James Piggee was just a teenager when he left Gary to attend Shaw University in Raleigh, N.C.

His mother put him on a bus, gave him a $50 bill, and said simply, “Boy, go be something.”

Fast forward several decades and the now 74-year-old retired Gary Schools Corp. administrator has echoed his mother’s sound advice to thousands of high school students across the country.

Go be something.

For 27 years in a row, Piggee has coordinated a bus tour during spring break, with visits to dozens of historically black colleges and universities, or HBCUs, from Grambling to Howard. The now nationally known program started humbly with one bus and 35 students in 1986.

Since then, more than 6,000 high school students have taken a ride on the program to help select a college, with roughly 90 percent of them graduating with a degree. Many of the “black college bus tour graduates” have gone on to prestigious jobs across the country.

I have some problems witht he specifics of what he is doing but I guess he is having a positive impact, so I will join in the shout out...until we find his trip was being financed by the school's he visited with a healthy administration fee going directly to mr. piggee.