Remembering Betty and ‘Jimmy Joe’ Robinson, who transformed parts of Pittsburgh through education and service

An admired educator, who some later affectionately referred to as "Gram," Betty's work reflected both high standards and deep compassion. She saw education not as a job but as a calling to lift families and entire communities toward a better future.

While at Pitt in the early 1950s, she was introduced to James, a Pitt athlete and the first African American to play football for the Panthers. The couple had an abiding love of family, community empowerment and each other that would cross generations.

Their son, James Robinson Jr. said his parents always supported each other's community outreach and goals. "Their service came in shifts," he said. "My father went first, building a ministry. Then in about the 1970s, his 'saga' ended, and my mother picked up and deepened her work in Manchester."

Jimmy Joe's journey to Manchester began in the coal mining town of Connellsville. After graduating from Pitt in 1951, he was drafted by the NFL's Cleveland Browns. He'd later play briefly for the Pittsburgh Steelers and in Montreal. His athletic career was interrupted by military service in the Korean War, and afterward he felt the call to ministry. He was among the first Black Presbyterian pastors in Kansas before returning to Pittsburgh in 1962 to take the pulpit at Bidwell Presbyterian Church.

At Bidwell, Jimmy Joe (A&S '51) launched a ministry that was both pastoral and practical. He founded the Bidwell Training Center, giving laborers and people struggling with addiction new skills for employment and new hope for stability. During the Civil Rights Movement, he marched alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and met with Malcolm X. He also became known for keeping Manchester calm after King's assassination, even as other neighborhoods erupted in violence.

It was together, however, that Jimmy Joe and Betty (EDUC '51, '70G, '74G) made perhaps their most lasting mark. In 1972, they walked door to door in Manchester, asking parents what their children needed. The answer was simple: a safe place after school. The Robinsons turned an abandoned warehouse into the Manchester Youth Development Center, filling it with music, art, tutoring and support. From that humble beginning grew a $1.2 million program that has served hundreds of children each year with nursery care, after-school classes, summer enrichment and computer lessons.

The Youth Development Center later gave rise to the Manchester Academic Charter School, which today educates more than 170 students in kindergarten through eighth grade. Nearly half of its staff are alumni of the center - living proof of the Robinsons' belief that community can renew itself from within.

"They did pretty well for the kids," Strickland said. "His work with the Bidwell Training Center was exemplary, and together they created places that saved lives."

Betty believed all children could learn. In meetings, she always told the teachers, if there is a deficit, "it's not the child's fault; figure out a way to help," said Deborah Robinson, her daughter-in-law and a retired educator who worked at the Manchester school.

The Robinsons downplayed their accomplishments. "We had God in our guts," Betty once said, crediting their faith as the force that sustained them through lean budgets, neighborhood struggles and the long fight to keep institutions alive.

Their work gained national recognition. In 2004, Steeler great Franco Harris and then-Pitt Chancellor Mark Nordenberg hosted a dinner in honor of the Robinsons as they retired from the Manchester Youth Development Center. But the couple saw themselves as servants, not celebrities. "We started this as a Ma and Pa operation," Betty said. "It's been great. We've seen history, but it's time to leave our little piece of the world."

In truth, their "little piece" was expansive. The Robinsons' efforts reshaped Manchester, providing stability where there had been turmoil and hope where there had been despair. Their model - rooted in education, skills training and faith - remains embedded in the Bidwell Training Center, the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild, the Youth Development Center and the Academic Charter School.

In addition to their only son, James Jr., and his wife, Debbie, the couple is survived by three grandchildren, seven great-grandchildren and extended family, along with generations of students, parishioners and neighbors whose lives were transformed by their vision.

Photography courtesy of the Robinson family. A 2004 dinner hosted by former Pitt Chancellor Mark Nordenberg, right, and Pittsburgh Steelers' great Franco Harris, left, honored James "Jimmy Joe" Robinson and Betty Hord Robinson, middle, as the couple retired from work at the Manchester Youth Development Center.