ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, December 30, 1995 TAG: 9601200004
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV5 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: PULASKI
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
Where in Pulaski can you swim all year long, earn a black belt in karate, work out with fitness equipment, take a steam bath, watch the New River Community College basketball team play a home game, or leave your children under supervised care when you have to go to work early or stay late?
"We've got pretty much everything that the big-city YMCAs have," said Jack Leahy, chief executive officer of the Pulaski Hensel Eckman YMCA. "Except a masseuse, maybe."
The 24-year-old Pulaski YMCA building on Oakhurst Avenue is the only one between Roanoke and Bristol, and one of the few in a town the size of Pulaski. It was chartered in 1947, two decades before planning began for a permanent building to house it.
A third of that building is devoted to what used to be called its Child Care Center. Now, with progressive educational activities for the different age groups, that operation has become its Child Development Center.
"It's no longer strictly a baby-sitting-type service, but an educational-type service," Leahy said. Freda Hubble is the staff member in charge of the center.
The Y added the child-care program to its offerings in 1964, when lots of mothers and fathers both worked at Pulaski's two furniture plants and elsewhere, foreshadowing the trend of two working parents prevalent today. The need was there so the Pulaski Y got into child care earlier than most.
In those days, the Y was located in buildings on Jefferson Avenue between Third and Fourth streets. The buildings had been donated by the late Hensel Eckman, a high school principal and civic leader who led the campaign to establish the Y, which now bears his name. "The story I hear is that Hensel went down to North Carolina and visited a Y there, and saw how great it was for the kids and the community, and decided we ought to have a Y here," Leahy said.
When the Y built its present building, the child-care facilities became a big part of it. They include three classrooms - named the Alligator, Giraffe and Panda rooms, for easy identification by the youngsters - with child-size furnishings, drinking fountains and toilets. Children also have access to the gymnasium, sun deck, the 75-by-28-foot swimming pool, walking trail and aerobic-dance-karate rooms.
The Y was the only agency offering a program when the Pulaski County school system sought a contractor to provide paid before- and-after-school child care, and set up programs last year in the Newbern, Hiwassee and Dublin elementary schools. The child-care programs did not have enough paid participants to cover the expense of state requirements for two teachers and other costs, but the Y still runs a van to bring Dublin Elementary pupils to the Y for after-school care.
A clubhouse room for school-age children includes video games. "But it's still amazing how many kids still play chess and checkers," Leahy said.
The Child Development Center is open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. with before-school and after-school programs for children 5 to 13 years old. There is also a preschool program for ages 2 to 5. About 30 preschoolers and 60 school-age children are participating.
The Y itself has about 1,000 members, some of whom come from as far away as Wythe and Carroll counties.
"Probably only half the membership is from the town of Pulaski," Leahy said. "People come for different reasons. Some come to lift, others just come to play basketball, some come to swim. ... Some just come for a shower and steam."
Included in a variety of Y programs is a free senior citizen exercise class from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. Monday, Wednesday and Friday. A growing number of seniors are participating in the Y's light weight-lifting program.
Leahy was a supporter of the 13,820-square-foot Louisa P. Chrisley Physical Fitness Center that opened last year at Pulaski County High School, following a three-year, fund-raising drive. The center offers hours for the public to use the fitness equipment.
Long-range, he said, it should help the Y because students will want to continue using such equipment after graduation. Because the school center is for students during school hours, its hours of use by the public are necessarily limited. He sees it as funneling more prospective members to the Y to work out.
Men have a steam room and women have a sauna at the Y, which also offers racquetball, two rooms of fitness equipment open daily, a health center, and a jogging and walking trail to be incorporated into a planned county playground to be built on land donated by the Y.
David Venne, the Pulaski Golden Corral manager heading the fund-raising drive for the playground, moved to Pulaski at least partly because the Y offered activities for himself, his wife and their two sons.
Leahy, who became the Y's seventh director in 1984, chose the Pulaski Y because, when he was ready to leave the harsh winters of his native New York state for warmer climes, he asked his wife, Georgiana, where she would like to relocate. She chose Virginia.
Leahy taught school from 1969 to 1974 and ran a Y camp in New York state during summers. He joined the Y full time in 1974. Having grown up participating in Y programs, he decided "to give back a little bit of what I received from the Y, and still receive."
He and James McClanahan, the Y program promoter, coach the New River Community College basketball team, which practices and plays on the Y court.
The Pulaski Y has a staff of seven full-time professionals and about 20 part-time employees in jobs from manning the front desk to lifeguarding. It is open from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. Friday, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. Monthly memberships, some of which will increase by a few dollars in 1997, range from $5 for youth to $30 for a family. Further information is available by calling 980-3671.
LENGTH: Long : 109 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: PAUL DELLINGER/Staff Jack Leahy is chief executiveby CNBofficer of Pulaski's Hensel Eckman YMCA: "Probably only half the
membership is from the town of Pulaski," he says. "People come for
different reasons. Some come to lift, others just come to play
basketball, some come to swim. ... Some just come for a shower and
steam."