of thousands of youth and their families.
His advocacy for the underserved remained constant throughout his life, particularly during his teaching career at an Ivy League institution. There can be a tendency at top-tier universities to focus on the high fliers, on the faculty and students who are the most exceptional. Craig believed in teaching from the bottom up.
Dr. Craig Yennie during his COMPASS days
He mentored the students who struggled with the course material, and he related well with those who struggled to fit in. During his memorial service, a student recalled once attending a tutoring session with Dr. Yennie. While waiting for the illustrious professor to appear, the students were shocked to realize that Dr. Yennie was sitting and chatting amongst them. That was Craig: always humble, always kind, and always interested in the well being of others.
For Craig’s mother Hyacinth, her middle child was just a touch different from birth. His delivery was the fastest and least painful; as if he was in a hurry to get started. As a child, Craig was always curious. He had a precocious interest in school and he loved the theater, history, and science; he had a particular affinity for chemistry and forensics. Craig was the natural peacemaker in the family, as middle children often are, and shared a special bond with his mom and sisters.
“I love all of my children, and am so proud of each of them,” Hyacinth surmises, “but when the T.V. remote broke, I always called Craig. When he grew up and moved away, I sent him pictures of the remote to fix it.”
She smiles at the memory. “Craig was always helping all of us by giving great advice and encouragement. He was wise beyond his years. I loved listening to him, I loved learning from him, and from the moment he was born we had a special bond.”
Call it a mother’s intuition, but a few months prior to his passing, Hyacinth was in Craig’s childhood bedroom when she began to cry.
She looked around at the walls filled with photos and awards and sports memorabilia, and she felt overcome by an inexplicable yearning. That feeling remains today, some two years after she received a fateful phone call from a hospital in Providence, Rhode Island.
“Come quick,” the voice on the line urged her that day. “Your son is in the hospital.”
Hyacinth and her two daughters arrived at the emergency room only to be shepherded into a private waiting area. Her elder daughter – as a doctor in her own right – began to shake. She knew these rooms were not for glad tidings, but her mother could hardly believe the news.
Dr. Craig Yennie passed away, at the age of 33, from a sudden heart attack.
“I was just in a daze for weeks and weeks,” Hyacinth recalls. “You don’t ever want to lose a child.” Her voice trails off. It’s hard to explain the feeling, a kind of grief that never subsides. It’s harder still to comprehend the loss of someone so special. These days she feels his presence through her daughters and grandchildren, in the causes they shared together, and, as she puts it, by walking in his path.
It is a path that leads back to the people and places that Craig loved most.
Craig’s spirit remains at Brown University, through a memorial wall and a garden planted in his memory. It lives through the SCRIBE Institute, a local nonprofit that awards an annual scholarship for graduating seniors interested in a STEM career.
His path leads back to Trinity College, stopping at the foot of a blossoming tree near the Trinity Chemistry Lab. It resounds in the halls of his old high school, Sports Medical Science Academy, and rests on a memorial bench in the school foyer. The bench etching speaks to Craig’s passion for teaching.
“A good teacher is like a candle,” the inscription reads, “it consumes itself and lights the way for others.”
Indeed, Dr. Craig Yennie lives on in so many ways. For the youth and families touched by COMPASS Youth Collaborative, the organization he helped create, Craig Yennie will never be forgotten.