Using chess, Lexus ES owner Orrin Hudson teaches 20,000 kids to “think it out, don’t shoot it out.”
ON MAY 24, 2000, Orrin Hudson was watching television from the comfort of his couch in Birmingham, Alabama, when a story on the nightly news changed his life forever. A teenager in Queens, New York, had shot seven people in an armed robbery over $2,000. Five of the seven died. “I saw that and couldn’t sleep that night,” says Hudson. “I thought to myself, If I have a million dollars in my pocket and kids are killing kids for money, then I’m a failure.”
At that moment, Hudson knew his calling was to teach kids to “think it out, not shoot it out.” Nine months later, he had sold his business and started Be Someone—a nonprofit, crime-prevention, educational program that uses chess to show young people how to make the right moves in life.
Hudson’s idea to reach out to teens through the game of chess was inspired by his own transformation 30 years earlier. By the time he had turned 15, Hudson—who was one of 13 brothers and sisters living in a housing project in Alabama—was well practiced at petty crime. Sensing that he was a good kid on a bad path, one of his high school teachers, James Edge, took him aside and taught him to play chess. “Mr. Edge showed me that every move you make has consequences and that you win or lose in life based on the decisions you make. I would be in jail today if it was not for him.”
Hudson went on to win two Birmingham City Chess Championships (1999, 2000), and in 2009 he won the Under 1700 Blitz Chess Championship at the World Open—all while promoting his message to teenagers to “never give up and stay in the game.”
“Think about the chess board,” says Hudson. “The king, the pawn, the bishop, the rook, the knight, and the queen: they all have their unique combination of power. Their purpose is to stay in their lane and do what they do best.” Hudson has made it his life’s mission to help young people find their own unique combination of power and use it.
While his messages may be simple, his methods of engaging teens, including inventing rap songs and offering $1,000 cash to any kid who can beat him at chess, are working. To date, over 20,000 inner-city children, ages six to 19 in 17 states, have attended Hudson’s one-day to week-long Get In The Game and Think Like A Champion seminars. In the workshops Hudson teaches his students not only how to play chess, but also how to present themselves, ways to increase their vocabulary, and the value of networking.
His mentorship has helped many troubled teens that were headed for jail end up enrolled in college instead. “My goal is to reach and teach a million kids,” say Hudson, who counts among his supporters best-selling author Jack Canfield and actress and fellow Atlantan Jane Fonda.
In a world where bad news is often the lead story on the nightly news, does Hudson ever despair at the condition of things? “No,” he says. “I’m living my dream. Because at the end of the day, what matters is that I tried to make the world a better place. I look at the news so that I can see what challenges are out there that I need to deal with.”
Hudson embraces these challenges, and, like a king on the chessboard, he stays in the game, pursuing his purpose. To him, winning means marching toward the goal of giving a million kids the chance to be who they were meant to be.
And the reason he drives a 2009 ES 350? “Excellence is not enough,” he explains. “You have to be amazing, and that’s why my wife and I bought a Lexus.”
