Lakeview Person of the Year: Sherwyn Besson

In the dozen years he's live in Lakeview and the seven he's taught at Malverne High School, Sherwyn Besson has witnessed what he describes as the deterioration of his community.

Nights in Lakeview had brought gambling, drinking, drug use and fighting. Some parents stopped paying attention to their children’s education, as Besson sees it, and, as a result, students were content with performing below average. People became detached and passive.

“I saw the degradation of Lakeview taking place,” said Besson, 43. “It was slow. It was subtle, so you really couldn’t pinpoint it. Why wasn’t this community rising above crime? Why wasn’t it rising above all the challenges it was facing, from cleanliness to the nuisances? It just became dire: I saw our kids dying in this very, very acceptable way, and that wasn’t acceptable to me.”

With the help of several community leaders, Besson, a native of Trinidad who came to New York in 1988, formed the Save Our Sons Network, an organization devoted to helping boys become strong men. He held the group’s first meeting in March, and in the nine months since, he has successfully mobilized members of the community — particularly men — and started a movement uniting people in a quest to accomplish one overarching goal: instilling in the youth a sense of value and virtue.

“There has definitely been [an awakening] in consciousness in the community, where we’re starting to see a lot of men step forward and become leaders,” said Besson, a part-time business teacher at the high school. “Although we’ve seen changes in the boys’ behavior, we still have a long way to go. I look at my community’s youth as my children, and I want my children to aspire to more.”

Besson has been inspired by his own son, 11-year-old Isiah, to develop programs for Save Our Sons, or SOS, which is now a state-recognized nonprofit organization. Those programs cover everything from sexting and respecting women to dressing for success, and Besson carries them out with help from neighbor and friend Brian Meacham, Lakeview NAACP President Bea Bayley and several other local parents.