Kermit Washington - Early Life

Early Life

Kermit Washington's mother Barbara graduated from Miner's Teacher's College (later subsumed into Howard University), where she was an excellent student; his father Alexander was an X-ray technician. Washington had a rough childhood. When he was three years old, his parents had a fight in which his maternal uncle became involved and in which someone violently attacked his uncle with an iron. His parents soon divorced, with his father awarded custody of the children. His mother, who suffered from bipolar disorder, then took him and his older brother Eric from their father on an ill-advised sojourn for which they were poorly prepared. Struggling to find money to feed the children, she eventually called their father, who came and took them back. His stay with his father did not last long, and he and his brother were passed around to various relatives on both sides of the family.

The effect of being shuttled into and out of the homes of family members led to a feeling of not being wanted, which made Washington extremely shy as a youth. The only time he recalls feeling a sense of self-worth was when his great-grandmother on his father's side had the pair for a while. According to Washington, she loved the boys but was extremely strict, domineering, and at times, physically abusive. After his father remarried, the children moved back in with him and his new wife. Washington felt a sense of optimism for the first time, saying "I thought it was our dream come true. All our lives we had seen nice families on TV. Real ones. Now we were going to be a real family." However, he again felt unwanted this time by his stepmother. As a small child, Washington said that he had no recollections of ever being hugged, and only felt close to his older brother, Chris. Washington was a poor student who hated school throughout most of his childhood. He had to retake many of his classes in summer school to raise his grades. When he entered high school he played football merely so he could be around a close friend, and have someone to walk home with at night with as he was terrified of walking home alone.

As a senior in high school, Washington stood 6 ft 4 in (1.93 m) but weighed a mere 150 lbs. After some rare positive feedback by his biology teacher, Barbara Thomas, he began to study and put forth a greater effort in that class. He quickly became a solid student in biology but poor in all other subjects. When Thomas became his home room teacher and saw his grades in other classes she encouraged him to try hard in all of his courses. Washington rapidly improved his marks, making the honor roll in his senior year.

His basketball performance in high school was unimpressive. He came off the bench to average four points per game (ppg). His stepmother informed him that when he graduated high school he would be thrown out of the house. Chris had been able to leave home on a football scholarship and would later play in the National Football League, but Washington himself had nowhere to go. He trained for three hours a day toward the end of his senior season, and showed up uninvited at a playground game featuring top high school players from Washington and Pennsylvania, where he talked his way into the game. Tom Young, who had recently left his job as an assistant coach at Maryland University to become head coach at American University, saw him play there, and although Washington did not perform particularly well, Young was impressed by his hustle and how he ignored the poor treatment he received from the people who organized the game.