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'Giving back' not simply a motto for Richardson

November 6, 2009 12:36 am

BY BRYNN BOYER

Some call him Uncle Phil, like the character on "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air." Others call him Grandpa. To many, he's just Xave.

Xavier Richardson doesn't mind. He's been getting nicknames for 20 years, since he started mentoring local teens as part of the Partnership for Academic Excellence. The teens call it simply the Partnership.

FULL CIRCLE

To the more than 3,000 teens he has helped, Richardson is a father figure who takes them to dinner at Pizza Hut and helps them with college applications.

Many teens in the Partnership come from single-parent homes. Some have never had anyone in their family go to college.

Richardson knows the struggles they face. He faced them too.

Now 53, Richardson is a top executive for MediCorp Health System. But like the teens he has mentored, he was not a child of privilege.

He grew up, as he describes it, "in an economically disadvantaged household with a mother who cleaned homes for a living and an alcoholic father who worked sporadically."

When he graduated from James Monroe High School in 1975, an African-American's ascension to an Ivy League school like Princeton was rare. But that's where Richardson ended up. He went to the Harvard Business School for his MBA.

Working on Wall Street after graduation, he became involved with a Harlem church and saw a need to help the youths there.

"I had no idea that later I'd realize I had a calling to work with young people," he said.

When Richardson moved back to Fredericksburg in 1989, he found that even fewer young African-Americans, males in particular, were going to college than when he'd graduated 14 years earlier.

Richardson and a group of professionals in the community got together that year to form the Partnership for Academic Excellence.

"We wanted to create an organization that had a holistic approach," he said. "The Partnership is based on the African proverb, 'It takes a whole village to raise a child,'" he said.

Now, 60 to 80 youths take free SAT prep classes at the old Walker-Grant school, which Richardson once attended.

Richardson helps the students with the college application process and offers support every step of the way.

He and other mentors take students on trips to colleges and cultural attractions, sometimes with former students who come back as volunteers.

Richardson is on the sidelines at local football games, cheering on his students.

"Sometimes I go to three football games in one day," he said with a laugh.

FATHER FIGURE

When Shanice Swain got married 10 years ago, she knew who would walk her down the aisle. It would be the man who had walked her down the aisle at the debutante ball after her own father passed away. And it would be the man who pushed her to go to college.

"He's been a male role model in my life," Swain, 33, said of the man she calls Uncle Xave.

Richardson helped Swain get her first job at age 17 at the Virginia Heartland Bank. And after her father died, he became another father figure to Swain, a 1994 graduate of James Monroe.

"He made you feel like you could go to school," she said. "There was no way in the world I could just quit."

Swain went to Mary Washington College for both her undergraduate degree in business and her MBA. Now she works for a government contractor. And she remains close to the Partnership.

"My husband and I chaperone trips for the group," she said.

Her two children, MaKayla, 9, and Michael Jr., 6, call Richardson Pop Pop.

"I'm really thankful for the Partnership," Swain said. "I credit a lot of what I've done to him."

PHILOSOPHY

"You're writing your story every day by the way you live."

"Give where you are."

"That which angers you can control you."

Richardson incorporates such adages, which he calls "philosophies," seamlessly into his everyday speech. And sometimes he hears the students doing it too.

"First impressions are everything," Tony Lewis, 21, said, quoting Richardson.

Lewis, a senior at Loyola University, credits Richardson with not only pushing him to transfer from James Monroe to the academically rigorous Blue Ridge School but with giving him advice.

"I would say the most important lesson is to give back," he said, "like he's given back.

"I look at him as one of my best friends and also as a second father figure."

The success of the mentorship program is evident in the stories Richardson tells of teens from low-income neighborhoods going to medical school, getting full-ride scholarships or going to Ivy League schools.

The Partnership receives funding from nonprofit organizations in the community as well as Doris Buffett's Sunshine Lady Foundation.

The 20th anniversary of the Partnership coincides with the final concert of Saffire tomorrow night. Proceeds from the concert will go the Partnership.

The connection is especially important to Richardson because one member of the group, Gaye Adegbalola, a former teacher, mentored him in high school and inspired him to start the Partnership.

Richardson said the students aren't the only ones who have benefited from the Partnership.

"It is extremely rewarding," he said.

"It has made me a better listener, a better parent. It gives me a sense of hope for the future."

Brynn Boyer: 540/374-5000, ext. 5779
Email: bboyer@freelancestar.com