Work with kids and convicts earn Pasco woman MLK Spirit Award

Elouise Sparks learned early in life the importance of community.

The eighth of nine children, Sparks grew up in the east Pasco neighborhood surrounding Kurtzman Park.

“We literally had a village that raised us,” she said. “People looked out for you. You could go down the street and you knew this neighbor, you knew that neighbor. Everybody just knew each other.”

Sparks, 52, continues to help people who need guidance and support, from teens participating in the Miss Juneteenth Scholarship Pageant to inmates at Coyote Ridge Correctional Facility.

It’s her commitment to positive social change that earned her the 2018 winner of Columbia Basin College’s Martin Luther King Jr. Spirit Award.

She is being presented the award as part of Monday’s Martin Luther King Bell-ringing Ceremony. The event starts at noon next to the statue of the slain civil rights leader on the CBC campus between Thornton Center and Gjerde Center.

Each year the college’s diversity committee and the president pick someone who exemplifies King’s spirit.

This is hardly the first time Sparks participated in the event, she said. A longtime choir director, she has led the Tri-City Community Choir at the past 14 celebrations, and she was expecting a phone call she received from the college’s communication director, Frank Murray.

After coordinating the choir and the Miss Juneteenth’s appearance, Murray called back.

“He says, ‘Elouise, how do you spell your first name again?’ ” she said. “I said, ‘Frank, you know how to spell my name.’ I think he was trying to keep it this big surprise.

“He said, ‘This year, it’s kind of special ... because you’re getting the Spirit Award.’ ”

The news left Sparks speechless. A poster about the civil rights leader hangs in her front hallway.

“We always have honored him,” she said. “I just wished I had an opportunity to live in that moment where he was at. ... It was very humbling.”

Helping give young people purpose

Sparks was a single mother, working at Hanford and volunteering at the Martin Luther King Center when she started her first pageant in early ’90s. The Princess and Pre-teen African American pageant was aimed at girls ages 7 to 12.

She was inspired by a conversation with several of the girls at the center. When she asked what they wanted to do when they got older, and learned the girls didn’t have any goals.

“That bothered me,” she said. “I said, ‘Hey we need to do something for these kids. These kids they’re not thinking beyond here, and they need a goal to reach for.’ ”

Her daughter had recently participated in a pageant and came out of it with a changed attitude about herself.

She led the pageant for about five years before moving to Moses Lake for a brief time. When she returned to Pasco in the early 2000s, people began approaching her about starting it back up.

After spending time watching teens in the area, she determined she wanted an event that would let them know they were seen and heard. Since 2003, the pageant has awarded $83,000 in scholarships.

Perhaps most importantly, the contest helped motivate many of the women to find success.

“That’s the thing that really inspires me,” she said. “Just to see what they’re doing in their lives, graduating from college, moving on and buying their houses for the first time. I get all excited, like that’s my other child.”

Around the same time she was starting the Juneteenth celebration, Sparks joined her husband, her brother and his wife in ministering to prisoners at Coyote Ridge Correctional Facility in Connell.

“I remember the first time that I went, I was scared to death because it’s an all-men prison,” she said. “You feel like you’re the fresh meat on the block.”

She remembered praying for calm, since she believed God led her to the prison. Eventually the fear left, and she began working with the men. She shares the perspective of the women waiting for the return of their men.

A lot of time they will find different scriptures to encourage them to live a better life when they are released from prison.

“I always tell them, ‘Coyote Ridge is your training camp. You have time to think about things and to get things right because once you get outside the gate, that’s the battlefield,’ ” she said.

She spent two Sundays a month holding services at the facility for about a decade. Recently, they trimmed it to a single service a month.

They incorporate the men into the service, whether it’s using their talents for music or simply letting them share their stories.

“We just listened and encouraged, and those kind of services are usually the most powerful ones because the guys get a chance to share,” she said. “They leave there on fire, and they just want to go and help someone else.”

In many ways the men who are successful after leaving Coyote Ridge sound similar to the women leaving the Miss Juneteenth celebration. They approach Sparks and her family in the community and share their successes. The four have been flagged down on Kennewick Avenue by one of the men, and another keeps in touch with them five years after he got out of prison.

Sparks, an employee at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, is a mother to three children, and a grandmother to three.

When people ask her how long she plans to keep volunteering, she answers she doesn’t know.

“It’s really about wanting to see your community do better,” she said. “I really believe in and love the community I live in.”

This story was originally published January 15, 2018 at 6:44 AM with the headline "Work with kids and convicts earn Pasco woman MLK Spirit Award."