Jimmy Garvin is the consummate golf hustler, with hundreds of youngsters in some of the toughest sections of the nation's capital the primary beneficiaries of his tireless efforts on their behalf.
Garvin is the president and a part-owner of Golf Course Specialists, the management company that runs all three of the public golf courses in the District of Columbia on land owned by the National Park Service.
His journey to his modest, cluttered office attached to the cinder-block clubhouse at historic Langston Golf Course in northeast Washington has taken some remarkable twists and turns throughout the years for a man born into poverty in the tiny Florida town of Immokalee -- the same hometown of Arizona Cardinals running back Edgerrin James near Everglades National Park.
These days, Garvin, 53, spends many of his waking hours hustling to raise funds to support a number of educational programs linked closely to his golf courses and aimed primarily at helping neighborhood youngsters to not only stay in school but also thrive and eventually move on to colleges around the country, whether with or without the golf skills his programs also teach.
"Golf is the carrot, but education is the key," has become Garvin's often-repeated mantra, along with his "five P's -- planning, patience, persistence, prepared and possibilities." And he remains a role model for using golf, or any other sport, to achieve success off the course. The money he raises from a wide variety of sources and benefactors -- including his annual celebrity tournament -- is plowed right back into the Interpretive Education Center and all the programs he has helped organize.
The center, an oversized classroom attached to the clubhouse complex a wall away from the bustling snack bar, is stocked with a number of donated computers fully loaded with educational software. It's also filled to the brim with textbooks, college directories and even golf instructional texts and is open virtually every day to anyone who wants to sign up, always free of charge. Volunteer instructors donate time and energy to keep it humming as an after-school center, and adults can attend evening sessions, too. Garvin spends time both teaching and recruiting staff and students from all around the city.
"What he's done for the kids is just incredible," said Tony Burnett, the retired longtime head groundskeeper and superintendent at nearby RFK Stadium who plays golf at Langston almost every day. "They have the opportunity to learn the game if they want, and many of them do, and they have access to all these computers in the youth center. He's had great success with it, and he's a hero to a lot of these kids. He should be."
Golf was not Garvin's sport of choice growing up as the son of a migrant farm worker and timber logger in South Florida. He played football, basketball and baseball, and was a percussionist in the band talented enough to be honored with the state-sponsored John Philip Sousa Award presented to Florida's finest high school musicians. He also was a top student, particularly after his childhood hero, Florence Jelks, the assistant principal of his elementary school, rescued him from his somewhat chaotic home life and allowed him to live with her for several years.
Garvin was recruited by a number of colleges for both his athletic and musical prowess. He eventually settled on Howard University in Washington, D.C., one of the nation's pre-eminent predominately black colleges. He played baseball for coach Chuck Hinton, a former Washington Senator who became another treasured mentor, and captained the team his senior year. Hinton also introduced Garvin to golf, and when an arm injury precluded him from chasing his dream of playing in the major leagues, golf became his new passion.
Garvin worked part time on the grounds crew at Langston before and after he graduated from Howard in 1978. He eventually began a career as a food-service executive with the Marriott Corporation, working in several cities around the country before returning to Washington in 1990 and accepting a job with Golf Course Specialists to become the general manager at Langston. The golf course was opened in 1939, built specifically by the Department of Interior during the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt to provide a facility for black golfers prohibited from playing on the city's other segregated courses.
By the time Garvin took over as general manager, the course was in sorry shape, and there were bars on all the doors and windows to keep out vandals and thieves who broke in on a regular basis. That has all changed for the better under his stewardship, and the vastly reconditioned course attracts a diverse clientele from the city and surrounding suburbs.
"They told me kids were constantly breaking into the place," Garvin recalled. "Right away, you could see there was a real need in the surrounding community, and that's when we decided to add an educational component to it."
It took a while to get the academic center going, but Garvin and one of his old Howard professors, Dr. Marshall Banks, put together a plan that was finally approved by the National Park Service. The center opened in 2000, and Garvin estimates as many as 600 youngsters come through every year, with many of them using the skills they learned there to boost their test scores and grades and go on to college.
"We try to supplement what they're getting in school," Garvin said. "One of the things we've always struggled with is that most of the kids are leaving high school and are not ready for college. We wanted to give them supplemental information, improve their grade points and show them how to improve their scores on the SATs.
"We use golf as the carrot to draw them in, and we've had some kids become pretty good players. Last year, three kids got golf scholarships. We know we're probably not going to create another Tiger Woods. But we can create good citizens and get their academics up so they can get a good job and have a decent life."
The ultimate goal is to build an even larger academic center, perhaps housed in its own separate building elsewhere on the Langston grounds. Garvin has been trying to persuade the D.C. public schools to make golf a varsity sport in high school, or at least give some instruction at the high school or middle school level. At the moment, he's been told there is no money available for such programs.
In addition to raising money for his various projects, Garvin has successfully solicited several golf equipment companies to donate clubs, balls, clothing and shoes, with Nike donating 25 new sets of clubs last year.
For his efforts, Garvin was inducted into the African American Golfers Hall of Fame in 2006, but awards, honors and pats on the back have never been his motivation.
"A lot of people took the time to point me in the right direction when I was growing up, and it made all the difference in the world," he said. "That's all we're trying to do now. Just make a difference."
Leonard Shapiro is a contributor to ESPN.com's golf coverage. He can be reached at Badgerlen@aol.com.