Dec 5, 2007 12:12 pm US/Pacific
Coaches Serve Up Life Lessons
Jefferson Award Winners: Jon Greenberg & Charles Bryant
(CBS 5)
Meet Charles Bryant - better known as Charlie "O" - and Jon Greenberg, or "Berg" to his friends. Most days you'll find them coaching kids. But that only scratches the surface of what they do.
Combined, these two have worked 68 years for the San Francisco Parks and Recreation Department, helping run the Potrero Hill Recreation Center, "home court" in what can be a tough neighborhood.
Charlie O grew up just down the hill and first came here when he was nine.
"Sports, trying to stay off the streets, that's what got me up here," he explains.
What he found when got here, was a man who would become his coach and mentor: Jon Greenberg.
"He meant a lot to me once I got up here. Once I found Berg... he was able to take me places I'd never been before and from there, just been a beautiful friendship between me and him," Charlie says.
Jon came to the center 41 years ago, just out of grad school, with a desire to expand the horizons of kids like Charlie.
"There's a wonderful world out there. Let's do some exploring and we go places and we'll go to dinner or we'll go to lunch, go swimming," Jon says.
Not your ordinary coach. In fact, his unorthodox methods got the attention of CBS News nearly 20 years ago. They profiled Jon introducing his players to new food and dinner out.
Those kinds of new experiences are also documented in photographs along the rec center wall -- pictures of team tournaments, first-time plane rides, and field trips -- taught what Jon calls "life lessons" and what Charlie "O' says changed his life.
Charlie says, "I don't know where I would be at right now, to be honest. To be honest, I don't know what I would be doing without Jon's help."
For the past 27 years, Charlie has worked alongside his former coach, providing the next generation with guidance and safe alternatives to the streets.
"He came up through the community," says Jon. "He knows what some of the problems are, he knows how to talk to the youngsters, and how to talk to the adults, which is so important in the community like this. It's not just putting programs in, it's getting at relationships and it's, again, I use that word trust.. and boy has he done it!"
"When you come here, you find a lot of positive things. There's baseball, there's basketball, there's homework," Charlie adds.
And, leading the way, there's Charlie and Jon.
For dedicating their careers to enriching the lives and expanding the worlds of Potrero Hill kids, this week's Jefferson Award in the Bay Area goes to Jon Greenberg and Charlie "O".
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