By IPS Correspondents
NEW YORK, Jun 3 2003 (IPS)

Inner-city African-Americans are breaking new national and international records in another formerly white-only sport – fencing. The man who helped make it happen is New Jersey native Peter Westbrook.

Olympic medallist Westbrook – who, at 51, talks and moves with the energy of a young James Brown – rose from the ghetto to the top of the world. From a broken home in a New Jersey housing project, Westbrook went on to dominate the sabre event in the United States and Europe for nearly 30 years, and that is just the beginning.

Westbrook has transformed fencing with his foundation, which offers world-class training to New York’s urban kids for a token payment of 25 dollars a year.

More than 12 years after he founded The Peter Westbrook Foundation (PWF), Westbrook continues to transform the lives of the young people he teaches in his New York Fencers’ Club for urban youth – even producing several members of the U.S. Olympic squad.

Carlton Henry is a product of this positive energy. Henry has continued to attend the Fencers’ Club despite living in a homeless shelter since his father, a recovering drug addict, died of AIDS last October. At his father’s wake Henry saw his mother, also a recovering drug addict, for the first time since he was four years old.

When the young man, who is now 19, first came to the Club two years ago he was a member of The Bloods street gang. "We’d jump (physically attack) people, fight a lot, stab people, sell weed," Henry recalls. "I did a lot of negative things that I called fun."

Henry left the gang and is now studying for his high school diploma day and night, when he is not training or teaching at the Fencers’ Club. "The gang professes a sense of brotherhood," says Henry, "but really the people don’t care about you or how you turn out. They’re just with you ’til the fun is over."

"(The) Peter Westbrook (Foundation) is more like a real brotherhood, like a family. They want you to succeed, and they give you the tools you need to succeed. They give you a foundation and they teach you morals."

PWF also stresses education – all students must bring in their school report cards to prove they are working hard.

"If your grades are too low," said one student at a recent Saturday morning class, "you get put on suspension from the club till your grades go up. Peter Westbrook expects you to do the best you can do."

PWF, which Westbrook started with 10,000 dollars of his own, also holds an annual essay competition, and, if kids need it, the Foundation will arrange free academic tutoring in all the major subjects.

This all-round approach to helping young people is one of the things that initially attracted the interest of producer Debra Martin Chase, who is making a movie about Westbrook for the Walt Disney Company. Chase produced box-office hits ‘The Princess Diaries’ and ‘Courage Under Fire’.

"He makes a difference in kids’ lives," says Chase. "He shows them the power within themselves."

Westbrook expects his world-class fencing coaches to do the same. "The coaches have to be charismatic," he says. "They’ve got to keep the kids’ attention – they’ve got to be like the Pied Piper, to lead the kids to do positive things."

"The best thing Peter Westbrook did for me," says Henry, "was to give me Mika’il as a coach." Westbrook’s Olympic teammate Mika’il Sankofa co-founded the PWF.

"I have a best-friend, father relationship with Mika’il. We talk a lot about what’s going on in my life, and he gives me lots of guidance."

This support permeates the PWF. At the start of each Saturday morning class, Westbrook gives a talk – in his trademark high-energy, witty, fatherly style – offering advice and guidance based on his own experience.

The Olympian, the son of an African-American father and a Japanese mother, grew up in a poor housing project in Newark, N.J. His father beat his mother and walked out on the family when the boy was still young.

After that, his mother, who traces her ancestry back to Samurai warriors, gave him five dollars for every fencing lesson he took, in an effort to keep him off the streets. With a natural ability, he trained hard and eventually won a fencing scholarship to New York University.

Westbrook went on to dominate the sabre event in the United States. for an unprecedented 20 years, was national sabre champion 13 times, competed in six Olympic games and won a bronze medal at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.

With that medal Westbrook became the first American to win an Olympic fencing medal in 24 years and the first African-American to win an Olympic fencing medal, period.

But that, he hopes, is about to change. "Three years ago I predicted that the next U.S. Olympic fencing medal would be won by one of my kids," Westbrook says, adding, "Of course, that’s just a prediction." But the odds certainly look good.

At the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, PWF students made up almost one-half of the U.S. fencing team. At next year’s Olympics in Athens four or five members of the U.S. fencing team will come from the PWF.

These fencers will almost certainly include national sabre champion Keeth Smart, who, like Westbrook, won a fencing scholarship to college. Keeth’s sister Erin is likely to be on the team, as are fellow PWF students Akhi Spencer-El and Ivan Lee.

The PWF students are well aware of the opportunities on offer.

"Most people come to fence for the fun of it. But in the long run they try for a scholarship," explains 13-year-old Marty Williams, who has not missed a single Saturday morning class since he started fencing with PWF in September. "I want to go to college," he says, "and I want to make it to the Olympics."

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