BY JOHN JOHNSTON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Willie Jones sits on a slab of concrete, his back to a chain link fence. It encloses the rectangular grass field at the Max C. Fleischmann Boys & Girls Club in Avondale.
Mr. Jones is a 37-year-old Cincinnati firefighter, a married father of four children ages 7 to 16, and a volunteer for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Cincinnati. He's waiting for the football team he coaches, a group of 13-year-old boys named the Warriors.
"That building right there," he says, pointing to a brick, three-story apartment on the other side of the fence. "I lived in that brick building right there.
"This," he says of the Fleischmann club, "is where I got my start. This is where I found my mentors."
Now he is trying to be one. And by all accounts, doing a good job. Of 100,000 Boys & Girls Club volunteers nationally, Willie Jones was one of 30 -- one from each Major League Baseball market -- named to the MasterCard All-Star Team of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. He was honored in July at the All-Star Game in Denver.
Later this month, the field of 30 volunteers will be narrowed to six (one from each baseball division). A volunteer of the year will be named Oct. 1 and will be honored during Game 3 of the World Series.
Among the factors the judges consider is a volunteer's length of commitment, number of children affected and personal obstacles overcome.
Mr. Jones' family moved into the brick apartment building when he was 8. Five kids. One parent. His mother worked two jobs. His oldest sister also worked and helped raise him. He never knew his father. His mother saw he needed something constructive to do, so she sent him to Fleischmann. He found it a welcoming place. The men he met there helped shape his life.
He grew up, got married, began raising a family, became a firefighter. About seven years ago, when his oldest son started playing basketball at Fleischmann, Mr. Jones accompanied him to a practice.
"I saw the kids here. A lot of them had the basic needs and wants that I had when I was here. They need to feel they have someone that listens to them, and that what they think and what they want matters. They more or less pulled me back in."
He started coaching. Basketball, then football, too.
Mr. Jones, who still lives in Avondale, a three-minute drive from the club, says youth in the neighborhood face more pressures than when he was growing up. Drugs have always been a problem, but today kids are having sex earlier; gangs are prevalent; arguments aren't settled with fists, but with guns.
As a firefighter assigned to Squad 52, the city's heavy rescue unit, he sees what some young people are up against. His job takes him into homes where parents have disciplined kids by burning them with cigarettes; where a child falls from a second-floor window while a parent lies in a drug-induced stupor; where kids 9, 10 and 11 years old brandish guns.
"I can deal with what happens to adults, because a lot of it, they put themselves in that position. But most of the time, the kids are innocent. They're looking for someone to lead and guide them."
The coaches who guide the Warriors football team include a police officer, an electrician, an athletic director and a firefighter. When it's time for practice, Mr. Jones walks among the boys as they stretch.
"Guys, understand something," he shouts. "You mess up at home, your parents are going to take you off the team. You understand that?"
"Yes, sir!" they yell.
"School has started. You mess up in school, you are off the team. Is that understood?"
"Yes, sir!"
Is Willie Jones here because he cares? Yes, sir.
To volunteer
The Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Cincinnati is a United Way agency that serves more than 8,000 children a year, primarily low-income and at-risk youth ages 6-18. The agency operates clubs in Newport, Covington, Lower Price Hill, Over-the-Rhine and Avondale.
For information about volunteering, call 421-8909.
