For New York City born Carlton Henry there was no van. In his neighborhood, children learned through the ranks of the gang. Drug and alcohol education was done by experience and the family meal was served in a homeless shelter.

That was life – until Henry was urged into a small upstairs gym in lower Manhattan.

The floor and walls were solid white with a couple of handfuls of people, both children and adults moving about the room in some sort of bizarre ballet. They too wore white.

At the center of the room stood Peter Westbrook, a six-time Olympian in fencing. Henry wouldn’t have known the difference between Westbrook and the others at the time, but he does now.

As a child of the New Jersey projects, Westbrook used fencing to escape the desperation of inner city life. In 1976 he made his first Olympic team and in 1984 (eight years after his last Olympic competition due to the 1980 boycott) he won an Olympic bronze medal in individual sabre. It has been the only medal for U.S. Fencing in 20 years.

After the Olympics, his love for the sport and the opportunities it provided continued and the Peter Westbrook Foundation was founded in 1991 with the goal helping inner city youth achieve their dreams through fencing. Nine years later, he sent three students to the Summer Olympic Games in Sydney. It was the best finish for the United States since Westbrook’s medal in Los Angeles.

When the Games open in Athens on August 14, the Peter Westbrook Foundation will be represented by four, who according to U.S. Fencing could be the best in history.

Ivan Lee, 23, of Brooklyn is a proud member of that team. He is also a two-time NCAA champion and holds a journalism degree from St. John’s University. Joining Lee will be fellow Foundation members Kamara James and the brother/sister duo of Keeth and Erinn Smart.

“When I first started into fencing, I hated it,” said Lee, who began working with Westbrook in 1994. “I saw a lot of kids stabbing each other with sticks – so I learned to block quickly. I played basketball and football before this and when you get knocked down in those sports, it hurts. In fencing there is a lot of thought and a lot of fight, but not a lot of hurt. It’s physical chess. If you're only aggressive, then the smart people will beat you every time. If you're not aggressive, you'll just get run over."

Olympian or not, Lee is like any member of the Foundation – he is an athlete that loves to fence. And as part of the group, it is his job to teach others about being a good winner and a good loser, but most importantly about how actions directly influence the results they achieve.

Meet 15-year-old Omari Tate of Freeport, Long Island. Like Lee, he wanted to be a basketball player, but grandma didn’t approve of him spending time on the playground with the “bad kids.”

“One afternoon my grandma saw Peter Westbrook on Oprah,” explained Tate. “Then she told my daddy that he should take me here to learn fencing. If you knew my grandma, then you’d understand why my dad brought me to see Peter the next day.”

Tate quit basketball three weeks later and started taking the train to the Foundation a few times per week. He has now been a member for over a year with the goal of becoming an Olympian, ‘like Peter and Ivan.’

“Everyone in the Foundation has made a huge impact on my life,” said Tate. “I look up to all the Olympians and try to see what they do, then try it myself. It’s cool because they’re all right here, training right next to me and they’re always encouraging me – Grandma is too old now to come out and see me, but I call her every time I win a competition and I’m pretty sure she likes that.”

Whether it’s a 15-year-old grandson, a NCAA Champion or a former gang member, to Westbrook there isn’t a difference.

“These are all the same kids, they just have different stories,” said Westbrook as he looked across the room on a steamy spring afternoon. “Some of these kids come from great backgrounds and some of them come from a society that told them from birth they were rejects.”

Westbrook doesn’t ask for money, he simply asks for a name, then provides equipment and instruction with the hopes that you come back.

“I tell every one of them to leave their negativity at the door before they walk in here. Because in here, we all are equal – we all work hard,” said Westbrook, who will begin working on a movie with Disney shortly.

Across the white room, the ballet continues. A seven-year-old girl is taught to hold a sword properly, Olympics bound Ivan Lee works with one of his coaches and Westbrook stares over to Henry, who is in the middle of an intense match in the far left corner.

“I see all of them at the same time, I see them train and I see them compete and each one amazes me. There may be four people in this room headed to the Olympics and it’s very possible that a few may come home with medals. That’s a good thing, but then I look over at Carlton in the corner over there. After years of drugs, gangs and living in homeless shelters, here he is – you tell me where is the victory.”

Although not a member of the Olympic team, Carlton Henry is a successful student at a local community college and is a collegiate champion in his own ranks.