How did the homeless kid end up graduating high school?
When he was a rudderless 14-year-old, skipping school, smoking and drinking, and flirting with following in the footsteps of the drug dealers in his neighborhood, Andre Logan could think back to when life was good. Even in those days, Andre already had escaped the bad situation he was born into in Waukegan. “My mom wasn’t able to be with me because of drug problems. My dad had a bunch of problems,” Andre says now with a malice-free maturity beyond his 18 years. “I still talk to both of them, but they weren’t fit for me to grow up with and have a good childhood. My first memories are staying in Maywood with my grandparents.” Lawrence V. Flowers and Arie Flowers managed a bank building and some gas stations and owned a three-bedroom home in the Western suburb. The grandpa, who had cut off three fingers of his left hand while working as a boy in Mississippi, still was a whiz of a mechanic. “When I was 8 years old, my grandfather taught me to be able to take a radiator out of a Mercedes,”
