He Was Touched by Ashe, Now He Is Touching Others

Tony Brock smiles when he looks at Adelaine De Vera, a UCLA freshman majoring in chemistry who hopes to enter medical school one day. The young woman is from Carson but she was born in the Philippines. Her father works as a nurse and her mother works in a medical office.

Brock also smiles when he looks at Gabrielle Oliver, a tiny 10-year-old tennis player from Compton who proudly says that she can beat her mother, Jeannette, and that she would like to attend Yale some day.

Brock knows that Arthur Ashe would be proud.

Brock, a 41-year-old with not an ounce of fat on him and the need to be always moving, acting, doing things, is the director of the Safe Passage Tennis Program of Los Angeles. The program was founded by Ashe and is run by the Los Angeles Junior Chamber of Commerce.

More than 30 years ago, Brock met Ashe. Brock grew up in Cincinnati, the son of a high school basketball and tennis coach. Not many black kids played tennis in Cincinnati, but Brock did and so did his father, James. And so James was able to arrange a meeting with Ashe one summer afternoon in 1969.

Ashe, a year past his U.S. Open title and six years away from beating Jimmy Connors at Wimbledon, was in Cincinnati to play a tournament. What Ashe did was inspire a sixth grader who hadn’t been excited about tennis.

“Because of Arthur, I’m doing what I do now,” Brock says. “Because of Arthur, I got very interested in tennis and what it could do for me.”

What tennis did for Brock was earn him a scholarship to Hampton University in Virginia. What Ashe did for Brock was inspire the young man to continue pushing tennis where tennis didn’t usually go.

With Brock at the Arthur Ashe Tennis Center at UCLA on a recent sunny afternoon were De Vera, one of the great success stories of the Safe Passage program, and Oliver, one of the bright stars of the future.

De Vera is a graduate of the California Academy of Math and Science, a member of the National Honor Society and a 4.0 student. She joined the Safe Passage program when she was 14. De Vera’s mother brought her to the campus of Cal State Dominguez Hills, one of the four Safe Passage Outposts.

At St. Andrew’s in South Los Angeles, the Hollenbeck Recreation Center in East Los Angeles, the Elizabeth Learning Center in Cudahy, and Dominguez Hills, kids from families without a lot of resources but with the interest in learning a new sport are offered free instruction and the use of quality equipment. They also are offered tutoring and academic nurturing by a group of adults who pay attention to the making of good citizens.

Or, as the Safe Passage mission statement reads: “To create a safe passage for youngsters from youth into productive adulthood, using tennis as a vehicle. To develop self-esteem, confidence, discipline and exposure to new environments. We develop ‘Champion Citizens.’ ”

Through Safe Passage, De Vera has earned $16,000 in scholarship aid to UCLA. She does not play on the tennis team but De Vera still plays tennis.

“I always will,” she says.

Without Safe Passage, she adds, “I don’t think I would ever have learned to play tennis and without this scholarship money it would have been very difficult to attend UCLA.”

Oliver has been a Safe Passage pupil for only a year. Already she has won area age-group events. Her mother is a teacher’s aide and her father, Gregory, is a teacher. It is people like these, families in Compton who can provide their children with the necessities but not the frills, who benefit from Safe Passage.

Brock says that if Oliver were to continue to progress, she would be able to get more, and better, instruction. Safe Passage has people like former ATP pro Eduardo Carrillo as tennis teachers. If Oliver were to start doing well at more local age-group events, Brock says that the United States Tennis Assn. would take notice and provide the money for travel and entry fees to national competitions.

But it is not the making of pros that Ashe was interested in. Brock is happy to hear Oliver speak enthusiastically of meeting Venus and Serena Williams last year. They grew up in Compton and when Serena won the U.S. Open in September, Brock says that “there was a noticeable uptick in interest in our program.” What Brock wants more than anything is to produce more Adelaine De Vera’s--excellent students who use tennis to gain an education, not a professional reputation.

So Brock says he was most happy when, a month or so ago, Oliver came up to him and whispered that she had decided where she wanted to go to college.

Little Gabrielle, her head bowed, looks up when Brock says, “Go ahead, Gabrielle. Go ahead and say what you told me.”

“Yale,” Oliver says.

Ashe died in 1993 at age 52, but you just know that somehow, somewhere, he could not be happier.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com.