Gary Randle wrote the words “Stay Low” on a small chalkboard across from his desk.

It doesn’t refer to his golf swing; he doesn’t golf. Or a dance move; dancing is a stretch since the former cop injured his knee chasing down a suspect.

“It’s a reminder to me to stay humble,” says Randle, who at 6-foot-8-inches tall, still retains the imposing stature that helped the former TCU star dominate the boards when he played for the Frogs in the 1970s.

“As an athlete, I’d look at my stats in the paper after a game and maybe I’d think I’d done pretty well. It’s easy to get caught up in it,” he says. “But I have those words — Stay Low — as a reminder that I’m not the important thing.”

What is important is his faith (he became a Christian in 1982 and has since dedicated himself to God); his family, which includes wife, Marilyn and daughter Gabrielle, a recent Stanford University grad; and his boys — the more than 200 Fort Worth kids he has helped find a way out of the cycle of crime and poverty through a program he co-founded called H.O.P.E. Farm.

Randle, 54, started the program in 1989 with Noble Crawford, a fellow former Fort Worth cop. Both shared a mission to not just clean up the streets, but keep kids away from the negative influences that draw them into a life of crime.

The idea was to target boys whose fathers were dead, incarcerated or who had otherwise abandoned them, and provide positive role models, structure and encouragement to excel in school and life.

“I saw firsthand the high number of minority youth going into the criminal justice system,” he says. “I knew something had to be done to help them before they got into trouble.”

The name H.O.P.E. Farm came about because the original idea was to have a farm in the country where young boys could get away from their inner city neighborhood and its negative influences.

But things didn’t go according to plan and instead of buying rural property, the organization had the opportunity to acquire a small house and adjacent land in the east Fort Worth neighborhood of Morningside Heights.

Randle saw the positives of serving kids in their own neighborhood, but kept the same mission.

“H.O.P.E. stands for Helping Other People Excel and the word farm, when you look it up in the dictionary, means ‘a tract of land sanctified for cultivation,’ ” he says. “That’s what we do, cultivate young minds.”

Randle grew up in Riverside, Calif., in, “a poor neighborhood where no one really realized we were poor.”

He says the community was dominated by working dads, stay-at-home moms and kids who stayed outside playing all day.

“Television wasn’t that influential,” he says. “We’d play with things like tires all day. We’d piece together bikes. No one ever got a new bike — you’d build one from whatever you could find.”

He also played basketball. After high school, Randle earned a scholarship to the University of California-Riverside where he was noticed by recruiters from larger schools.

“I felt I could be a fish in a bigger tank,” he says. “I decided to leave.”

TCU was recruiting Randle and his father, a Texas native, felt the school would be good for him.

“He told me, ‘the people of Texas, if they don’t like you, you’ll know it, but if they like you, they’ll help you,’ ” he says.

In 1975, Randle came to TCU.  Although he broke his hand during practice in his junior year, he played the next game anyway because the coach told him, “Hoss, we need you in there.”

But his collegiate career ended after a brutal road-trip loss against top-ranked Kentucky.

“They slaughtered us,” Randle says. “They beat us to death. I don’t know why, but the coach needed to work out his anger on someone and he chose me. He cussed me out.

“I was really the wrong player to do that to,” Randle says of the incident with Coach Johnny Swaim, “I let him have it. I cussed him out and said, ‘I’m out of here.’ So when we got back to campus, I was gone.

“In retrospect, I shouldn’t have done it,’ Randle says. “I was 19 and I was dumb. I made a decision that affected the rest of my life.”
Randle went back to California, but says leaving basketball was like a painful divorce. He refocused his life and began a career in social work, eventually working with a foundation serving inner-city boys in West Hollywood.

He found himself working to build the boys’ self-esteem as well as getting them basic food and clothing.

Randle and his wife wanted to return to Texas and they finally made the move back in 1982. Around that same time, Randle says, he became a Christian.

He knew what he needed to do next — find his former coach and say “I’m sorry.”

“It was a life-changing thing,” Randle says. “I asked him to forgive me and he forgave me. It was a huge burden lifted off me. A coach is like a father and when there is a rift, it weighs on you. He died not long after that. I’m so grateful that I was able to meet with him.”

When Randle went to look for social work positions, he saw that the Fort Worth Police Department was hiring. He signed on, made it through basic training and started work as a patrol officer. One day he was chasing a speeding car down Lancaster Avenue when the driver hopped out and fled down an embankment. Randle tried to follow, but fell down the ravine, snapping his kneecap.

“That was the end of my days as a patrol officer,” he says. “My knee was just gone.”

But another opportunity was coming. He and Crawford had met at church and they began talking about how they could help kids before they got in trouble with the law. By the time he was medically discharged from the force, he had a new mission in H.O.P.E. Farm.

“It was just like gasoline and a match,” he says. “It just exploded.”

They started working with a 10-year-old boy back in 1989 and gradually grew the non-profit organization to serve more than 200 kids with an annual budget of $822,000.

H.O.P.E. Farm’s concept is simple — to provide young boys a secure place to go after school where they can get tutoring, life skills, a work ethic and leadership training. Boys who started in the program years ago are now graduating from college and coming back to help mentor the next generation.

“Kids want to be made whole, they want direction,” Randle says. “What happens is we become their fathers and our influence becomes stronger than the streets.”

Now H.O.P.E. Farm is expanding, adding a second location in the Como neighborhood, with plans to eventually add satellite locations in the Stop Six and Eastwood neighborhoods.  Thanks to generous donations, including grants from the Sid Richardson Foundation, the organization hopes to add a school and community center. Randle would like to eventually serve young girls as well. Representatives from Dallas, Portland and Atlanta have visited to see how the program could help their cities.
Randle is also on a personal mission to finish his coursework at TCU. Last year he re-enrolled and hopes to graduate in May.
“I tell the boys you always have to finish what you start,” he says. “Now I have to be good to my word. I can’t tell them to do that if I haven’t done it myself.”

For information or to make a donation, go to hopefarminc.org.
Comment at tcumagazine@tcu.edu.