LOOKING BACK

Young Chang

The lone building near the Costa Mesa Historical Society, which faces

demolition at the end of July, used to be a place where boys went to

simply be boys.

Generations of them played football there. They shot hoops and even

slapped a small ball back and forth on the pingpong table.

It was where parents sent them to do typically healthy boy things --

like play sports, make friends and use work out equipment considered

modern back then -- to avoid getting in trouble doing who knows what on

the streets.

That building today is known as the Downtown Community Center. With

the city’s decision to knock it down -- recent plans call for it to be

left as vacant turf -- we thought we’d take a look back at The Boys’ Club

of the Harbor Area, which started in the building in 1941 and moved out

in the late ‘70s.

Part of the Boys’ Clubs of America, which started in 1906, the local

chapter featured facilities including a gymnasium, swimming pool and

other recreational equipment.

Former athletic director Rod MacMillian taught sports to the boys and

encouraged fathers to get involved, according to a 1956 edition of the

Costa Mesa Globe Herald.

Intramural leagues and interclub teams grew out of the organization,

and the club’s boys often became athletic stars when they performed at

their own high schools.

Longtime Costa Mesa resident Rene Scharfe remembers a whole wall

covered with the National Geographic magazines he would pore through as a

9-year old.

“They had rocks that you could cut and actually sand, and they had

pottery,” said Scharfe, a facilities technician for the Orange County

Sherriff’s Dept.

Moms as well as dads volunteered throughout the decades, selling

whatever needed to be sold at the club and rooting their kids on at

games.

As recently as last month, historical society volunteer Gladys Refakes

remembers swimming classes being held at the Downtown Community Center

for kids. It wasn’t under the auspices of the Boys’ Club, but it was

recreation.

“They had a lot of activities, for toddlers and up,” she said.

The Downtown Community Center will move into a new facility being

built next door to the existing one. But the future of what was once land

for the Boys’ Club looks, literally, empty.

* Do you know of a person, place or event that deserves a historical

Look Back? Let us know. Contact Young Chang by fax at (949) 646-4170;

e-mail at [email protected]; or mail her at c/o Daily Pilot, 330 W.

Bay St., Costa Mesa, CA 92627.