Xavier Richardson draws a crowd of friends after last week's James Monroe football game at Maury Stadium. He regularly attends games. DAVE ELLIS/THE FREE LANCE-STAR View More Images from this story Visit the Photo Place

'Giving back' not simply a motto for Richardson

The Partnership for Academic Excellence is celebrating its twentieth anniversary this year

Date published: 11/6/2009

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.

WHEN: Tomorrow, 7 p.m. WHERE: Dodd Auditorium, University of Mary Washington, 1301 College Ave., Fredericksburg TICKET PRICES: Regular seating, $25; supporter seating $35 TICKETS: Available at the Fredericksburg Visitor Center, 706 Caroline St., and Picker's Supply, 902 Caroline St.

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Date published: 11/6/2009