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Heritage YMCA Group History Aurora Family YMCA History The Naperville Area YMCA History YMCA Worldwide History The YMCA has touched us all! Did you know… (thanks to information supplied by the YMCA of the USA) Collectively, YMCAs are the largest not-for-profit community service organizations in America. Each YMCA is a charitable not-for-profit, qualifying under Section 501(c)(3) of the U.S. Tax Code.  Each is independent.  YMCAs are required by the national constitution to pay annual dues, to refrain from discrimination and to support the YMCA mission.  All other decisions are local, including programs offered, staffing and style of operation.  The national office, called YMCA of the USA, is headquartered in Chicago with more than 340 employees who serve member associations. In the average YMCA, a volunteer board sets policy for its executive, who manages the operation of the YMCA with staff and volunteer leaders. YMCAs are at work in more than 120 countries around the world, serving more than 30 million people.  Like other national YMCA movements, the YMCA of the USA is a member of the World Alliance of YMCAs, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland The YMCA was founded in London, England, in 1844 by George Williams and a dozen or so friends who lived and worked as clerks in a drapery--a forerunner of dry-goods and department stores. Their goal was to save fellow live-in clerks from the wicked life on the London streets. The first members were evangelical Protestants who prayed and studied the Bible as an alternative to vice. The Y has always been nonsectarian and today accepts those of all faiths at all levels of the organization, despite its unchanging name, the Young Men's Christian Association. Over 155 Years Young The first U.S. YMCA started in Boston in 1851, the work of Thomas Sullivan, a retired sea captain who was a lay missionary. Ys spread fast and soon were serving boys and older men as well as young men. Although 5,145 women worked in YMCA military canteens in World War I, it wasn't until after World War II that women and girls were admitted to full membership and participation in the U.S. YMCAs. (Although the Naperville YMCA began allowing women to use facilities in November, 1911).  Today half of all YMCA constituents and staff members are women. Also, half of the Y's constituents are 18 or under. YMCA staff members played a key role in the development of the Boy Scouts of America. After Lord S.S. Baden-Powell and others started Scouting in 1897 in Britain, it spread to America, and many YMCAs here had Boy Scout programs around the turn of the century. In June, 1910, a temporary national headquarters for the Boy Scouts was housed in a YMCA office in New York City. The first National Council office of the Boy Scouts of America was opened in New York City in 1911. Luther  Gulick, who, with his wife, Charlotte, started Camp Fire Girls (see the next item), was on the first board of directors for the Boy Scouts of America - and was instrumental in hiring James West, who was the first scouting professional. Ties to the YMCA continued for some time after 1910. That year, Lord Baden-Powell and others held the first training conference for Scout leaders, the Scout Master's Training School, at the Silver Bay Association, which was well known for hosting retreats and meetings for the leaders of the YMCA movement (the YWCA and other organizations also used Silver Bay for similar purposes). These Scout Master's Training Schools continued for some years. In 1985, on the occasion of their 75th anniversary, a plaque first given in 1947 was rededicated at Silver Bay by the Boy Scouts of America, in honor of its role in founding of Scouting in America. The Camp Fire Girls (now Camp Fire Boys and Girls) were founded in 1910 through the joint efforts of Luther Gulick, M.D., and his wife, Charlotte. Gulick was already well known for his work in the YMCA, his understanding of the whole person leading to his design of the YMCA's inverted triangle, one side each for spirit, mind, and body. Busy with his existing commitments, Gulick did not want to take on the task of forming another organization. He did, however, advise others on the organization of the Thetford Girls, the forerunner of the Camp Fire Girls. Mrs. Gulick by then had become interested in the Thetford Girls and was inspired to name their first camp, at Sebago Lake, Me., Camp WoHeLo, from the first two letters of the words Work, Health, and Love. She saw them as forming an upright triangle, which she pictured superimposed over the Y's symbol to make a star. The United Service Organizations, better known as the USO, was created in October, 1940, as a joint effort by the YMCA, YWCA, National Catholic Community Service, National Jewish Welfare Board, Traveler's Aid Association, and the Salvation Army. These organizations, like the YMCA, had long histories of helping servicemen and noncombatants in the nation's wars, but the scale of mobilization needed as America prepared for World War II was far beyond the scope of any one organization. The only way to deal effectively with the needs of the hundreds of thousands of young men being drafted was to combine and coordinate efforts. In January, 1941, USO leaders met with President Roosevelt and various military leaders. In settling a dispute between which areas of the USO's activities would be controlled by the military and which by the civilians, Roosevelt ordered that the private organizations would handle the recreation services and the government would put up the buildings and put the USO name on the outside. The Peace Corps, founded in 1961 by order of President Kennedy, was patterned after the YMCA’s program of World Service Workers, which had started in the 1880s. The student Ys of that era included as members John Mott and Robert Wilder, who founded the Student Volunteer Movement in 1888. Toastmasters International was invented in 1903 as an older youth public speaking program by Ralph C. Smedley, education director of the Bloomington (IL) YMCA. Smedley realized that older boys visiting the Y needed training in communication skills. He arrived at the name The Toastmasters Club because meetings resembled a series of banquet toasts. Gideons International was formed on July 1, 1899, at the YMCA in Janesville, WI, by three men (Nicholson, Hill and Knights) who had come up with the idea a few months earlier. The Gideons were a group of Christian commercial travelers who were to evangelize as they went around the country on business. To that end, Gideons would leave Bibles in the rooms in which they had stayed. Camping has been part of YMCA programming for over a century. The claim for a YMCA first in camping, however, must be worded carefully, since the YMCA did not invent camping in 1885, and Sumner Dudley did not lead the first YMCA camping program. What YMCAs can claim is having founded the first continuously used camp. The first school camp was started in 1861 by William Gunn, and Gunn camps became well known.     Volleyball was invented at the Holyoke YMCA (Mass.) in 1895 by William Morgan, an instructor at the Y who felt that basketball was too strenuous for businessmen. Morgan blended elements of basketball, tennis and handball into the game and called it "mintonette." The name "volleyball" was first used in 1896 during an exhibition at the International YMCA Training School in Springfield, Mass., to better describe how the ball went back and forth over the net. In 1922, YMCAs held their first national championship in the game. This became the U.S. Open in 1924, when non-YMCA teams were permitted to compete.     Softball was given its name by motion of Walter Hakanson of the Denver YMCA in 1926 at a meeting of the Colorado Amateur Softball Association (CASA), itself a result of YMCA staff efforts. Softball had been played for many years prior to 1926, under such names as kittenball, softball and even sissyball. In 1926, however, the YMCA state secretary, Homer Hoisington, noticed both the sport’s popularity and its need for standardized rules. After a gathering of interested parties, the CASA was formed and Hakanson moved to settle on the name softball for the game. The motion carried, and the name softball became accepted nationwide. Shortly thereafter, the Denver YMCA adopted a declaration of principles for softball, adhering to non-commercialized recreation open to all ages and races and demanding good sportsmanship. When the Amateur Softball Association of America was formed in 1933, the Denver YMCA team represented Colorado in its first national tournament, held in Chicago.     Professional Football began at a YMCA. In 1895, in Latrobe, Pa., John Brailer was paid $10 plus expenses by the local YMCA to replace the injured quarterback on their team. Years later, however, Pudge Heffelfinger claimed that he was secretly paid to play for the Allegheny Athletic Association in 1892. The National Football League elected to go with Pudge’s version of events. Father’s Day in its present form was created at a meeting at the Spokane, WA, YMCA in 1909 by Louise Smart Dodd. The Y and the Spokane Minister’s Alliance swiftly endorsed the idea and helped it spread, holding the first Father’s Day celebration on June 10, 1910. President Wilson officially recognized Father’s Day in 1916, President Coolidge recommended it in 1924, and in 1971 President Nixon and Congress issued proclamations and endorsements of Father’s Day as a national tradition. Black History Month was first observed as Negro History Week in February, 1926, at the Wabash Avenue YMCA, 3763 South Wabash Ave., Chicago. During the Great Migration of blacks from the South to the North early in the 20th century, formal and informal segregation limited them to only certain areas of the city. As a result, the Wabash Ave. Y, often referred to as the Colored Y, became a major institution in serving the black neighborhood known as Bronzeville. It was there that Carter G. Woodson, Ph.D., a historian who stayed at the Y during visits to the city, and three friends formed the idea that if whites learned more about blacks, race relations would improve. They chose the month of February because it contains the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, plus Valentine's Day, a day of love and affection. In the 1970s, Bronzeville ran down, the Wabash YMCA was closed, and the building nearly torn down. Now the neighborhood is improving and the building is on the National Register of Historic Places. Swimming and aquatics have long been associated with the YMCA, and tens of millions of people across the country learned how to swim at the YMCA. It was not always this way, however, and for many years swimming was seen as a distraction from legitimate physical development. The first reported YMCA swimming bath was built at the Brooklyn (N.Y.) Central YMCA in 1885. By the end of the year, it was reported that 17 Ys had pools.  Pools then bore scant resemblance to the pools of today: The Brooklyn Central pool was 14 feet by 45 feet and 5 feet deep. Early pools, in addition to being small, had no filters or recirculation systems. The water in the pool just got dirtier and dirtier until the pool was drained and cleaned, which some Ys did on a weekly basis. No wonder the medical community saw them as a threat to health. Two developments helped change YMCA staff attitudes towards pools. The first was the development of mass swim lessons in 1907 by George Corsan at the Detroit YMCA. What Corsan did was to teach swimming strokes on land, starting with the crawl stroke first, as a confidence builder. The second development was the use of filtration systems for keeping the water clean. Ray L. Rayburn, a founder of what was the Building Bureau (now Building and Furnishing Services), came up with the ideas of building pools with roll-out rims and water recirculation systems. Recirculation meant that the water could be filtered and impurities removed. The first roll-out rim was installed in 1909 in the Kansas City, Mo., pool. In 1910, a filtration system was added to the Kansas City pool. No more would pools be considered health menaces. In 1932, there were more than a million swimmers a year at YMCAs. In 1956, the national learn-to-swim campaigns became Learn to Swim Month. In 1984, it was reported that YMCAs collectively were the largest operator of swimming pools in the world.     Racquetball was invented in 1950 at the Greenwich YMCA (Conn.) by Joe Sobeck, a member who couldn’t find other squash players of his caliber and who did not care for handball. He tried paddleball and platform tennis and came up with the idea of using a strung racquet similar to a platform tennis paddle (not a sawed-off tennis racquet, as some say) to allow a greater variety of shots. After drawing up rules for the game, Sobeck went to nearby Ys for approval from other players and, at the same time, formed them into the Paddle Rackets Association to promote the sport. The original balls Sobeck used were half blue and half red. When he needed replacements, Sobeck asked Spalding, the original manufacturer, to make the balls all blue so they wouldn’t mark the Y’s courts.     Yes, it was at the International YMCA Training School in December 1891 that James Naismith invented the game of basketball, doing so at the demand of Luther Gulick, the director of the school. Gulick needed a game to occupy a "class of incorrigibles" -- 18 future YMCA directors who, more interested in rugby and football, didn’t care for leapfrog, tumbling and other activities they were forced to do during the winter. Gulick, obviously out of patience with the group, gave Naismith two weeks to come up with a game to occupy them. Naismith decided that the new game had to be physically active and simple to understand. It could not be rough, so no contact could be allowed. The ball could be passed but not carried. Goals at each end of the court would lend a degree of difficulty and give skill and science a role. Elevating the goal would eliminate rushes that could injure players, a problem in football and rugby. Introducing the game of "basket ball" at the next gym class (Naismith did meet Gulick’s deadline), Naismith posted 13 rules on the wall and taught the game to the incorrigibles. The men loved it and proceeded to introduce "basket ball" to their home towns over Christmas break. Naismith’s invention spread like wildfire. Not only was basketball invented by a YMCA institution, but the game’s first professional team came from a Y. The Trenton YMCA (N.J.) had fielded a basketball team since 1892, and in 1896 its team claimed to be the national champions after beating various other YMCA and college teams. The team then severed its ties with the Y. It played the 1896-97 season out of a local Masonic temple, charging for admission and keeping the proceeds. The Nobel Peace Prize awarded for pioneering work in peacemaking was jointly awarded in 1946 to John R. Mott, a leader of the YMCA movement in America, and to Emily Greene Balch. Mott’s award was in recognition for the role the YMCA had played in increasing global understanding and for its humanitarian efforts. Mott himself was a product of the student YMCA movement and was a major influence on the Y’s missionary movement. In 1993, the Jerusalem International YMCA, the only Y owned by YMCA of the USA, was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for its work for promoting peace in the Middle East. U.S. Indian Ys first started in 1879 with the founding of a YMCA by Thomas Wakeman, a Dakota Indian, in Flandreau, S.D. The Dakota Indian associations were formally received into the state organization in 1885. By 1886, there were 10 Indian associations with a total of 156 members. By 1898, there were about 40 Indian associations, including several student YMCAs. The student department’s interest in Indian work was fueled by James A. Garvie’s presentation to the convention of 1886: Garvie, a Sioux, had translated the model college constitution of a student Y into the Sioux language.   The first Y employee hired to do Indian work full time was Dr. Charles Eastman, a Sioux hired in 1895. Prior to that, however, the Kansas state association had engaged a native Indian missionary to work among his own people. In 1920, Indian efforts were overseen by the student department. By 1926, the number of Indian YMCAs was too small to include separately in the annual report. The General Convention of Sioux YMCAs in Dupree, S.D., and the Mission Valley YMCA Family Center in Ronan, Mont., are the last YMCAs on reservations.