Jeff Delaney of Postgraduate Musings sent in this article on Clarence Otis ‘77.

Clarence Otis Jr., CEO of Darden Restaurants (DRI), will never forget the Sunday drives his family took through Beverly Hills when he was a boy.

Each began and ended in Watts. In 1965, the South Los Angeles area was the scene of riots that killed 34 and injured more than 1,000, but to Otis, who was 9 at the time, it simply was home.

Otis’ father, a janitor, took his family to Beverly Hills not to gawk in envy. It was his way to show the kids another world was out there, and let them know it wasn’t out of their reach.

“Those drives showed me how the other half lived,” Otis recalls. “They made me believe another life was possible.”

Was it ever.

Two years ago this month, at age 48, Otis was named CEO of the largest casual-dining restaurant company, overseeing such mega-brands as Olive Garden and Red Lobster. He’s one of only a handful of African-American CEOs running Fortune 500 companies. At home in Orlando, he and his wife, Jacqui, are amassing one of the finest collections of African-American art in the nation.

Read the whole things. Prior EphBlog coverage of Otis here and here.

The challenges of being raised in Watts were real. There was gang activity at the time, though it was not drug-infested, Clarence Jr. notes. Growing up there, he says, he learned to interact with everyone.

He had friends who were scholars and others who became gang leaders. A few friends were killed in gang violence.

During the Watts riots, his parents wouldn’t let him and his siblings outside. After that, he had to learn how to make do on his own.

“You kind of have an urban street map in your head,” he says. “You just try to avoid the places where gangs hang out.”

Almost every black, male teen in Watts knew one drill only too well: being regularly stopped by cops and questioned. Otis recalls being stopped “several” times a year. He certainly didn’t like it, but he had little choice but to put up with it.

The whole neighborhood put up with a lot. There were few public services in Watts then, including no public transportation. “You either drove, or you didn’t get around,” he says.

But Otis had options. That’s mostly because his parents demanded good grades. And a caring guidance counselor steered Otis toward a scholarship at Williams College, a liberal arts college in Williamstown, Mass.

“A lot of people reached out to help me,” Otis says. “Positive discrimination happens, too.”

Indeed. I think that Buster Grossman ‘56 had a part in this story, but I can’t find that story on-line. Note that Otis graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Williams. I knew lots of smart people who didn’t get PBK, but not a single dumb one who did. So, study hard young Ephs. You too can become the CEO of a Fortune 500 company.