In 1993 LeAlan Marvin Jones was a thirteen-year old reporter for National Public Radio. The documentary he helped produce became one of the most acclaimed pieces of audio-work in the history of Public-Radio. It detailed the life of two young-men growing up in the inner city of Chicago and the obstacles faced to transcend their circumstances.

Ghetto-Life 101 received some of the most prestigious awards in national and international journalism. The documentary won the Prix-Italia in 1994, which considers itself the oldest and most prestigious International Broadcasting. Following up in 1996 with an even more tragic audio work entitled Remorse: the 14 Stories of Eric Morse. This piece garnered the George Foster Peabody and the Robert F. Kennedy Grand-Prize (the first non-print format to garner the prize); also making Jones the youngest recipient of both.

Both documentaries were transcribed and turned into a highly regarded book entitled, Our-America: Life and Death on the Southside of Chicago. Jones recently produced a follow-up to the first documentary with the BBC-World Services : “Out of the Ghetto,“ and penning his second book, “Our-House: The Perspective of the Ghetto Kid.”

A personal portrait by Maine Painter Robert Shetterly of Jones is being erected in 2009. Shetterly paintings are done for Americans he feels tell the truth; Jones portrait follows the likes of Dr. Martin Luther King, Frederick Douglass and James Baldwin and more than 100 other significant Americans of the 20th Century.

A Contributor to the BBC World Services, which has an audience of 150-million people globally, the legal-guardian for his two teenage nephews for the last 7-years and a varsity linebackers coach at Simeon High School in Chicago, where his youngest nephew is a varsity quarterback.

Most importantly outside of his life achievements, LeAlan Marvin Jones is alive and a resident of the Englewood Community.