Knowing him, and Dave, has been some of the greater blessings of my life.
Cleo is the grandfather of Bijan Robinson and I’ve known that man for 42 years. That’s how I met legendary athlete and referee Cleo Robinson. What is now known as the national-power Men’s Wheelchair Basketball team at Arizona, the “Wildchairs” was how it all began for me. That one chance meeting turned into over 36 years of teaching, with the greater bulk of those years spent teaching Adaptive Physical Education to children and it also led to over 30 years of coaching youth and high school softball, but my first 13 years or so were spent coaching adults with Dave at Arizona. He gave a presentation on adaptive athletics during one of our classes and I chose to do some of my required hours in his program. I came back to The Old Pueblo from Maryland to study education at the University of Arizona and one of my classes was a study of Adaptive Physical Education and that’s where I met my mentor, Dave Herr-Cardillo. I was just 18, fresh out of high school, trying to get my footing in college after deciding not to pursue any kind of pre-law education at Georgetown or an art education at George Washington. This is the 37th installment of “Old Pueblo Abuelo,” a thought on positive things happening in the Old Pueblo from a sometimes cranky and often times humorous grandfather actually born in Tucson and writing from my desk in Tucson, the Old Pueblo.
