Pam Panchak, Post-Gazette Garfield Gators coaches from left: Melvin Gay, Tony Walls, Bob Jones and Garth Taylor

By Karamagi Rujumba
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Bob Jones was no less a child when he became a father at age 13.

A young black man growing up without a father in the public housing projects of Garfield in the 1980s, he was lost.

"I had no true understanding of what I had done," he said. "I wasn't even old enough to work."

Mr. Jones, now 38 and a father of four, was at a critical stage -- a point that countless studies have shown can lead to a life of poverty, crime, and maybe an early death.

	Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette Coach Bob Jones of Garfield Youth Sports walks across the court during a break in the Gator Classic basketball tournament last month in Garfield. Click photo for larger image. Related content Video: The Garfield Gators help boys learn to be men Growing up in Garfield: Coaches help a young man negotiate life's rugged path Index to the series

He would have been yet another black man living on the margins of society, invisible to the world, and he knew it, too.

"I had to change my ways, but I didn't know what to do," he said. "I had no clue about taking responsibility or how to be a man. I didn't have a man in my life to look up to for guidance."

His mother's strength and a close-knit group of friends who somehow helped raise each other kept him from slipping into a life on the streets.

The friends -- Tony Walls, Garth Taylor, and Melvin Gay -- were boys from similarly poor, female-headed homes in the projects who played football together and watched each other's backs as they maneuvered the streets of Garfield. They eventually went to college together and have remained close.

Because some of them were also teen-age fathers, Mr. Jones said, they struggled together to deal with their family lives, school and being fatherless fathers.

"We would spend nights at each other's houses and wake up early every morning to play basketball," he recalled. "Sometimes we had to walk to other parts of the city to play, but we were always together."

	Listen in Garth Taylor, Bob Jones and Melvin Gay talk about growing up in Garfield, their life experiences and their work with young people.
	Pam Panchak, Post-Gazette Click arrow icon to launch audio.
	Pam Panchak, Post-Gazette Click arrow icon to launch audio.
	Pam Panchak, Post-Gazette Click arrow icon to launch audio.

At the time, Garfield was characterized by rows of public housing projects -- many of them now boarded up -- and groups of street-corner drug peddlers who controlled sections of the neighborhood, he recalled.

"Drugs were always there, and we all knew the older guys who were in that lifestyle," he said. "That is why there were certain places in Garfield that we never went alone. We knew what would happen."

"Football was our way out," said Mr. Jones, who played at Fort Pitt Elementary school and Peabody High School. And playing football was the way they developed the discipline and structure that kept them off the path of "selling drugs, dropping out of school or ending up in prison."

"If I tried to do something wrong I had friends like Garth Taylor and Tony Walls who would call me on it," he said.

None of them got into trouble with the law, he said, because "living in the ghetto is about the choices that you make. And we knew right from wrong. If one of us did something stupid at school or at home, we would laugh, or joke about it. We would make you feel embarrassed because we all knew better."

They knew little about raising children.

The upbringing of Mr. Jones' first daughter, now 25, fell on her mother's and grandmothers' shoulders with some help from his sisters.

"All I could do was try to see my daughter after school or on weekends. But it was her mother who had to grow up faster than me. She was the one who was there all the time."

Mr. Jones recalled that his own mother "never let up on me. She still treated me like a kid. I was expected at home early every night. I had to be there to clean the house or wash dishes, and she made sure I was at school every day."

His mother's watchful eye, and the fact that his younger brother and three sisters looked up to him, helped keep him on track, he said. "She didn't turn her back on me."

The friends were there too.

"We became very honest with each other because we realized our situation. We were young black men in Garfield. Some of us were fathers already, and we had to teach ourselves things like how to get a job and keep it, how to treat people with respect, open a bank account, save money for your child. All we knew was that we wanted a better life," he said.

They also pushed each other to achieve certain things.

A college education was one of them. The brother of his friend Tony Walls attended Waynesburg College, and he, Garth Taylor and Tony Walls decided to all apply there.

Unfamiliar with college applications and life outside their neighborhood, they again drew on one another to get through.

There were still mistakes. "We didn't always make the best decisions," said Mr. Jones.

By the time he was in college, Mr. Jones had fathered two other children with the woman who is now his fiancee.

He wanted to be more involved in the upbringing of his son and second daughter.

"I had a whole family even before I finished college," he said. "I used to drive back to Pittsburgh every weekend to be with my children and their mother."

While he was away at school, his son and daughter -- now 20 and 18 -- lived with their mother in a public housing complex in Garfield. "That is all I could afford, but I wanted to be more involved with them. I wanted them to live with me," he said.

And when he graduated from Waynesburg College, where he received a degree in public administration, Mr. Jones returned to Garfield and moved in with the mother of his second and third children, with whom he now also has a 5-year-old daughter.

"It wasn't until then that I realized how much I really didn't know about being a father. I had missed a lot with my other child, and I wanted to be a better father to my other children," said Mr. Jones.

Mr. Jones and his childhood friends -- who had also returned to Garfield -- sought to become the kind of father figures they yearned for when they were growing up.

"I saw kids on playgrounds and in the streets of Garfield who were just like me and my friends," he recalled. "They were trying hard, but just like us, they didn't have grown black men whom they could look up to for something positive."

So 15 years ago he and his friends started a midget football program. They hoped that through sports they could steer some young black boys and girls toward the path they took: education, hard work, responsibility for oneself, and achieving certain life and career goals.

All four men live in Garfield. Tony Walls, 39, works in the Outreach Department of the Homewood-Brushton YMCA. Melvin Gay, 35, is a former Pittsburgh firefighter who retired on disability. Mr. Jones is a program manager of Youth Places and East End Student Support Services, mentoring programs in some Pittsburgh high schools. Garth Taylor, 37, is the program manager of Youth Places.

These men are the coaches of the Garfield Gators, a pre-teen and early teen-age football and cheerleading program for more than 250 boys and girls in the community. During the football season, they spend their evenings running practice drills on the football field at Fort Pitt Elementary, where the Gators play.

On game days, they run the show when throngs of cheering parents and fans fill the bleachers at Fort Pitt. This year's season starts tomorrow afternoon and will end in November.

As mentors, they cut larger-than-life figures in the community. They are big and tall, and boldly go about their mission with a certain sense of depth and experience acquired over many years of dealing with teen-age black boys and girls in Garfield.

That includes their own children. Mr. Jones has two daughters who were Gator cheerleaders. His son started playing Gator football when he was eight. The same is true of the children of Mr. Gay, Mr. Walls, and Mr. Taylor's sons.

The men run a well-regimented after-school program, in which participation is based on good behavior at home, a desire to perform well at school, staying off the streets and an ability to show respect to elders.

But what happens when the kids age out of the program? Or when they have to face the rigors of high school, peer pressure and stress at home? What happens during the off months of the year when the Gators are not in season?

"That is when we have to be that other adult in their lives, the person who shows them that we're not going to give up on them," said Mr. Gay .

"Many of the boys and girls we see are dealing with family situations that we are very familiar with. We have all grown up in this community," he said.

In the off months, the men stay involved with the Gators through a four-day after-school mentoring and tutoring program at the Garfield Family Support Center.

Housed in the small former YMCA building on Hillcrest Avenue, the center has a game room, a computer lab and a lounge where the men get their best chance to know what is really going on in the lives of the boys and girls they coach.

"We have seen what it means to be in a family where you don't have money. We know what it feels like to have your parents struggling to hold a household together," Mr. Gay said. "These kids often have to deal with a lot of tension in the home and that is when it's really important for us to be here."

"We are here to listen, to talk when things at home seem so bad and kids begin to feel like taking the other road. We are here to tell them that we have been there," he said. "We are here to tell them that things do get better."

As a divorced father of two teen-age boys, Mr. Gay said, it entails "being there."

"You have to be a consistent person because the children are looking for someone that can challenge and nurture them even when they are unsure of themselves or their parents or when they begin to wonder about what life holds for them."