Robert Robinson grew up with seven siblings in a three-bedroom house in the Hill District, and the city was the size of his world. He turned down scholarships to distant schools, saying now it was "the fear factor."

Alyssa Cwanger, Post-Gazette Jefferson Award Winner Robert Robinson, shown at McDain driving range in Monroeville, is president and founder of the West Penn Minority Junior Golf Association. Click photo for larger image.    This is the sixth of seven profiles of this year's Jefferson Award winners. List of winners 2004 Jefferson Award winners strive to make a difference Previous profiles Tireless hospice volunteer devotes herself to patients Grove City teen moved to action by death of nephew Volunteer made tracks to search-and-rescue work Retiree still serves his fellow veterans as hospital volunteer Grandmother inspired young award winner to be volunteer

In 1992, Robinson's brother-in-law in Arizona invited him to play in an amateur golf tournament there to raise scholarship money for minority students. Back in Pittsburgh, he decided to replicate the idea. The West Penn Minority Junior Golf Association was incorporated in 1995.

For his work instructing children in the game and etiquette of golf and of life, raising college scholarship money for them and finding them job opportunities in the golf industry, Robinson -- known as Coach Rock -- is being honored with a Jefferson Award as a Community Champion. Duquesne Light is his sponsor. The local honors are sponsored by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Comcast and the United Way.

Robinson will receive a medallion at a ceremony, sponsored by the Pittsburgh Foundation, in Carnegie Music Hall, Oakland, on Jan. 27, as will six other awardees. In addition, the West Penn Minority Junior Golf Association will get a $1,000 donation in his honor.

Robinson is a big man with big arms. He attends so faithfully to the details of training children that he often forgets to smile. A look from him will straighten the back of the most sullen kid. Of the three instructors in his program, he is the "mean" one, his charges report. He doesn't show his teddy-bear side until he knows they've got it: "The biggest thrill is to have a kid in the program beat me."

In his youth, Robinson had hopes of a baseball career. He played at Community College of Allegheny County, having turned down offers from the University of Miami and Penn State. But he was self-motivated. After graduating from CCAC in 1977, he got a job at Westinghouse (now Bechtel) as an engineer's assistant and began taking classes at night. After seven years at the University of Pittsburgh and Point Park College, he had a mechanical engineering degree and has worked at Bechtel ever since.

Robinson's wife, Pamela, nominated him for the award. They married last June. Besides working full time as an engineer, she wrote, "he literally puts in a 40-hour week volunteering his time and effort for the WPMJGA."

"He is so passionate about this program," said Norman Brice, a program instructor. "I look at some of my e-mails from him, and they're coming sometimes at 3 in the morning."

Brice has been a West Penn instructor from the beginning. The two men met through a mutual friend on a golf trip several years before Robinson started the association.

Six children, including Robinson's son and daughter, made the organization's trial run at McDain driving range in Monroeville in 1995, before the phenomenon of Tiger Woods. By 1997, Woods had made golf cool for children of color. That year, the U.S. Golf Association granted the West Penn Minority Junior Golf Association $60,000 for three years. The USGA has made three grants to Robinson's program over the years.

The program takes children from age 10 through college. More than 150 children have gone through it. They have to commit to practices every Wednesday and Saturday at 6 p.m. from June to September. There are two trips to a Somerset camp each summer. Robinson, one of three instructors, also has worked out affordable-play agreements with several courses in the area. In 2003, the Tiger Woods Foundation selected the West Penn Minority Junior Golf Association to be host of a three-day clinic and festival in Wilkinsburg that attracted 2,000 young golfers.

"Having access to country clubs gives these kids a chance to see and meet people of influence, to see things they don't see on a basketball court," said Robinson, who has been a golfer for about 20 years. "Two of our kids want to become club professionals."

Donna Stubblefield has had three children in the program and is one of 15 volunteers.

"Coach Rock is a great example to young men on how to be a man," she said. He is also a solid mentor to girls, some of whom are scared of him at first because he is strict.

Stubblefield's oldest daughter, D'Onna, got a scholarship to Kent State University from the LPGA after spending two summers in the West Penn Minority Junior Golf Association. She had complained to her mother that Robinson didn't smile. During the black-tie scholarship dinner at which D'Onna was honored, she found out she was to sit at the head table with Robinson and turned in a panic to her mother. "She said, 'Mom, he is so mean!' But by end of dinner, she was excited because the Rock had come alive. She said, 'Mom, do you know he sings?' "

Christopher Newman of Murrysville was one of the program's first junior golfers. Now a dental student at the University of Pennsylvania, he has worked five summers at the pro shop of the Westmoreland Country Club in Export.

"When I was at my first golf camp at age 15, I walked around with my golf shirt untucked," said Newman. "I thought it was ridiculous to have to tuck it in. Now that I'm older, I understand how important it is to present yourself well. Every day at golf camp, he'd say, 'Tuck that shirt in.' "

Another lesson he instills, said Newman, is punctuality: "You need to be early so you're not late."

Robinson is passing along what he got as a kid, he said, remembering in particular a mentor during his Little League years. "This guy -- I thought he was old, but he probably wasn't -- took the time to teach us to play baseball. In the winter, we used a hallway of an apartment, where he put cardboard on the floor and taught us how to slide.

"What he taught me about really was commitment because he said, 'OK, we're going to be here next week.' If he hadn't shown up, it would have been bad. But he was there."

This is the sixth of seven profiles of this year's Jefferson Award winners.