Frisby beat the odds and wants to help others do the same with his Achievers Brunch | Jenice Armstrong

It was 1991 and a bitterly cold morning.

So Mister Mann Frisby put on a big, puffy coat and headed out to start his day at Bodine High School for International Affairs. He wasn’t at the Northern Liberties school long before the principal showed up and notified him that there had been a family emergency.

Frisby, a sophomore at the time, remembers how his hands shook with fear that something awful had happened as he removed his Triple Fat Goose jacket from a locker and headed outside.

His godfather met him and opened up Frisby’s coat to reveal multiple plastic bags of a white substance that had been stashed inside the lining. Frisby was shocked but also outraged. He was only 15 — and surrounded everywhere, even within his own family, by drugs and poverty — but clearly understood just how easily his entire life would have been derailed had authorities discovered those bags in his possession.

He returned to his accounting class deeply shaken.

Against all odds, Frisby went on to enroll at Penn State University on a four-year academic scholarship and became the first in his family to graduate from college.

What’s almost equally as impressive is that he managed to do so while avoiding common pitfalls of college life such as binge drinking and illicit drug use. Frisby said he never took even a sip of alcohol during the entire time he was in Happy Valley, nor did he experiment with marijuana.

Now, the freelance writer and entrepreneur wants to help others avoid similar temptations at the second annual Achievers Brunch, scheduled for May 19 at the Kappa Alpha Psi Achievement Center on Germantown Avenue.

“My mentors prepared me to get to college. But nobody sat down and said ‘This is how you deal with the social aspects — the peer pressure of alcohol and drugs,'” recalled Frisby, now 44.

College retention rates are abysmal for black males. Only about 40 percent manage to graduate, according to the United Negro College Fund.

Inadequate finances, lack of college readiness, and feelings of racial alienation are among the reasons for the high dropout rate. Also, first-generation students such as Frisby don’t always get the emotional support they need.

I donated to the GoFundMe crowd-funding for the brunch because I really believe in what he’s doing. Frisby was a teenager when I met him back in the 1990s and writing for a now-defunct section of the Daily News aimed at high school students. Others believe, too. As of Wednesday afternoon, the fund was barely shy of its $5,000 goal.

Several former colleagues and I mentored Frisby. He was a scrappy kid with a high-top fade haircut who was really bright and hustled hard. All he needed was opportunity and direction. He was very much like the 50 young men who will be attending his Achievers Brunch. All have grade-point averages of 3.5 or higher and are headed to college.

“There are so many resources for boys who are in trouble," pointed out Frisby, the author of several books including Holla Back...But Listen First: A Life Guide for Young Adults.

“We’re working to encourage the best because I was that kid at one point. Somebody might have looked at me at and said, ‘Oh, look at that excellent SAT score. Look at those excellent grades. Look at that full scholarship to Penn State.' But my life was a mess," he added. "I needed help.”

Sex will be discussed.

“Last year, one boy said, ‘If we are having sex, and she says she doesn’t want to do it anymore do I have to stop,” Frisby recalled. “We’re trying to create that kind of space where people can ask questions."

You can’t do that enough.

Because as Noble Zahairagunn, 17, a Central High School senior headed to New York University to study finance, pointed out: “Most of them don’t have fathers in their lives "

They do now, thanks to the Achievers Brunch.

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly described the scholarship Frisby received from Penn State. It was an academic, not track, scholarship.