The story made headlines, of course. It made headlines again in 1999, when all 23 graduated from high school. And with the publication of "The Promise: How One Woman Made Good on Her Extraordinary Pact to Send a Classroom of First Graders to College," written by Brown and San Jose Mercury News reporter Caille Millner, it's something more -- a road map to inspire others.

The book delves deep into what happened between that initial pledge and graduation day: the weekly classroom visits, the late-night phone calls and crises and the constant, loving attention Brown and her growing cadre of volunteers lavished upon these children.

"You can't just drop your kids off at school and hope that they'll learn something," Brown writes in "The Promise."

"It is not that hard to make a big difference in the quality of education your child receives," she continues. "All it takes is the investment of a little bit of time ... If you're old enough to be a parent, you're old enough to have learned something that will be of value to the children in the classroom. Even if it's no more than knowing how to stack the books up at the end of class or putting the chairs up on the desks after school. Get involved. Do something."

Finding the means

Brown did more than something. She set aside $10,000 of her $45,000 annual salary to launch the Oral Lee Brown Foundation, a repository of future tuitions and hope.

Brown knew all about poverty. Born in the Mississippi Delta in the early 1940s, Brown escaped her impoverished upbringing and moved to California at age 20. She worked days and attended school at night, realizing even then that education was key to a better future.

Armed with a University of San Francisco bachelor's degree, Brown began working, first for Blue Cross, then as an Oakland Realtor and finally as head of her own real estate company -- raising three daughters at the same time.

Brown set aside nearly a third of that Realtor salary each year for the foundation, adding on new business ventures -- including a peach cobbler business and restaurant -- to help make ends meet, with help from her family, including two by-then grown daughters.

Brown's relentless schedule took a toll on her family. Her marriage to Joe Brown, the girls' beloved stepfather, disintegrated in 1995.

But Brown never wavered. She didn't just pay for college, she bought shoes when poverty kept barefoot children out of school. She delivered groceries when small bellies hungered too much to learn.

"I would literally have to leave my office and buy groceries," Brown said during a recent interview. "The school would call me, wouldn't even call their parents. I became a Mom."

The lack of parental involvement in impoverished areas is a depressing reality. Brown has no problem with parents who juggle multiple jobs to support their families, but she's bothered by the ones who always have an excuse to skip Back to School Night and parent meetings.

"Parental support is crucial, but unfortunately, we don't have it," said Brown. "Lots of parents are not educated. They're jealous, worried that their children will go off to college and won't come back to their world. I tell myself, 'You didn't adopt the parents, you adopted the kids.'"

Raising the bar

Brown plowed ahead undaunted. She read report cards and offered children a ready ear and firm, gentle nagging. Where's your homework? Why haven't you signed up for math?

"I was the mom," she said.

It was Brown who gazed, aghast, at college admissions requirements when that first group enrolled in high school. Oakland's high school graduation requirements were not nearly as stringent as University of California admissions demanded. And SATs, community service, leadership, extracurriculars -- all the admissions criteria taken for granted at suburban prep schools -- was news to this crew.

The foundation's tutoring program ratcheted up, board members became mentors and college students came in to help. The results were stunning.

In a city where less than half the children who start high school ever finish, every one of the "babies" graduated from high school. Nineteen went to college. Brown attended every graduation and packed them off to college.

"When the kids went to college, just two parents went," Brown said. "They're my kids. I had to take them, get them moved in, find apartments, dorms, buy toiletries, food, check roommates. These are my kids."

She reels off their names with deep affection, Delisha, LaTosha, Nekita, Michael. Three are in graduate school now, and Brown's not done.

"Every four years I reach back and get another first grade," Brown said.

Another 89 babies are on the launch pad now. Seventeen are clutching college acceptance letters. Brown's phone rings off the hook. Life is considerably more complicated now than it was with that first class.

Now, Brown's babies come from all over Oakland's public school system. Every four years, the foundation's board members sift through hundreds of applications to choose the next batch.

"I'd try to take them all," Brown said. "But they bring me 20 little babies, and we run."

Brown visits 40 classrooms every two weeks to keep tabs on her first- and fourth-graders. She gets the teens after school and in the evenings, at tutoring sessions or in late-night telephone calls.

"If I thought about it, I couldn't do it," Brown said.

Brown fits booksignings, speeches and fund-raisers around those babies. Putting 20 or 40 or 89 kids through college is an expensive proposition, even before one factors in the cost of sneakers, food and SAT prep books.

The foundation holds grass-roots fund-raisers like crab feeds or big flea markets. An annual banquet brings in more. Sales from this book go directly to the foundation.

But most of all, she hopes that the book serves as a road map for poor children who want to go to college, and for the adults who can get them there. It's not about money, she said.

"No one thought we could do it. And yes, we proved them wrong," she writes. "But the best part is that we proved them wrong with nothing but our love and support of one another."