Irony is Bittersweet….

 

Picture this….it was a Thursday afternoon in August 2000.  I was working for the Gilbert Branch as a teen outreach coordinator and I received an email (email was so new and cool still to me).  The email was a job posting for a new Boys & Girls Club that was going to open on the ASU East Campus and they were looking for a site supervisor. 

I interviewed for the job (I remember being so nervous!) and then I found out I was hired!  I still have the congratulations email dated September 8, 2000. 

Congratulations to Mindy Hanrahan who is the new Site Director at the soon to be opened Williams Campus Branch.  Mindy has been employeed with the Boys & Girls Club for ten years in a variety of positions, most recently as Site Supervisor at the Gilbert East site, as well as Outreach Coordinator at the Gilbert Branch.  We plan on hiring the parttime staff within the next two weeks, renovating the existing former teen center with great assistance from the Intel Corporation, and opening for Kids on Monday Oct. 2.  Branch staff can expect a call for donations of spare supplies and equipment as we prepare the building for the 350+ youth who live on campus.  More information to come.  Please feel free to congratulate Mindy on her new position.

I was so excited!  It was a dream of mine to open a Club.  To put my spin on things….I wanted colorful walls, fun kid friendly equipment and a place where kids felt they wanted to be. 

So my dream came true.  And it was magnificent.  And I was happy. 

Fast forward to December 2006.  Opportunity to move to the Chandler Club----big fears.  “It’s in the middle of a gang zone”.  But I had this other dream.  This dream to build a new club.  To choose where rooms would be and again, to make a fun, kid friendly place where kids and teens felt they wanted to be.

 

So I moved….and broke up a few fights (all 4”9 of me) and I realized this was where I needed to be.  And we began building this dream club of mine……

Now here comes the Irony part……

Friday, August 7, 2009, the Williams Campus Branch, my baby club, the club I opened and loved, closed after 9 years of service to the community.  

It feels unnatural for a Club to close…..it doesn’t happen.  And I walked into that place that I created and I cried.  Cried for the girl I use to be who’s biggest dream was to paint the walls in bright colors.  For the hundreds of kids who entered through those doors who still came to the Club and for the some that grew up and moved on.    So that’s the bitter.

And the Sweet part is that yesterday, my old Clubhouse in Chandler, the one we’ve been working so hard to empty, was demolished to make room for this new building.  A building that hundreds of kids will enter everyday.  A building that has the brightly colored walls I asked for and 32,000 sq feet of space for kids to run and play and grow. 

I am so happy and grateful to have a new Club for my kids.  They deserve it. 

And my heart literally aches in my chest for the kids who’s Clubhouse just closed.  Don’t they deserve it too?