The cinderblock gem of the South End is bound for dust.
The South End Boys & Girls Club has ended its programs at 4910 S. Pine St. The property has been sold and will likely be developed as housing.
Staff members and volunteers are packing trophies and basketballs down to the former Gray Middle School, 3109 S. 60th St., where the club programs will start June 22 and run for the next year.
In fall 2010, if construction goes as planned, they’ll move to the new Donald G. Topping HOPE Center next to the new Gray Middle School.
The HOPE Center will have great gyms, spiffy computers, a terrific kitchen, plus meeting rooms. The kids will be at the heart of this comprehensive community asset.
That’s grand progress for the hundreds of kids growing into decent adults with the help of the Boys & Girls Club.
But it’s bittersweet for the thousands of adults who came through the old South End club. If ever a building embodied the working spirit of Tacoma, it’s that loveworn center that backs up against Tacoma Cemetery.
Parents in South Tacoma’s industrial neighborhoods knew their kids needed a place to go for sports and supervision after school. They formed the Boys Club’s original board in 1944. The land, plenty for ball fields and playgrounds, was a gift. They sold enough of the property to build the club, which opened in 1954 with Don Danielson as its first director.
“All of us looked at Danielson and the volunteer coaches, and saw them giving back and building,” said Rick Guild, president and CEO of Boys & Girls Clubs of South Puget Sound.
He’s one of the dozens of adults who don’t like to think of what they would have become without Danielson’s decency and leadership. He ran a club where, if you worked and played hard and fair, you were equal to anyone.
“It didn’t matter who your parents were,” Guild said. “It didn’t matter whether you had Keds or J.C. Penney tennis shoes.”
It didn’t matter if you had neither.
There was a kid named Larry, Guild said, who had only a pair of beat-up cowboy boots.
“He was one of the fastest guys I ever knew, Guild said. “He would run in cowboy boots and beat everybody. When he got serious, he would take them off and run in his bare feet.”
Young athletes thrived at the club. Ray Horton started there, starred at the University of Washington and earned a Super Bowl ring with the Dallas Cowboys. Bobby Moore, whom the world knows as Ahmad Rashad, is an alumnus.
So is Ron Cey, who played in the World Series with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Young scholars prospered as well. John McCarthy now serves as a Pierce County Superior Court judge. The three Burmeister boys, Tom, Al and Ed, went into education. Between the three of them, they’ve taught for a combined 90 years.
Danielson taught responsibility. If you worked behind the counter, you showed up on time and did the job well. Danielson expected that. And plenty of other kids wanted the chance to shine if you did not.
In the early 1960s, the parents decided their kids needed a pool.
So they built it. They raised the money. They solicited donated materials. They – the electricians, the mechanics, the carpenters, the mud and cement guys – built it.
Rashaun Renggli swam to national competition in the pool in the 1990s, a decade after the club admitted girls. An athlete and a scholar, she also won first place nationally with an essay on her coach, Judy Jones.
Jones, the last of the South End Club directors, said young people are coming back one more time to see the shabby building and the people who made it shine.
Samantha Beechie, the 2004 state winner of Boys & Girls Club Youth of the Year, hugged her and cried. So did this year’s winner, Christney Kpodo, who grew up poor and is bound for college.
One faded gem of a building.
So many bright lives.
Kathleen Merryman: 253-597-8677
kathleen.merryman@thenewstribune.com
Club events
South End Boys & Girls Club, 4910 S. Pine St., will hold two evenings of celebrations:
June 26, 6 to 9 p.m. – Hors d’oeuvres, cash bar and a souvenir; $10 per person.
June 27, 6 to 11 p.m. – Dinner and dancing, cash bar and a souvenir; $40 per person.
Information: 253-502-4642.
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