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CEO and ex-NFL player tell Choffin students about overcoming adversity
By Justin Wier
YOUNGSTOWN
CEO Sean Darby and former NFL player Donald Jones spoke to students at Choffin Career and Technical Center about overcoming adversity to find success.
Darby grew up in Plainfield, N.J., and recounted Thursday a childhood surrounded by drugs and violence. He said making money selling weed and shooting dice progressed into dealing heroin and crack cocaine by age 16.
“I used to look out my window at 21 or 22 and I would tell myself, ‘I’m going to die in the streets,’” he said.
Those were prison windows. Darby caught an armed-robbery charge at 17 and served 81/2 years. He said he missed out on many experiences people consider normal, such as attending a high-school prom.
Darby was able to reinvent himself after he entered into a program that allowed him to take classes at Rutgers University in New Jersey. A professor connected him with a man who hires ex-felons and he was able to put skills he honed selling drugs to use selling copy machines.
“In six years, I went from making $9.50 an hour to making $80,000 a year,” Darby said.
More recently, Darby started a business selling a family-favorite banana pudding his wife makes. Khanisa’s now distributes pudding to seven restaurants in Philadelphia and New Jersey.
He said he came to speak to encourage others to follow in his footsteps.
“I’m blessed because I was able to overcome it,” he said. Darby’s brother is in prison in Florida.
Jones also grew up in Plainfield in similar circumstances. He recalled climbing out the window to avoid school when his teacher stepped out of the classroom.
While he had a promising football career, colleges wouldn’t give him scholarships because of his grades. He turned that around in junior college and eventually graduated from Youngstown State University.
His NFL career ended after three years because of health problems, however. Jones contracted a kidney disease while in college, which turned to kidney failure by his third year in the NFL.
“My dream was now over,” Jones said. “I’m shattered.”
Since then he has moved into media, and now he does radio covering the Buffalo Bills. He encouraged students to think like a starter, and to never settle for second place.
Natalie Scott, a school counselor at Choffin, said she saw Jones and Darby speak in Canfield last year and wanted to bring them to speak to students.
When she was put in charge of Black History Month programming, she jumped at the opportunity. “Many of our kids, their lives kind of sound like [Jones and Darby’s] lives, but they didn’t let that stop them,” she said.