The most distinctive thing about Mr. Fetterman’s early years may have been his 7-inch growth spurt as a high school sophomore. It led him to become a defensive and offensive lineman on football teams at York Central High School and Albright College in Reading.

Otherwise, he was on a business path very much like his father’s — only one destined for perhaps greater success — if not for two life-shaking events. In the first, when Mr. Fetterman was near completing a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Connecticut in 1993, his 27-year-old best friend died in a car crash when on the way to pick him up for a gym workout.

“It was hard to emerge from that, because it was so sudden, and random, too,” Mr. Fetterman said. “To have this idea that when you’re that age, you can wake up in the morning, have breakfast and kiss your family goodbye and not know that you’ve got 15 minutes left before you get blasted out of this world.”

Ruminating at the time about his purpose in life prompted him to volunteer in New Haven’s Big Brothers Big Sisters program. He was matched with Nicky Santana, an 8-year-old from a low-income Puerto Rican family, whose father had died of AIDs and whose mother was terminally ill with the disease. She pleaded with Mr. Fetterman to look after her son’s schooling.

It is common for Big Brothers Big Sisters relationships to be short-term — especially if one member of the pair moves away, as Mr. Fetterman did after a year together. However, Mr. Santana credits his Big Brother with longtime advocacy and assistance that got him into a New Hampshire boarding school and Washington & Jefferson College. Mr. Fetterman provided him hope, as well as personal financial assistance, from the time of their initial encounter walking around the boy’s poverty-stricken neighborhood to buy candy.

“I get goosebumps now talking about it, what he did for me,” said Mr. Santana, now 33 and working at a New Haven nonprofit that helps people with disabilities. “He had no ties to me. He was keeping a promise to my mother, but he had no reason to do that. He was just invested in my future and helping me become a better person, like we had this mission together.”

One could say the effort Mr. Fetterman invested in that relationship foreshadowed his involvement in Braddock and politics — causes with futures that might have seemed just as bleak as Nicky Santana’s at the outset.