Fullerton Couple Realize Their Dream of Extending Aid to Black Students

When Matt Jenkins was working his way through college during the ‘50s, he had to get up at 3 a.m. to clean animal laboratories. Today Jenkins, 52, a millionaire real estate developer, still rises at about the same time.

He then sets out from his hillside home overlooking Fullerton for a pre-dawn jog with his wife and business partner, Roberta, 48. Their conversation often turns to how their good fortune stems largely from the scholarships, loans and jobs that paid Matt’s way through Tuskegee University, a 3,400-student, predominantly black college founded a century ago in Alabama.

The Jenkinses, both of whom are Tuskegee University graduates, last year established the Educational Foundation for Black Americans in an attempt to give the current generation of black youth the opportunity to go to college. They have donated $150,000 to help the new organization get off the ground.

There are other groups, most notably the United Negro College Fund, that raise money for higher education for blacks. However, the Jenkinses, during a recent interview in the family room of their Sunny Hills home, explained that they set up their foundation a year ago with their own vision of how college educations for blacks should be funded.

They believed it was time for those blacks who had benefited most from university educations--successful black professionals and entrepreneurs like themselves--to assume the financial and moral responsibility for educating and motivating today’s generation of young blacks.

Affluent blacks would take this leadership role, the Jenkinses believed, by tapping financial resources available through their network of contacts in the professional and business worlds, both in the black and the white communities.

The Jenkinses said they feared that if black professionals failed to take on this responsibility, no one else would.

“Today there are fewer blacks in the nation attending college than (there were) 10 years ago because of cutbacks in federal funding of higher education,” Matt said.

“One can only wonder what’s going to happen to young people who’re being denied even the opportunity of a college education, though they’re working hard both inside and outside the classroom.”

(While 8.5% of students at four-year colleges in 1976 were black, the percentage dropped to 8% in 1982, the last year for which figures are available, according to a 1984 report by the National Center for Educational Statistics. The report acknowledges that the decrease seems statistically slight; still, according to the report, it is an ominous development because this is the first such decline in black college enrollment since blacks began attending colleges in large numbers two decades ago.)

Added Roberta: “Over 90% of black students in college today are on some form of financial aid. Because of federal funding cutbacks, more black students are being forced to drop out of school or being prevented from enrolling in college at all.”

The Jenkinses’ dream of helping to provide a college education to future generations of black Americans came to partial fruition this fall when the foundation made its first grants to colleges.

At the first meeting of the foundation’s board of directors, it voted to award $20,000 to Tuskegee University and $5,000 to Compton Community College in Los Angeles County. These grants funded student loan tuition programs at these two predominantly black institutions.

Non-Interest Loan

Under these so-called revolving student loan programs, Tuskegee and Compton provide no-interest loans to students to help them cover the costs of tuition, books and other materials.

Although the first grants are relatively modest, Matt said they were designed to have a substantial and immediate impact.

“At Tuskegee, which costs about $6,000 a year to attend, about 400 students are currently being allowed to temporarily attend classes although they have not fully paid all of their tuition,” Matt explained. “The balance owed runs from $300 to $700 per student.

“And after paying for tuition, a great many students don’t have any money left to purchase books and supplies. The cost of these items averages about $300 a student.

“The foundation solved this problem by setting up a revolving tuition loan fund of $15,000 and a revolving book and material fund of $5,000.”

Matt continued: “With the recent introduction of tuition at community colleges such as Compton, students--especially single parents who already have many financial obligations--want to continue their schooling but don’t have the funds to do so.

“By the foundation establishing a revolving loan tuition program of $5,000 at Compton administered like the one at Tuskegee, we hope to keep these young people in school.”

The 10-member foundation board, composed of directors from throughout the nation, includes such Southern California figures as Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley and Orange County philanthropist and arts patroness Elaine Redfield. Matt is the foundation’s president and Roberta is its vice president and treasurer.

“We recruited members to serve on the foundation’s board who wanted to foster college opportunities for young people and who also were interested in developing a spirit of entrepreneurship among them,” Roberta said.

Entrepreneurial Skills

She noted that the foundation’s emphasis on developing entrepreneurial skills among college students to encourage them to enter business careers was inspired by her own experience with Matt in jointly founding their real estate development firm six years ago.

She serves as vice president and treasurer of the firm, SDD Enterprises Inc., a real estate investment and management firm with headquarters in Fullerton. (SDD is derived from the first letters of the names of their three children, Sabrae, Derryl and Dexter.)

Matt is president of SDD, which is involved in the ownership, development and management of 14 mobile home parks in California, Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Alabama. The Jenkinses employ 50 people in this multimillion-dollar venture.

In addition to encouraging entrepreneurship among the young, another foundation goal, Matt said, is “to stimulate other professional and business people of all races and ethnic groups to give personal grants to individuals and organizations of their choice.”

(Additional information on the Education Foundation for Black Americans is available by calling (714) 738-3006 or writing the foundation at 626-A Commonwealth Ave., Fullerton, Calif. 92632.)

As the Jenkinses on a recent rainy evening sat before a crackling fire in the family room of the 13-room three-story house they completed 11 years ago, they reflected on their humble origins and the importance of education in their lives.

Matt’s family operated a truck farm outside Mobile, Ala. The ninth of 10 children, Matt was raised by his mother after his father died when he was 2.

As he was growing up, he frequently missed school because he was needed at home during the spring planting and fall harvesting seasons. But his mother made sure he kept up with his studies, he remembers.

After Matt entered Tuskegee, he discovered that in order to pay for his six years of veterinary medicine study, he would need scholarships and loans--and, most important of all, campus jobs.

Held Campus Jobs

While Roberta’s family, which operated a small South Carolina dairy farm, was able to pay most of her college expenses, she remembers that as the eldest of seven children it was necessary for her to hold down campus jobs to make ends meet as she earned her degree as a dietitian.

The Jenkinses met while students at Tuskegee but delayed marriage until after Roberta graduated, a year after Matt in the spring of 1958. Matt was in the midst of a three-year tour of duty as an Air Force veterinarian.

After his discharge from the service in 1960, Matt, Roberta and their little dog piled into a VW bug in Michigan and traveled across the country to California.

“Ever since I was a kid, I’d wanted to live in California,” Matt said. “California always seemed bigger and better than any place I’d ever read about.”

Matt worked as a veterinarian for the state for nearly a year before he opened a private practice in the southwest Los Angeles County community of Compton. He was an active veterinarian until 1979, when he sold the practice.

For the nine years before that, Matt had served on the board of directors of the Bank of Finance of Los Angeles. A fellow bank director was a rising politician named Tom Bradley; Matt and he became close friends.

Although Matt is a Republican, he said this has not interfered with their friendship or his support for Bradley, a Democrat.

“I believe more in voting for the man than the party,” Matt said.

“I’m a member of the Republican Party because of its support of entrepreneurship,” Matt said. “In my personal and business experiences, I’ve found that the only time people appreciate things is when they are given the opportunity to work for them.”

After listening with a smile to her husband’s endorsement of Republican Party ideals, Roberta said, “I’m a Democrat.”

“Since Matt is not active in partisan Republican politics, there hasn’t been any conflict between us,” she explained. “Besides, we have the same political philosophy. He just calls himself a Republican, and I call myself a Democrat.”

The Jenkinses’ “earn-your-own-way” political philosophy characterizes the donations their foundation has made so far. “The grants we made this year were not scholarships that students have no obligation to pay back,” Matt emphasized. “They are loans.

“Sure, they’re non-interest-bearing loans, and they’re structured so that students don’t have to repay them until they’re financially able.

‘Must Be Repaid’

“But they are loans that must be repaid to the colleges,” Matt emphasized. “And the repayment requirement will replenish the loan fund so there will be money available to make loans to students in the future.”

The Jenkinses have had a longstanding interest in education. Matt served on the board of trustees of Compton College from 1967 to 1975, and he served on Tuskegee’s board of trustees from 1971 to 1978. (He rejoined the Tuskegee board earlier this year.)

And the education of their own children was the catalyst for their move in 1974 from Compton to Fullerton.

“Because of our concerns about the quality of the (Compton public) school system, we had been sending the children to a private school in Palos Verdes,” Matt said. “But we felt the children would develop into more well-rounded individuals if they attended public schools. So we looked around for a city with good public schools. Fullerton was the place.

“It was a nice, quiet, conservative city, and it had a large college community (because of Cal State Fullerton and Fullerton Community College),” Matt said. “It wasn’t far from Los Angeles or the beach; it seemed ideal for our life style.”

Roberta, who went non-stop for six months doing the investigation into communities they might move to, added, “I thought the kids could really benefit from the cultural life of the city.”

Her assessment has not proved wrong, noted Roberta, who said Fullerton has offered the educational and cultural benefits they sought for their three children. Sabrae, 24, is an alumna of Howard University in Washington, where she is now a real estate developer. Derryl, 19, is attending prep school in Mississippi. Dexter, 18, is a freshman at Occidental College in Los Angeles.

With their children no longer at home, the Jenkinses now spend most of their time working--and playing--in tandem. They begin the day with their 4:30 a.m. jogging, get to the office by 9 a. m. and try to tear themselves away by 6 p.m.

Although they attempt to leave their work at the office, Roberta, playfully wagging a finger at Matt, said, “He talks about business all the time.”

Matt sheepishly rejoined, “To me it’s not work, it’s fun.”

In the winter, Matt and Roberta, who are avid skiers, spend as much time as possible on the slopes. Summers revolve around their condo on the shore in Long Beach, where they enjoy swimming and jogging along the sand.

They also find time for community work. For example, from 1982 to 1984 Roberta served as chairman of the board of For Kids Sake, a Brea hot line and crisis counseling center that seeks to combat child abuse. Matt is a member of the advisory board of Phoenix House, a Santa Ana drug treatment center.

But paramount to the Jenkinses for the next few months will be their foundation work. To meet the particular needs of Orange County, Matt said, the foundation is forming a task force to develop a scholarship program to benefit academically and entrepreneurially gifted black students in Orange County’s high schools, trade schools, community colleges and universities.

The Orange County scholarship winners will be honored at a fund-raising dinner next spring, which Matt said will mark the foundation’s first public appeal for funds.