Evansville Boys and Girls Club honors its founding father

EVANSVILLE, Ind. (AP) - The boys called him Doc Smith.

It was 1954. Clarence "Doc" Smith was a young Evansville dentist, very involved in his church and loosely involved in area clubs, when he and a few other prominent Evansville men noticed something troubling in the Evansville community.

"We felt that boys in Evansville were not getting all the opportunities they could get, especially those from less prosperous families," Smith said Friday afternoon from his living room in The Village at Holiday assisted living community. "A lot of boys had nothing to do, and they were knocking around the neighborhoods doing bad things instead of doing good things. So we decided Evansville needed a Boys Club. It was not so much for recreation as it was for guidance."

Six decades later, that gem of an idea has grown into a booming club that has served generations of Evansville children.

Monday evening, the Boys & Girls Club of Evansville will honor Smith for 60 years of service to Evansville youth. It is a distinguished award for a lifetime of service, said Tonya Staup, the club's assistant executive director.

The award surprised Smith. He is unassuming about the work he's done with the club.

"There was just a need and we were trying to meet it," he told the Evansville Courier & Press (http://bit.ly/1z0L1EQ ). "I had lived over on Iowa Street and I knew there were a lot of boys that had nothing to do."

And it was slow going for many years, he added. Smith and the other original "founding fathers" of club had no idea in those first years what it would become. In fact, they weren't sure they would be able to maintain a club at all.

When the Boys Club first opened in 1957, it had no outside funding. Smith and the other board members financed their first few years of operations. They opened a club in the old Trinity School building, next to the Willard Library. Smith and the other founding fathers actually cleaned, repaired and painted the inside themselves to get it ready for the boys.

But, while it took a few years for the greater Evansville community to recognize the new club, it took neighborhood boys no time at all.

The board members enticed boys in with recreation activities, games and meals. And once inside, they did their best to help them with homework, mentor the young men, and try to show them how to be a productive adult.

Smith spent time mentoring young men who wanted to enter the medical profession, so they started calling him "Doc Smith."

Then, in 1959, the United Way agreed to help fund the club. With a stable funding source, the club began to grow. And it's been growing ever since, Smith said.

Smith happily recalls years of successes. The board hired a Boys Club executive director from an Ohio club, Robert Rooney, who instituted programs and practices that accelerated the club's growth.

They formed baseball teams and basketball teams to compete in city leagues. They had board game nights, tutoring sessions, ceramics and craft classes (which, to everyone's surprise, were a huge hit for the boys), talent shows, and much more, Smith recalls.

In 1991, the club expanded yet more to include girls, and it didn't take long for girls to flood the club, Smith said.

"So there was a need for girls too," he said.

Though Smith down plays his achievements in the club, today's club leaders say he was instrumental.

"He had this quiet, unassuming, common sense approach to issues we deal with as the board," said Mike Schiff, a current board member. "I think it's because of visionaries like Doc Smith that there truly have been thousands of young people who have had their lives changed."

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Information from: Evansville Courier & Press, http://www.courierpress.com