Wednesday, September 06, 2000

English Woods: 'Every community should have a rec'

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One center, one director, all about the community

By Reid Forgrave
The Cincinnati Enquirer

        This was Paul Brondhaver's moment of reckoning.

        A 9-year-old boy had thrown a rock at a police cruiser. In the back of the cop car, the cuffed and crying boy waited for police to haul him away.

        Pointing at the Cincinnati Recreation Commission logo on his green T-shirt, Mr. Brondhaver hurried to the cruiser outside the English Woods Community Center in one of Cincinnati's poorest neighborhoods.

Paul Brondhaver, director of the English Woods Community Center, takes some of the younger English Woods residents to The Beach waterpark. (Enquirer photo) | ZOOM |

        About 30 people had surrounded the police car, and more watched from their doorsteps.

        They were anxious to see if Mr. Brondhaver, who had taken the job as center director only two months earlier and was still feeling his way around the tough West Side area, had the right stuff to be a neighborhood leader — or if he was just another white boy on their turf.

        On that April day, Mr. Brondhaver asked what the officer was going to do with the stone-thrower.

        “If we can't find his parents, we're going to have to take him to 2020,” the officer replied, using the slang term for the juvenile detention center.

        Mr. Brondhaver offered instead to talk to the boy's grandmother. He knew the child's mother was in drug rehab.

        The officer didn't hesitate. He let the 32-year-old community center director take the boy. Neighbors applauded raucously, and Mr. Brondhaver's heart soared as the child hugged him.

        “They don't forget that,” he says now, four months later.
       

Reaching out
        Community centers are at the heart of the CRC. Some have gymnasiums, swimming pools, computers and pool tables. Others — like English Woods — have just a few rooms with a couple of computers and shrunken basketball courts. The CRC also operates 21 senior centers, seven golf courses, and 46 pools, some of them attached to community centers.

        English Woods, though one of the smallest of the 29 centers run by the award-winning CRC, is among the top 10 needy neighborhoods in Cincinnati that would benefit most from community outreach programs, according to a recent study ranking 48 neighborhoods conducted by four city social service groups.

        Mr. Brondhaver is just doing what many of CRC's community center staffers do on a daily basis: acting as a nurturing parent for city youths.

From left, Diondra Hill, 10; Amber Worrell, 7; Alfonzo Upshaw, 8; and Shaunise Saunders, 9, play tetherball at the English Woods Community Center. (Enquirer photo) | ZOOM |

        “If I never met Paul this summer, I would be up in English Woods, doing nothing, being a kid,” says Andrew Mathis, 17, a basketball player at Western Hills High School. “Probably out on the streets a lot.”

        Instead, he has been a regular on Mr. Brondhaver's nearly daily community center outings — to the Hamilton County Fair, camping, hiking in nature preserves — and he has volunteered with Mr. Brondhaver as a softball coach.

        “These are the streetest kids you'll ever see,” Mr. Brondhaver says. “If someone doesn't reach into this community and pull the kids out of the water, they're going to drown. They're going to drown in drugs. They're going to drown in violence. They're screaming for help, but they don't want to ask for it.”

        Nationally, Cincinnati's recreation commission is one of the best at helping these kids. It won the top award in 1997 from the National Recreation and Park Association for its commitment and service to the city and its communities.
       

Opening the door
        “When you enter into a community center, it's like a cocoon,” says CRC administrator Mike Thomas. “Each of the centers, no matter how rough the surrounding community, is a safe place.”

        And this effect is substantial from the very beginning.

        “The minute a recreation center opens its doors, crime goes down,” says CRC director Wayne Bain, director of McKie Community Center in Northside.

Director Paul Brondhaver leads his group from English Woods around at the Hamilton County Fair. (Enquirer photo) | ZOOM |

        Youth crime was down 46 percent in North Fairmount a year after CRC began its programs there, records from Cincinnati police show. In Winton Hills, youth crime dropped 31 percent six months after the center opened.

        “The more kids learning organized sports and learning discipline, the less crime there is,” says Dan Willis, English Woods' neighborhood officer. “It keeps them away from stuff. A lot of the kids, they want to belong to something, whether it's positive or negative. They all take pride in the community centers.”
       

The helping hand
        Money was tight during Mr. Brondhaver's childhood. His father was a Queen City Metro bus driver, waking at 4:30 a.m. and not returning until past dinner time. Mr. Brondhaver's mother raised him and two siblings in a mobile home in the country.

        When he was 15, Mr. Brondhaver's parents divorced, and Mr. Brondhaver threw himself into working. His first job was lifeguarding at Krueck Community Center in Clifton.

        The New Richmond High School graduate has never lived within the city proper — he now resides in Anderson Township — but every working day of his life has been within Cincinnati city limits.

        A 1991 graduate of the University of Cincinnati, Mr. Brondhaver was named one of 10 Outstanding Young Cincinnatians in 2000 by the Greater Cincinnati Jaycees for his service to the community through CRC.

FIRST ON THE FIELD

The kids from English Woods Community Center were among the first to play football on the turf at the Bengals' new practice field next to Paul Brown Stadium.   What are they going to do next?   They're going to Disney World — that is, if they win the Cincinnati Recreation Commission's NFL Flag Football tournament, to be held the weekend of Sept. 16.   Every NFL city has an NFL Flag Football program, but only six will compete to go to Orlando — one of those cities being Cincinnati. Forty-six CRC teams, made up of about 600 boys and girls ages 6-15, will compete to go to Disney.   The flag football program — funded by charitable donations by NFL players — is free for the city kids and has grown from 60 participants in 1996 to 1,200 this year.

        Though he is married to Lisa, a part-time nurse at Children's Hospital, and has a 2-year-old daughter, Morgan; a 6-year-old son, Tanner; and a baby due in December, Mr. Brondhaver works an average of 80 hours a week among four jobs and the Ohio National Guard. About 50 hours are spent at English Woods.

        Breaking barriers at English Woods — he moved there after a decade at Clifton's community center — was one of the toughest parts for the rural Clermont County man. People were suspicious and cautious be cause he wasn't one of them.

        “At first I was a little bit skeptical,” says Yvette Chambers, an English Woods resident whose two sons are regulars at the community center. “I was wondering who this guy was that was taking the kids on all these trips. I had to meet him first, but when I did I could tell he is a good guy.”
       

Not as visible
        English Woods, located on Sutter Road about 2 miles west of the Hopple Street exit on Interstate 75, is hidden from the rest of Cincinnati.

        The predominantly African-American neighborhood doesn't have the visibility, for example, that Over-the-Rhine has near downtown.

        A high-rise public-housing complex in English Woods houses senior citizens, many of whom fear coming out after dark. Public housing lines the three-block neighborhood of 3,000 residents, most of whom pay $25 a month to Metropolitan Housing for rent.

        Mr. Brondhaver's office is small, one of three rooms in a red brick community center building that looks more like a garage than a teen hangout.

        And though he hasn't yet been here a year, it's amazing how the only truck-driving white boy on the block fits in.

        “Wasssssuuuuuuupppp!” Mr. Brondhaver shouts to kids walking into his office, mimicking the popular Budweiser commercial.

        But he also loves to upset the balance, to take the kids out of their element. They go canoeing at East Fork State Park, camping in rural Ohio and, of course, to the Hamilton County Fair.

        “Look, those are some real farmers right there!” Mr. Brondhaver said to the eight kids herded around him at the fair this summer.

        Most of the kids had never seen farm animals in the flesh before.

        “Where I grew up, all my buddies were farmers, 4-H kids,” Mr. Brondhaver told them.

        The kids covered their noses with their shirts, grossed out by the smell of animals. Thirteen-year-old Kenny, the teen council president at English Woods, threw up when the smell of cow manure overwhelmed him.
       

Needing more
        What gets to Mr. Brondhaver the most is the disparity in community centers' budgets.

        The tiny English Woods center, where basketball hoops are feet from the ceiling and the office doubles as a teen lounge, gets far less of the CRC budget than a larger center in a higher income area.

        Staff consists of two full-timers and anyone who can work for free. They have their choice of hours: The center is open 8 a.m.-8 p.m. weekdays during the summer, 1 p.m.-9 p.m. during the school year, and occasionally on weekends, too.

        English Woods gets $80,000 of CRC's $24.7 million annual budget. Individual center's budgets are determined by square footage and community participation.

        Mr. Brondhaver is pushing CRC officials to build a big ger center. But he knows the money isn't there — and that English Woods must wait its turn. College Hill is next in line for a new center.

        Officer Willis just wishes the center was as big as the Millvale Community Center a couple of miles away in South Cumminsville.

        “You'd feel the shock waves even in the high schools because the kids start in the rec centers with sports then move on up,” he said.

        In the Millvale center — also in a public housing area riddled with crime — the community center has the largest indoor basketball court in the city, two boxing rings, an Olympic-sized pool outside, a computer room with 17 Internet-access terminals, a library, a weightlifting room, an aerobics area and a teen lounge about the size of English Woods' basketball court.

        But Mr. Brondhaver's center is coping and hoping.

        “A lot of these teen-agers are selling drugs,” resident Ms. Chambers says. “Those kids aren't going to community center activities. (My son) Kenny's 13, and I don't want him to be influenced by that stuff.

        “Every community should have a rec in it, and someone that cares about the kids,” she continued. “They need somebody up there like Paul.”
       
       

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