Long after he resigned as president of the University of Georgia, Charles Knapp was passing through Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. A young man stared at him and then said, "Didn't you used to be somebody?"

"I still am somebody," Knapp replied with a laugh.

1997 file photo (ENLARGE)

Charles Knapp, then UGA president, attends the June 1997 graduation. Behind him is Billy Payne, who led the drive to bring the Olympics to Atlanta.

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Since he left UGA years ago, Knapp has held jobs that have taken him from Colorado to Washington and back to Atlanta, with stops in New Orleans, where he taught at Tulane University.

These days, Knapp will talk about national politics, problems and successes in public education, trends in higher education and economic theory. He'll tell you his architect wife, Lynne, is retired and their daughter, Amanda, is happily married and living in Cleveland.

But mention UGA, and Knapp clams up. He won't comment publicly on the university or President Michael Adams. Not a word.

The Knapps left Athens in 1997. "After 10 years, it was time to give the institution some new leadership, and for me to do something different," Knapp said.

He took over the Aspen Institute, an international nonprofit organization that fosters dialogue and leadership. But the Knapps were homesick. Having spent 10 years in Athens and in their house in the North Georgia mountains, the couple found they felt more at home in Georgia than anywhere. They wanted to live here permanently.

To that end, Knapp left Aspen, Colo., and took a job in the Atlanta office of Heidrick and Struggles, an executive search firm. He traveled the world, helping to recruit college and university presidents. The schedule wore on him.

"I was eating lunch with Tom Cousins and whining about how I was living on planes," said Knapp, 61. "Tom had helped recruit me to UGA from Tulane, and he asked me to come to work for the Cousins Family Foundation. Which I did."

Knapp began doing educational programming for the foundation. He later become chairman of the board of the East Lake Foundation. It helped to transform a dangerous, struggling Atlanta neighborhood into an area with a charter school, affordable housing and recreational opportunities. They are making the East Lake success into a national model for other communities.

Knapp also chaired the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce. He was told that the report, which called for a major overhaul of American education, "managed to offend every educational constituency in America, which I viewed as a compliment," he said.

In addition to his other responsibilities, Knapp teaches on an adjunct basis in UGA's Institute of Higher Education.

"My latest course was on the university presidency," he said. "How it's changed over the past 100 years. We looked at all the things I should have read before I became UGA's president."