Michael Paul Williams
We'd converge from various walks of life -- firefighters, factory shift workers, attorneys and pro athletes -- for hotly contested games of basketball at the Downtown Y.
"Who's got next?" was the question of the lunch hour. Lose once in the packed gym, and you might as well head elsewhere at the YMCA to complete your workout.
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For decades, the Y-Guys -- some of them former high school and college stars, at least one a longtime player in the National Basketball Association -- competed against each other and Father Time during intense full-court games in the sweltering gym.
"It goes way back to my first year in the league," said Johnny Newman, the former University of Richmond star who spent 16 seasons in the NBA. "I came back, I definitely wanted to play with some college-level players ... and that was one of the places in the city that had the best talent and the experienced players."
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Not everyone fit Newman's description -- here, I raise my hand. But you shoot hoops with this group over a span of two, three or four decades, and you learn about more than basketball. You see fathers bringing their children to the gym, and watch those children blossom, and you gain a greater perspective of what's real and what's a game.
But Father Time is undefeated.
Age, cranky joints (hand raised again) and the pandemic eroded or ended the hoop dreams of this core group of regulars. But in recent years, we've gotten together every few months for lunch and fellowship.
"I didn't see that coming," said Y-Guy James "Poo" Jackson. "That was all John Waller."
Waller, a Virginia Union University basketball standout during the 1970s, organizes the lunch gatherings every few months at the Crafty Crab restaurant on Nine Mile Road, including a heavily attended pre-Thanksgiving reunion.
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"Every time he does it, guys show up," said Jackson, who hooped at Armstrong High School and Fayetteville State University, where he's in the Athletics Hall of Fame. "We were bitter competitors at that time, but now it's, 'Glad to see you, glad that you're alright.'"
Waller, 69, said the depletion of the Y-Guys ranks compelled him to act.
"We lost a couple of people. ... We're getting older," Waller said Thursday. "We wanted to fellowship because we're losing our people."
"Even though we were playing against each other, we developed friendships and we generally cared about each other," he said. He started the fellowships out of a desire "to keep the friendship and camaraderie going."
And now, the group is taking its basketball post-season to another level as it launches an annual giving campaign, thanks to his outreach to former Y-Guy Alex McMurtrie Jr., a lawyer and former member of the House of Delegates.
Waller, a retired Philip Morris USA employee, had been asking McMurtrie to attend one of the Y-Guy reunions for months, McMurtrie recalled Friday.
McMurtrie, 89, was a member of a state Catholic championship basketball team at Cathedral High School and played on the freshman hoops squad at Notre Dame. I recall him as a regular at lunchtime Y games during the 1980s.
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"Waller kept calling me and said, 'The guys would like to see you,'" McMurtrie recalled Friday. He relented earlier this year, and was moved by what he saw.
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"I said to John, 'You've got some strength here. Maybe we need to band together for some common good.'" McMurtrie began fundraising. A committee of Y-Guys agreed to donate $5,000 apiece to the Henrico Police Athletic League and Young Kings and Young Queens in Action, a mentoring group that Jackson works with at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School.
"This giving-back thing, I think it's going to take it to a whole 'nother level," Jackson said of the Y-Guys.
Newman, the president and a founding member of Henrico PAL, said the programs were chosen because they both deal with youth, "and we understand from both organizations that we'll get the measurables that we're looking for to make sure that our dollars are impactful."
He said the organization's after-school and summer programs serve 4,000 youths a year. Henrico PAL operates out of Baker, Dumbarton, Harvie and Pinchbeck elementary schools, with its main office at the former Mathematics and Science Center in the Central Gardens community of eastern Henrico County.
Newman and others say these gifts are the first but won't be the last for the Y-Guys.
"The Y is where I started really giving back to communities," Newman said, dating back to when he would sneak into the Danville YMCA to play ball as a ninth grader. Observing him teaching kids how to play basketball, that Y gave him a membership so that he might formally do that work.
Young Kings and Young Queens in Action operates out of Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School, the only middle school in Richmond's Church Hill.
"We get them in the sixth grade and keep them to the eighth grade," Jackson said. It pulls members from Church Hill's elementary schools and seeks to keep them involved through high school at Armstrong. It recently started a partnership with Virginia State University, he said.
"Our main thing is exposure. We want to take them places they've never been. There are places outside their neighborhood," he said. Last year, the group visited the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington. A goal this spring is to take the group to Montgomery, Alabama, to learn more about the life of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Jackson said.
MLK Middle School sits in the middle of Mosby Court. The group -- 20 boys and 20 girls -- draws its enrollment largely from the East End's public housing communities. The youngsters know suicide, homicide and hunger too well. "When we meet with them, we feed them, because a lot of them have got food insecurities at home," Jackson said.
"We check grades, behavior, attendance," Jackson said, adding that "unchecked behavior is unchanged behavior." Their behavior determines whether the members get to join what Jackson called the group's "traveling squad."
As far as his involvement in Young Kings and Young Queens in Action, "They did not ask me to come. I asked them to come. I felt like I need to be in it. We've got to help these young guys. ... If not us, who?"
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Jackson became a regular at the Downtown Y around 1982.
"That was probably the best game in town at that time," he said.
Peak times for whole-court basketball runs were 6 a.m., lunchtime and evenings. Jackson joked that he appreciated the early morning games because it was too early to argue.
But as Waller recounts it, even amid the fierce on-court competition, the Y-Guys were mentoring all along.
He recalled the guys taking one of the younger players under their wing. That young man, Mike'l Simms, would play basketball for the Virginia Commonwealth University Rams.
"His mom came to the Y one day and shook everyone's hand and thanked us for keeping him off the streets," Waller recalled. "There was a lot of negativity out there, and we wanted to be positive, especially to the young men."
The group knew all along who's got next. It's work they can continue to support in their basketball post-season.
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Boys meet Frank Sinatra.
VHBG VHBG From the Archives: 170 years of memories and the journey to tell the story of the Virginia Home for Boys and Girls
Today a special guest post by Christopher Campbell, the Program Development Manager/Admissions for the Virginia Home for Boys and Girls. The organization's celebration of 170 years in existence has sent Christopher on a fascinating journey to tell the story of VHBG.
By Christopher Campbell
170-Years of history, where do I even begin, what direction do I head and what to do once I get there?
Virginia Home for Boys and Girls (VHBG) was founded in 1846 under the name, Richmond Male Orphan Society. It was formed stemming from a desperate need to house and raise orphan boys in the Richmond, VA area. At the time, there was a Female Humane Society but not one for boys.
The story goes that on one particularly cold evening a "small" orphan boy knocked on the door of the Female Humane Society, today's Memorial Foundation for Children and the headmistress of the time answered the door and was asked by the boy for pennies. The thought of this boy, out on the streets of Richmond haunted the headmistress' thoughts. Hers was a home for girls; surely there should be a home for boys too? And from this simple ask and the headmistress' desire to help, Virginia Home for Boys and Girls got its start.
Over the following 170-years, VHBG underwent many changes to meet the needs of the surrounding community. Changes in location, leadership, name and the demographic of the child served but never has VHBG swayed away from the belief that every child deserved a sense of normalcy and family.
Because of the primary focus of VHBG, maintaining or keeping up with all the historic accounts/stories and memorabilia was never the focus, more of an afterthought when preparing for celebrations or milestones. Sadly, I am certain that because of this, much was lost along the way.
When I set out to put some rhyme or reason to the story and memorabilia I had no idea what a task it would become. My initial focus was gathering up all the boxes, scrapbooks, photographs and paintings I could find here on our 30+ acre campus comprised of several building.
At this point I don't believe there is a building, room, closet, shed or drawer I haven't been in. And through my sifting around, I found items that no one even knew existed and items such as trophies from the 1930s that Alumni thought to be long lost.
Let me back up a bit to say, that I am not a writer, curator or historian. My original intent in doing this research was to bring light to and celebrate 170-years of social impact. But what I learned as a result was that I loved the history of VHBG and the part VHBG played in Richmond's and Virginia's history.
Through my research at the Virginia Historical Society, which has a lot of VHBG records in their archive, I found that some of Richmond's most prominent families were supporters of VHBG from the very beginning. In fact, names like 'Davenport', from today's Davenport Financial, and 'Minor' from today's Owens and Minor were the names of men listed as part of VHBG's first Board of Directors. We had youth who left us for the Civil War and one in particular who was apprenticed as a gunsmith who lost his life in battle as one of Richmond's finest sharpshooters.
The more I researched, the more I came to realize that the story of VHBG is also a story of Richmond! I found myself reading original Board minutes that took account of cigars rolled and matchbooks sold. Yep, VHBG owned and operated a tobacco company for a while too! The VHBG even had their own newspaper and printing press. The Male Orphan Messenger, a news publication, was written, printed and sold by VHBG to raise money for the home.
We at VHBG also are very fortunate to have living history in the way of Alumni who once lived in tour group homes or attended our school. We have also continued contact with long tenured and impactful staff members who have such incredible stories to tell. This past year, I had the distinct pleasure of meeting "Mom and Pop" Hazelgrove who were the co-superintendents starting in 1961 and served in that position for over 10 years.
One of the great mysteries of VHBG is Mary "Mimi" Cunningham. Mary was the second wife of one of VHBG's Superintendents, J. R. Gill, who later became an officer in the Planter's National Bank. After Mr. Gill's death in 1885, Mary was unanimously voted as the new superintendent. She was one of the most philanthropic leaders VHBG has ever seen. For instance, she once hand-wrote over 1800 Christmas Cards to "friends and family" of VHBG in an effort to raise money.
Despite her long tenure and expansive efforts on VHBG's behalf, there isn't one picture or painting of Mary to be found. Even an expansive search of the internet reveals nothing. While we have pictures and paintings of previous leaders going back to the late 1800s, nothing seems to have remained on Mary Cunningham.
Which brings me to this inquiry...
If by chance you have information on Mary, I would love to know more and find a way to immortalize her profound work.
Our efforts to memorialize the astounding 170 years of the VHBG continue as we search through records all over Richmond to fill in the gaps of the rich historical narrative of our organization. With continued support from the community, VHBG will be in existence for future generations. As the unofficial curator of VHBG's history, I will continue to make rhyme and reason to whatever is discovered, not to mention the history we continue to make!
If anyone has particular interest in VHBG's history, stories to tell, memorabilia to show, ideas or the means to help best preserve our items, please do not hesitate to reach out to me at (804) 270-6566 ext. 135 or [email protected]. Also, if anyone would like information on ways to become involved with VHBG, please visit our site at WWW.VHBG.ORG and remember to "like" us on Facebook.
VHBG VHBG VHBG VHBG VHBG VHBG VHBG VHBG
Boys meet Frank Sinatra.
VHBG VHBG
Michael Paul Williams
(804) 649-6815
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