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My name is David Aldridge. I came to American University in the fall of 1983, graduated in the summer of 1987, and. With what degree? I was a double major.

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I had BAS in print journalism and history. Wonderful. So what brought you to American University? That's a good.

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Wow. That's a good question. Um, I, I applied to four schools. Candor requires me to to say that

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AU was not my first choice, but it was the school I could afford to go to. I was a commuter student. My I grew up in northeast Washington, lived there as a kid.

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I had never been to this part of the city before until my first day of classes here. Took two buses to get here. And the only way, the only reason I knew I was still in Washington

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is because I looked up at the street signs and they were still green, and they were green in my neighborhood, so I knew I'm still in. I'm still in the city.

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I really didn't know if I was still in the city. When I got here, I'd never been in this part of town before, ever, for any reason. Just didn't work out that way.

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So it was a I had heard about American when I was in high school. I thought I wanted to be a journalist or a reporter or something in communications, and I

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knew Howard had a really good school, and I knew American had a really good school, and American came to my high school. They had a career day, and I got the when I was a junior in high school, and I thought, wow, this, this seems like they they're

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pretty good. Like, if I stay home, maybe I'll go to AU because it's different. It's just different.

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And I was like, I went to a different high school. And so I was used to different by then. And so I thought, well, if I, if I do stay home, I'll, maybe I'll do this.

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And as it wound up, I had to go to American. It was the only one that made that I could afford that my family could afford.

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So here I am. So I, I would infer from. From what you just said that you got a scholarship. Yes, I got a scholarship which paid for the tuition.

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And because my parents lived here, I didn't have to pay for room and board. And that's why I came, because otherwise I couldn't afford to.

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Even then, we just we had what we had and all the other schools I went to, they had offered money as well, but there was a gap. There was just that gap that

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everybody knows about. It's not enough. It's not quite enough. Um, and we could make this work.

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And so that's why we that's why I came. Describe your American university experience. What was it like? As I say, all the time, coming to American changed my life.

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And it's not that my life would have been bad if I had gone to some other school. I'm not saying that, but I know that the trajectory of my life changed because I went here.

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Um, the people that I met here were transformational for me. Um, when you're when you're 18, 19 years old, we all experience the same thing.

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You have no idea who you are yet. You don't know. You don't know what you're good at. You don't know if you're funny.

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You don't know if you're especially smart like you think you are. You hope you are. Um. And you don't know how to

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interact with different people, right? And so coming to American taught me all of those things and reinforced all of those things for me to the point where I grew my confidence in myself grew.

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It was the first time That people I didn't know believed in me. You know, my parents believed in me and loved me and gave me a great environment and my family

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and my friends and all that. But when professors and administrators and people you don't know say, you know, you should try this because this is you have the aptitude to do it.

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It's so life affirming that I can't even I can't even describe it aptly how much that does for a young person. And I know when I was here, the advisor to the school paper because I worked at the Eagle.

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Right. And the advisor to the school paper was the former president. He was the former desk president or city, whatever it is. The president of the Washington, D.C. bureau of NBC news.

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He ran NBC news out of Washington, D.C., and he was our advisor. He was the dean of the SOC at the time. And he said, you should try to be editor of the paper. I said, what? I said, are you nuts?

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I'm not going to. I can't do that. And he said, oh, yeah, you can. You're good enough.

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You can do that. And to have somebody like that believe in you and say you're you're the guy or you're the woman or whatever.

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I mean, it just it just opens up the whole world to you, you know? It just opens up everything. And so to have that experience here, to make the friendships that I made here, the different types of relationships you have with

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your students, your fellow students and friends, um, it just all opened up, the world opened up, and I had a very narrow view of my place in the world before I came here. And after I left, it was much different.

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And that's why I always will owe this school because of what it did for me. If I'm not mistaken, you were the first black editor of the Eagle.

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Yes, I was. Tell me about. That. Well, again it comes.

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It's part of that experience. You know, when you go to a PWI, you're always the only. You know, you're always the only in the classroom. You're the only in the cafeteria.

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You're the only in the dorm. You're the only everywhere. Or there's two people maybe, you know.

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So that part you get used to. It's not pleasant, but you get used to it. You just have to. If you want to go to that school,

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that's what you have to do. Right. So when I went to the Eagle, I was the only again. Right.

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So, um. But I made really good friendships there. Some of my best friends to this day are people I met at the Eagle. Um, but, you know, when I was a rising junior, um, again,

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Professor Jordan Frank Jordan said you should run for editor in chief, and I really didn't even have that on my radar. It was not on my radar at all. And so I interviewed and I

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thought, well, okay, at least I interviewed, right? At least I went through with it. And when they said, you know, you're they they picked you because the, the Confederation

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Media Commission at the time was a bunch of students did the picking of all the student media heads and they picked me and I was I was overwhelmed by that. Um, and then I thought to I

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thought about it and said, you know, this, I should do something with this. You know, I should I should make this easier for the next person, you know?

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And I had to think about every decision that I made was not just, is it good for the paper? It's is it good for the next black kid that comes through this door, you know? And so I had to do that.

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And we all have to juggle. It's part of just part of being in this country. We have to juggle. And so we had to do that.

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And and so being in charge, like I learned something that was affirmed to me by an I was surprised that it was this person, but it was George W Bush with whom I agree about nothing. Okay.

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But George Bush said something that resonated with me. He said, when when you're in charge, people may agree with your decision.

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They may disagree with your decision, but they expect you to make a decision. And that's that's right. That's exactly right.

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And so you have to make a call. And so that whole year was about me making decisions. And again, that opens things up for you as a human being, knowing that you have the capability to make decisions and some of them

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are going to be right, and some of them are going to be wrong. But you have to make them you have to you have to believe in yourself enough to make a call on something. And again, that just takes you to a whole different place when you

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go into the into the world of work, because you have a confidence about yourself that I'm going to make. I'm going to make a call. I'm going to choose to do

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something whether it works or not, I can't. Nothing I can do about it. But I'm going to I have the confidence in myself to decide.

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And that that came from here, that came from this place. I was just a completely different person when I left here than I was when I got here.

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Well, you left American University and what a career. So tell us about life after American University. What did you do? What was that like? Well, again, the springboard was because of because of being here.

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So after I was editor my senior year, um, one of my friends on the Eagle staff was working as a stringer at the Washington Post. And that's a part time reporter in the sports department. And he suggested that I get in touch with the high school sports

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editor at the post, who graduated from American University and who always tried to look out for a few kids. And I called him up. His name was Mike Trilling, and he

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said, we'll find something for you to do. Come on down, you know. And I went down there and I covered high school sports as a senior part time.

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And that led through a series of fortunate steps which take way too long to explain here. I was able to get a full time staff writer job out of college at the Washington Post at 22, which

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is insane. It's completely insane. It has nothing to do with my aptitude, trust me. And I'm not being self-deprecating here.

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It has nothing to do with my ability. There's a million people that had the same ability I did, but I got my foot in the door because Mike Trilling said, come on down. And they were able to see me work and took a chance on me.

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And so I started there at the post. I worked at the post for nine years. I covered the bullets. They were the bullets then.

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They're the wizards now. I covered the team that is now called the commanders. Um, as the beat writer did that

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for eight years and went from there to ESPN, transferred and transitioned into television, which was just some happy accident. Did that for nine years, was had a

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good time there, worked at Turner Sports uh, covering the NBA for 14 years and now have been at The Athletic, which is a sports digital website, for the last four and a half years. So it's been a I've had a wonderful, incredible career,

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ridiculously fortunate. But all of it is because I went here. It's this was what got this was

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the launch pad. This was the Saturn V rocket that got me there. I know many of you don't like to

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use necessarily that in describing yourself, but I will use it. In any case, it's trailblazers. Change makers. Yeah.

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Really? Who you are. Yeah. Um, and clearly during your time at AU, you did that after you left

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AU. When one looks at your career, you did that. So tell me something.

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What is the best advice that you would give your 21 year old self, current or for future generations? What would you tell them? Sorry. Before you answer that, do you

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mind if I just take your. Sure. Take my phone. Okay.

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Thank you. Oh, gosh. Yeah. What would I tell my 21 year old

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self? I would say, don't be so hard on yourself. You're smarter than you think. You're tougher than you know.

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And you'll meet another girl. Priceless. Yeah. Priceless.

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Yes, indeed. Indeed. Oh my goodness. Um. One of the things that I know about you is you left American and

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American never left, you. No and. You've always come back again and again and have always given back. Tell me about that.

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What propels you to keep giving back to American again and again and again? Um, I think most families have the same tradition that you owe. I owe James and Muriel Aldridge, and I always will.

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I owe them because they gave me. They gave me a loving home and believed in me and instilled me with confidence and never, ever did anything other than sacrifice for me and my brother and my

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sister. My dad was a mailman. My mother was a registered nurse and they put three kids through college.

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I saw the financial aid forms. I know how much money they made and I still don't know how they did that. But they did do that.

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They did it somehow. Um. So I owe them, and I. Someone was asking me this the other day. We were talking about.

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We're talking about the concept of shame, right? And one of the things that I think is a problem in our country is that we've lost the impact of shame. There were things that you didn't do.

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Not because just because they were wrong. Because you didn't want to embarrass your family. Right. I didn't want to embarrass my

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parents. So I didn't do things that were available that are always available in any young person's life.

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Um, so I owed him. And I owe American because my life fundamentally changed in my four years here. And to ignore that would be.

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Beyond shortsighted and absurd. I mean, I know it. I mean, I know it better than anybody. So I can never repay this school for what it did for me, ever.

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Um, that doesn't mean it doesn't have challenges and problems, and it doesn't mean that I. And part of the reason I keep coming back is because I know that kids that look like me have issues still, and I have been gone for almost 40 years because the challenges are

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still the challenges, right? But that's well in keeping with our country and our world, the challenges of today are going to be the same challenges 50 years from now. You just hope that you can make it a little bit better.

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And so I reached back and I try to help when I can. I still don't know if I do enough. I try to because I want them to have the same experience that I did, and it wasn't always great.

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And there were days where I cried and I was upset and unhappy with things. But but the overall body of work over four years and again, the friendships, the genuine

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friendships I've made with people here that have lasted a lifetime. The woman I married, I met in 227, Mary Graydon center. So, you know, come on, this is home. It's always going to be home.

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Mary Green Center just keeps coming back up. It just keeps coming back up. We're going to have to figure this one out here.

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Yeah. Um, Anything else you want to share with us. That you think is important?

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As we're doing this documentary about the black alumni and their connection to American? Yeah. I mean, I just hope I mean, I know that everybody doesn't have the experience that I did, you know, and I'm not naive about that.

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It's a challenge. It's hard. When I got here, it was 8% black. I don't know what it is, 9% black.

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So now it was 8%. That's hard. It's really hard. Um, but we all make.

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When you make the choice, when you cross the Rubicon and you decide I'm going to do it anyway, even though it's hard. I mean, I would just say, especially to the the students, the young people, the kids that are here now, there's a great line

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in a movie that I, that I like very much called A League of Their Own. It's about an all girls baseball team during World.

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War. Two, and the manager of the team is a man, and he's talking to his best player who wants to quit because she wants to be with her husband, who just came back from Europe.

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And she says it just got too hard. And he looked at her and he said, it's supposed to be hard. The hard is what makes it great.

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And I would say to the kids, I know it's hard. It's supposed to be hard. But if you get through it, there's so much out there.

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There's so much that's going to be out there for you. So stick with it. Believe in yourself when you need to lean on people.

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Lean on them. We're all scared. All of us. Every kid here is scared out of

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their minds. So it's okay to say I'm a little nervous or I'm a little uncertain or. I don't quite know.

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They don't know either. You get through it together.