Hal Roberts’ Latest Passion is Helping Dyslexic Kids

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

LAKELAND | Hal Roberts has worn several significant hats in his long career and years as a Lakeland resident.

He’s been a lawyer, public servant, successful businessman, progressive in green technology, and now is an activist for a social need.

The latter role is what currently excites Roberts and his wife of 47 years, Marjorie.

They have founded the not-for-profit Roberts Academy at Florida Southern College, scheduled to open in August, for gifted children with dyslexia in first through fourth grades. All basic elementary school subjects will be offered during full days, as will training and support for families of the special youngsters.

LABOR OF LOVE

The academy is very near to the Roberts’ hearts because three of their grandchildren are gifted and have dyslexia. Though highly intelligent, these youths have trouble learning to read, causing great frustration and social problems at school.

“The tuition here is roughly one-fourth what it is in Atlanta for a similar program,” Roberts said. “Early on it has to be low to offer the opportunity to everyone and get word about.

“It will be primarily local. Kids in their first three or four years of school need to be with their families. They need to be able to address dyslexia in the first three years (of school) so that they learn to overcome it. Otherwise it’s a matter of accommodating to it.”

He said the recession has not affected the program, though it may well have affected the families of some students.

LONG CAREER

For three decades, Hal Roberts has been an innovator with EarthLinked Technologies on Pipkin Road in Lakeland, for which he is CEO.

And before that, Roberts, a lawyer, served as Lakeland city attorney from 1971 to 1980. He represented Lakeland Electric and teamed up with its assistant managing director Robert Cochran, who invented the technology used by EarthLinked. Now retired, Cochran founded the company in 1976 as Geo-Solar Energy Corp.

A native of Atlanta, where his grandchildren attend an academy like the one he’s starting here, Roberts earned a law degree at Emory University. He married Marjorie, a Lakeland native whose maiden name is Hollis, in 1962. They have lived here since 1967.
GREEN TECH

Explaining what EarthLinked is about, Roberts said: “We exchange heat in the shallow earth, the upper 100 feet. Our heating pump is a refrigeration system, like simple air conditioning, but can also operate in reverse and deliver heat as needed.

“Most heat pumps use ambient air as their heat source. We use the earth, which is a much more stable temperature. Under our feet in Lakeland, it is 76 degrees year-round. That’s close to the desired temperature in a building. It varies only ever so slightly, season to season.”

As Cochran put it, “It makes a dent in pollution and global warming. To put it in a very crude way, what we do is take one unit of electricity, add three units from the earth, and deliver four into the building. An EPA (federal Environmental Protection Agency) test proved that. It was finished a year and a half ago. It took about a year.

“We produced the most efficient water heater ever tested at Florida Solar Energy Center,” Cochran said of another test. “Then we met with three Florida utilities and they all said we needed to apply it to space heating and cooling, which we did. We did demonstration projects for 10 utilities, three in Florida (Lakeland Electric, Florida Power & Light, and what is now Progress Energy) and other states.”

FAR-REACHING

“The 75 percent electric savings were verified by the EPA,” Cochran said. “We heat water for nursing homes, public housing, condos. We have product in 47 states and 16 countries produced right here in Lakeland.”

For more information, please contact Larry Everhart at The Ledger.