Ministers With Balls

Wainright still respects the work of the organization that saved him when he was a kid. But he says times have changed and the Boys and Girls Clubs have turned into something more like after-school day care.

Clarke says the clubs' mostly young, paid employees aren't the "street warriors," that he, Wainright and Smith are. The feel inside the club these days is too corporate, he says.

The John T. Thornberry Boys and Girls Club at 43rd Street and Cleveland is a maze of game rooms, study rooms, computer labs, a library with tutors, two gyms and an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Every door is labeled with the names of sponsors — the United Way, the Kauffman Foundation — dedicated to helping kids enjoy the club and learn. It costs only $15 for a child to join for the entire school year.

The loudspeaker blares. Several kids giggle on their way to the next activity. A few lone boys shuffle down the hallways.

Tony Byrd has walked this building for 10 years. He started as a volunteer but was eventually offered a full-time job; he is now the senior unit director at Thornberry and at the Troost-Midtown Boys and Girls Club. He's one of 21 paid employees at the Thornberry site. The employees share time with a handful of volunteers who come and go with the seasons. Byrd says that, on average, 240 kids a day come into the club throughout the school year. On this late afternoon, about 100 are milling about.

"The Boys and Girls Club is the number one youth-serving organization in the world," Byrd says. "It's just a beautiful thing."

Giving a reporter a tour, he takes every opportunity to stop a child to say hello, pat him or her on the back and offer reassuring words. His eyes show a deep devotion to the children.

"Our biggest thing is prevention," he tells the Pitch, his words sounding as if they're recited from a manual. "We want to prevent the kids from becoming involved in gangs. We want to prevent the kids from getting on drugs. We want to prevent the girls from getting pregnant. We want to prevent the boys from getting the girls pregnant."

He waves his finger, laughing, saying it takes two.

Byrd's smile tightens when the discussion turns to bloody 2005, when 127 people were murdered in Kansas City, many of them from the surrounding neighborhoods.

"You know what — none of those kids were Boys and Girls Club members," he says. "It hurts that you see all these kids dying, but you know what — I don't know why. I don't know what. But as a black man in this community and as a person who wants to help a kid no matter what color or race he is, it does hurt to see that, because the majority of the people who are dying are young black men. It's almost like we didn't have an opportunity to work with them."

Byrd lightens the mood by showing off a motorcycle donated to the club by Harley-Davidson. A couple of kids pass by to hang their coats on a rack behind the motorcycle, barely giving it a glance.

He says the organization's programming isn't influenced by its sponsors. "We need and we struggle, too. We need to make sure the kids are doing and having the things that they need to succeed," Byrd says.

"The Boys' Club don't want to deal with badass kids," Clarke says later. "We deal with at-risk kids. I'm talking about kids who carry pistols. I deal with drug-dealing kids all the time. I know their parents. I watched them from diapers. Now they're 16-, 17-year-old kids, running the neighborhood. They ain't scared of nothing and nobody."

It's just after 3 a.m. on February 13 when police arrive at a car in the median of U.S. Highway 71 near 75th Street. The driver's-side door is open. Inside, Arthur Timley is slumped over the steering wheel, blood pouring out of his head.

Timley had been heading home from a bar in the 11,000 block of Blue Ridge Boulevard when his killer opened fire on the highway. Bullets sprayed into the driver's-side door and windshield.

Timley was Pooh Oliver's second cousin. Clarke coached Timley at the YMCA in 1996. Clarke ran into Timley last year, and Timley jabbed at him, calling Clarke an old man, remarking how his hair was graying. Clarke took one look at Timley's flashy car and expensive clothes and knew Timley was in trouble.

Oliver took the news hard. "Another one of my homies is gone," he says. "He was a nice kid, but he just went down the wrong path. I went down the path, but I just didn't keep going. I just made a left."

Oliver remembers growing up with Timley, staying at his home for stretches, throwing balls with him on the playgrounds. When the funeral was set, Oliver realized that he wouldn't make it. "I had a tournament, and we were playing Central Missouri," Oliver says. "I would have went. My prayers was out. My thoughts was out. He knows that."