From Juniata Park to Harvard on a full ride

When the letter from the Gates Foundation landed on Lawndale Street in April, Virginia "Ginny" Dennis and her son Brandon started screaming.

"Is Miss Ginny OK?" a neighbor asked as they stepped out of their Juniata Park rowhouse. "Because we heard her hollering."

More than OK.

Miss Ginny's son had just been awarded a full scholarship to both college and graduate school.

He's going to Harvard.

At 17, Brandon Dixon is used to defying the odds.

With the guidance of Dennis - a spirited, single mother who worked as a medical lab technician - he won a spot at Girard College in fifth grade and has received a free, college-prep education at the private school in Fairmount.

Now, the student body president who helped lead the fight to preserve the secondary and boarding programs that have been hallmarks at Girard since it opened in 1848 has made history of his own:

He has been named a Gates Millennium Scholar and the cost of the rest of his education will be covered by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The first in his family to attend college, Dixon has been talking about Harvard since he was 4. He'll head to Cambridge in August to study government.

"It's exciting," said Dixon, who is rarely seen without a book in his hand. "Everyone knows that Harvard is sort of a hub of government, especially with the Kennedy [School of Government]. So it's probably the best place for me to go."

Every year since 1999, the Gates Foundation has chosen 1,000 academically successful, low-income minority seniors as Millennium Scholars.

Students are selected on the basis of a series of written essays, academic and leadership records, and recommendations.

Thirteen seniors from the region have been honored this year, including six from Philadelphia public schools and one from Chester. Dixon is the second Girard student in the program's history.

He entered Girard as a fifth grader after his mother learned about the free boarding school from a parent of one of Dixon's classmates at the Laboratory Charter School in Northern Liberties.

"I read about the program, and I thought it was great," Dennis said.

But she worried about her boy's being away at school and coming home only on weekends.

Although Dixon was excited about living in a dorm, the first few weeks were hard for him, for his mother, and for his older brother, Brian Miller, now 27.

By the third weekend, Dennis said, Dixon was crying uncontrollably as they drove home to Juniata Park.

"I was like: 'Oh no. That's it! You're not going back,' " Dennis recalled.

That weekend, she and her sons discussed whether Dixon should return to Girard. He agreed to go back to campus and try it for another week or two.

"The next weekend when he came home, he was OK after that," Dennis said.

Now, she said, she's glad she sent him back to Girard, where he has spent weekdays behind the massive, sheltering stone walls that surround the 43-acre campus - and where he has thrived.

At Laboratory Charter, Dixon said, he had competed for academic honors with classmate Chris Mathis. When Dixon followed his classmate to Girard, "I found not only competition from him but from everyone else at Girard."

Tony Askew, who directs college advising at the school, began talking to Dixon about the Gates program when he was still a junior.

By then, Dixon was involved in an array of activities at Girard, including Boy Scouts, mock trial, the newspaper, and yearbook. He mentored a younger student, played on the tennis team, and took both AP courses the school offers.

Last summer, Brandon began working on the eight 1,000-word essays the program required.

"He spent a lot of time, a lot of hours writing and rewriting," Askew said, adding that Dixon is a strong writer.

One of the essays asked him to describe a challenge he'd overcome. He wrote about the battle to preserve Girard's high school and boarding programs after the board that oversees it announced in June 2013 that it wanted to temporarily end those programs the next year for financial reasons.

Because Stephen Girard had provided detailed instructions for the school in his 1831 bequest, the board had to ask Orphans' Court for permission to make the changes.

Dixon described organizing protests and checking out an original copy of Girard's will from the archives so he could study it. After alumni, Dennis, and other parents filed objections to the proposed changes, Dixon testified about what the 19th century merchant-banker had intended for the school.

Ultimately, the board decided to allow Dixon's class to graduate. Orphans' Court rejected the proposed changes. Girard officials have appealed to Commonwealth Court but have promised to keep the high school and boarding programs intact until 2018-19.

Dixon was offered admission to all 11 colleges he applied to, including Yale, Penn, Dartmouth, Duke, and Swarthmore.

But he said when he and his mother stepped on the Harvard campus for the first time a few weeks ago, he felt at home.

"I pretty much already had it in my mind that I was going to go to Harvard, so it was like a confirmation that this was the place I wanted to be."

His ultimate goal: "To become president of the United States."

Virginia Dennis said no one should doubt her son's resolve: "He's determined to make a difference," she said.

Years ago, he told her: " 'Mom you don't have to worry about anything because when I get big, you can live in my West Wing.' "

Pennsylvania

Mohammed Bappe, Lansdowne; the School at Church Farm, Exton.

Lotus Barron, Philadelphia; Mastery Charter-Thomas, Philadelphia.

Brandon Dixon, Philadelphia; Girard College, Philadelphia.

Queenie Lam, Philadelphia; GAMP, Philadelphia

Sokunvichet Long, Philadelphia; Masterman, Philadelphia.

Ty Parks, Drexel Hill; Masterman, Philadelphia.

Van Sam, Philadelphia; Academy at Palumbo, Philadelphia.

Kanae Taylor, Philadelphia; Carver H.S. for Engineering & Science, Philadelphia.

Shamyra Woods-Elliott, Chester; Chester H.S.- Main Campus, Chester.

Xian Yu Zheng, Philadelphia; Franklin Learning Center, Philadelphia.

New Jersey

Lawrence Holman, Trenton; Valley Forge Military Academy, Wayne.

Scott Perry, Cranbury; New Hope Academy, Yardley.

Emmanuel Udotong, Cinnaminson; Cinnaminson H.S.

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