Honoring a keeper of kids
JUDD WILSON/Press The Kootenai County Boys and Girls Club was inducted into the Idaho Hall of Fame Tuesday. Pictured from left, Boys and Girls Club board members Val Wilcox and Sam Bishop, Idaho Hall of Fame board members Tony Stewart and Freeman Duncan, Boys and Girls Club executive director Ryan Davis, and board members Ron Nilson, Al Williams, Wes Veach, Rick Rasmussen, Randy Oaks.
Jewelz Becraft helps Luke Blassick, 8, learn how to play billiards Tuesday afternoon at Coeur d’Alene’s Boys and Girls Club. The Club was inducted into the Idaho Hall of Fame on Tuesday. (LOREN BENOIT/Press)
By BRIAN WALKER
Staff Writer
POST FALLS — Once Kootenai County residents and businesses grasped the value of the Boys and Girls Club, the excitement about the local nonprofit took off as fast as kids in a candy store.
The club, in its 11th year of running programs here, was inducted into the Idaho Hall of Fame during the Post Falls Chamber of Commerce meeting at Red Lion Templin's Hotel on Tuesday.
"It's a huge honor," said Ryan Davis, the local club's executive director since it started here. "To look at the impact that we've made in a relatively short period of time and to think that we're worthy of being inducted into the Hall of Fame is super exciting."
The club was nominated by Freeman Duncan and Tony Stewart, local board members of the Idaho Hall of Fame.
"What started with one employee now has 35 employees and an annual budget of $930,000," Duncan wrote in his nomination letter. "It's a testament of what a community can do when it pulls together for a very worthy cause."
A group of Post Falls and Coeur d'Alene parents joined together in 2004 to explore the possibility of forming a Boys and Girls Club to deal with the issue of kids coming home from school to an empty house.
The group was chartered by Boys and Girls Club of America in 2007 and hired Davis. It started programs at the Nazarene church in Post Falls in 2008.
Spurred on by a $500,000 donation by Bennett Lumber Company and land donation by the Post Falls School District, the club's Post Falls facility opened in 2012.
Coeur d'Alene businessman Duane Hagadone and his wife, Lola, donated more than $2 million toward the club's Coeur d'Alene facility on land donated by the Coeur d'Alene School District as that site opened in December 2015.
Each of the club's sites serves an average of about 300 kids during the school year. This summer the sites are handling a total of about 1,700 kids each day.
"What's been impressive is that a lot of individuals have realized the impact we have," Davis said. "We are not a federally funded agency. The community's support has given us legs to make this work."
The club has about 3,500 members.
Davis said the expansion of the Post Falls site in the future has been discussed.
The Hall of Fame has more than 200 members. Previous local inductees have included, but are not limited to, Duane Hagadone, Bob Templin, Charles and Susan Nipp, the Schneidmiller family, John McHugh, Ernie Stensgar, Pappy Boyington, Stewart and Louise Shadduck.
"To even be mentioned in this group is incredibly humbling," Davis said.