Algernon Sydney Sullivan would have enjoyed meeting Duke football player Greg Akinbiyi.
A prominent New York lawyer, orator and philanthropist in the late 19th century, Sullivan was known as a man who "reached out both hands in constant helpfulness to others." He was equally at ease around street beggars, school children and powerful politicians in much the same way Akinbiyi has moved seamlessly among kids in Durham housing projects, elderly shut-ins, poverty-stricken Hondurans and his many classmates at an elite private university.
Sullivan's impact was so profound on his community that, almost 40 years after his death, a group of his surviving admirers instituted an award to keep alive the memory of his integrity, generosity, spirituality and nobility of character. Thus, the Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award has been presented to deserving students and faculty members at southern universities since 1925. Duke became one of those universities in 1952 and participated in the awards program through 1964, then reinstated it in 2003 to annually recognize a graduating senior for his or her outstanding commitment to service.
Akinbiyi has reached out both hands to help others so often during the last four years that he is Duke's 2008-09 Sullivan Award recipient adding his name to a list of honorees that includes former U.S. senator Elizabeth Dole and former university president Dr. Deryl Hart.
A starting defensive end, Akinbiyi led Duke in sacks and tackles for loss last fall, but it is off the field where he made his biggest contributions to the university and local communities. He has done everything from assisting teachers in elementary school classrooms to visiting with the elderly at Durham retirement homes.
Akinbiyi spent spring break of his junior year on a mission trip to build houses in Honduras, then spent the summer interning with the Youth Life Foundation to mentor children in the heart of Durham's housing projects. He also became active with a campus ministry group and started a bible study program within the football team.
The first semester of his freshman year and this last semester of his senior year were the only semesters he didn't volunteer somewhere, prompting Duke student-athlete development director Leslie Barnes to praise his social responsibility and humanitarianism. "He is a quiet, humble leader whose concern lies more in touching others and encouraging their growth than in receiving credit himself," she says.
Akinbiyi credits his parents with setting an example of service to others. "My mother is a social worker of sorts with her own day care center in inner-city Miami, and just seeing her heart for people and her desire to really help people and go past the superficial, it really convicted me and challenged me," he says. "I was such a selfish person and I just wanted to get outside that and find a joy in helping people.
"When I came here I realized I could make a difference. I'm at Duke University. I never imagined coming to a university like this. And then having the opportunity to give back, to really engage people, instead of just playing video games and going to practice all day it was something that really challenged me.
"It's so easy to get caught in the mundane, the day-to-day, and get stuck there for four years. I did get stuck there for a little while. But I had people who challenged me everyday to step outside myself, and I was constantly in contact with my parents, who wouldn't allow me to stay stagnant, but urged me to reach out to other people."
Duke football alumnus Keith Daniel was one of Akinbiyi's early influences on campus. The former chaplain of the football team, Daniel is the director of Duke Chapel's PathWays program, which sponsored Akinbiyi's summer internship in Durham and the mission trip to Honduras. The PathWays program challenges its members to explore the various ways God wants them to utilize their talents and gifts.
"At first I wasn't really receptive to everything Keith was saying, but after awhile I started seeing the truth in everything he was communicating and just really partnered with him in this exploration of helping people and what that looked like," Akinbiyi says.
"When I first got to know him, I could tell right away that he was a very contemplative man and very self-aware," recalls Daniel. "He wanted to see other people experience a level of fulfillment in their lives with whatever they were doing. He's the kind of guy you loved to have around because he would get excited about what excited other people and made them come alive. We talked a lot about heart and what it means to live from that place.
"When he spent the summer in our PathWays House, he worked with a lot of youth. We know how much children sometimes stand in awe of football players and I think Greg appreciated that, but he knew it was about more than sport. It was about character, giving and serving."
Last year Akinbiyi got involved with an additional campus ministry program, the Cambridge Christian Fellowship, guided by minister Reggie Roberson. He says he was surprised to discover the "far-off reality that people were trying to pursue their faith and live for God on this campus." Eventually he and football teammates Fred Roland and Charles Robinson started a bible study group in Akinbiyi's campus apartment that has since expanded to other athletes and is now held weekly at the Yoh Football Center.
Akinbiyi has spent most of this last semester at Duke preparing to graduate and training for a possible free agent opportunity in pro football. If nothing materializes there, he may try to get involved with AmeriCorps and their programs in his native Miami, because helping people, he has discovered through four years at Duke, "is where my heart is."
"It's very important to me," he says. "To be honest it's a challenging thing, because I can always go back to my place and not help anybody and just live my life. But there's just a strong conviction I have that when I do that, I'm not really living."
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Akinbiyi joined some select company in receiving the Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award. The first recipient at Duke in 1952 was Dick Crowder, a standout member of the basketball team, the president of the senior class and an active leader for several campus organizations. Six years later, the honor went to senior Mary Elizabeth Hanford the future U.S. Senator and White House Cabinet member Elizabeth Dole.
In 1957, the award went to a faculty member, Dr. Deryl Hart, who had founded the department of surgery in 1930 and later served a short term as university president. The basketball team's annual scholar-athlete award has been named for Hart since 1976.