Growing up, Avery Richardson ’17 wasn’t sure his father’s alma mater was even real.
“He’s a corny guy, and my mom would joke, ‘Did you even go to college?’” Avery said. “He’d talk about Pacific, and it sounded like he made it up.”
He didn’t.
Carl Richardson ’86 was the first member of his immediate family to attend college. After two years of community college in California, he came north to 鶹Ӱ to play football and study psychology and sociology.
His own parents hadn’t finished high school, and they were intent on giving their children more.
They took Carl out of public school and enrolled him in an all-boys prep school, and they emphasized the importance of an education.
“(College) was very much an expectation, and an encouragement as well,” he said. “Unfortunately, my dad passed away just before I started my freshman year, but my mother wanted to see me through.”
Carl 鶹Ӱd from Pacific and went on to work as a counselor in a group home, then with the California Youth Authority. The balance of his career has been spent in law enforcement, working for the California State Patrol as a youth officer.
Along the way, he insisted on the same educational focus for his children.
“It was very, very clear they would attend college, and they would finish,” Carl said.
Avery remembers joining his mother in master’s classes as a child.
“It was like a field trip for me. I loved it,” he said. “I always knew a bachelor’s isn’t enough; I have to get a master’s.”
Avery always showed academic inclination. He was accepted to 13 colleges, and he planned to attend somewhere in his home state of California, until he got a call from Pacific.
It's rigorous here. They want to push you, want to see you try, take initiative. –Avery Richardson '17
“I told my dad, and he said, ‘Oh good, because I put your information in yesterday,’” Avery said. “I had never thought about Pacific, but the next day, I got a call from a coach. I got an academic scholarship and a chance to play football.”
He also got a chance to see just what his father had been talking about for so many years.
As a student, Carl played football and enjoyed the outdoors in the Pacific Northwest.
Avery was involved in more campus activities. He participated in the 55th annual ‘a and served as vice president of the Black Student Union and an under鶹Ӱ representative for the university Diversity Committee.
Both men have lived in McCormick Hall, and both played football for the Boxers — though the program has been dismantled and rebuilt in between.
“[My dad] likes the program now,” Avery said. “The coaches stress discipline, and they care about us. He noticed that. He likes how dedicated and driven the players are.”
Pacific’s student population has more than doubled, but both Carl and Avery talk about the relationships that Pacific introduces.
“It was just unmatched,” Carl said. “Even after all these years, you just pick up where you left off.”
“You meet genuinely good people here,” Avery echoed. “My dad would always mention that, and I see it.”
Ultimately, though, a Pacific education is about a path to the future, they said.
“You always want your kids to do more than you did,” Carl said. “(My parents felt) in order for us to succeed, college would be very important. That’s the approach I took as well.
“My kids had to go to school … just to give themselves the chance to succeed in life.”
Avery is doing just that. He majored in exercise science (now kinesiology), thinking he’d go on to physical therapy school. After graduation, though, he spent a few years in research and public health. His Pacific connections helped him land a research internship at OSHU, where he was part of a project studying health inequities and the impact of shifting Medicare funding into more preventive care.
“It really shifted the idea to treating people as a whole,” Avery said. He cited the project’s common example of a woman living alone in an overheated apartment that led to health issue flare ups. “The state would pay thousands of dollars for her care, but wouldn’t pay for $70 air conditioning to prevent this. Let’s get to the bottom of what’s really needed.”
Following the internship, Avery also became a certified nursing assistant and continued to work in a variety of roles with another OHSU project related to Alzheimer’s research. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, though, he went home to California. He was able to continue working with the research project and also began a contact tracing job with Riverside County Public Health.
“It feels good, being able to provide resources when needed, provide comfort when needed,” he said in 2021.
Following the pandemic, Avery earned a Fulbright program grant to spend nine months in Germany, studying loneliness in older adults, then went to Colorado, where he contributed to publications on emergency medicine.
But he always said he wanted to go beyond a bachelor’s degree — so he is. As of 2024, Avery was back in Oregon, working toward a dual degree in medicine and public health and his dream of becoming a physician.
“Since graduation, I’ve veered from my degree and med school,” he said. “I got a lot of experience in healthcare. A lot of it is getting your foot in and figuring out what the next steps are. I’m really grateful things have really worked out.”