Spartan Echo

Section: News

Newly-named Virginia Secretary of Education Gerard Robinson, left, addresses a press conference at the State Capitol in Richmond, Va., Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2010, after being introduced by Gov.-elect Bob McDonnell, right. (AP Photo/Richmond Times-Dispatch, Bob Brown)

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - As a teenager in south Los Angeles, Gerard Robinson thought his future spanned the length of a football field: make it through high school, play in college and head to the NFL.

Like many of his peers, he never aspired to higher education or considered the long odds against making it in the pros - college was just a means to an end.

"Everyone knew the game: Go to school, stay out of trouble, play sports," said the 43-year-old Robinson, Virginia's new education secretary.

The future he had envisioned, however, ended his senior year in high school when a 6-foot-5, 275-pound player rammed his helmet into Robinson's knee, cracking his fibula and ending his athletic career. The incident forced Robinson to come up with Plan B.

Far from a model student, he took a full-time job at a grocery store after graduating and attended classes at El Camino Community College. A chance conversation at the store with El Camino's dean of instruction - who ended up becoming his mentor - got him thinking he could shape his own destiny.

"He was the first person who really took an interest in me to say, 'Where you are today doesn't have to be where you can be tomorrow. Today you have this GPA, but that doesn't mean that tomorrow you can't be a CEO,'" Robinson said of Raymond Roney.

Roney, who has since retired, said that with some guidance Robinson took that advice and ran with it - and has returned the favor by going back to L.A. to speak to young people, especially black students.

"We both come from environments where some of us were the first to graduate from high school," said Roney, who grew up in a low-income area of Philadelphia. "We thought college was out of the question. And you have to reach back and say, 'Look, I was there, if I could do it, it's not impossible for you to do it.'"

After El Camino, Robinson headed to Howard University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy and anthropology, because he was "interested in thinking for a living." He returned to Los Angeles to teach fifth grade and help with a program in Compton. He went on to receive a master's in education at Harvard University.

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