Joel A. Robinson

I was born and grew up in New York City. My father died when I was two-years old during the depression. My mother faced a dilemma of having to find work and caring for a young child and had no choice and left me alone to fend for myself in the New York's rough city streets. Survival is an excellent teacher and learned how to fight and to avoid dangerous and devious people. I was reasonably good at sports while education was a distant second and I concentrated on the former and disregarded the other. It is a common story for poor kids in cities across the country. When I was seventeen I had a tryout with the Boston Red Sox but was not offered a contract, which was my first introduction to failure although I didn't have too much time to ruminate on this issue as I was drafted into the army during the Korean War and spent part of my military service in an intelligence outfit in Eastern Europe. When I left the service I realized I had little chance of finding a good job without an education and I was forced to go back to High School for a year and then to Columbia at night while working during the day for 16 years.