Like much of
East Liverpool's history,
our YMCA stems from an
association with England.
The organization was founded
in London in 1844 by Sir
George Williams, a 23-year
old aristocrat devoted
to the health and welfare of
boys.
Williams was joined in the
endeavor by friends, mostly
young businessmen, in direct
response to what they felt
were the dangerous social
conditions arising in large
cities at the end of the
Industrial Revolution. The
Young Men's Christian
Association sought to combat
idleness and mischief in
young men by way of Bible
studies and other classes.
In just seven years, Great
Britain had 2,700 YMCA
members in two dozen
separate associations.
The YMCA's
success in England
precipitated its spread to
industrial centers in North
America and throughout
Europe. On December 29th,
1851, the first American
YMCA was founded in Boston,
Massachusetts. By 1854, 26
YMCAs had been formed
throughout the United States
and Canada.
By the end of
the 1800s, the introduction
of competitive team sports
at YMCAs was accepted as a
positive influence on young
men. The thinking then, as
now, was that team sports
required teamwork,
self-sacrifice, obedience
and loyalty - all qualities
in keeping with the YMCA's
general creed. In embracing
this philosophy, the
National YMCA became
increasingly secular in its
programs.
On March 20, 1880, 35 men
met at the Methodist
Episcopal
Church to discuss the
possibility of a YMCA
being founded in East
Liverpool. The minutes of
the meeting read,
"(A YMCA) may not woo all
of the young men from the
saloons
and billiard parlors, but it
will help."
The idea took root in
East Liverpool, and
in the fall of that
year, a YMCA opened on 4th
Street near Central school.
It was to be merely the
first of several
sites the YMCA occupied,
until in February 1914, the
YMCA moved to the site of
the recently
vacated downtown building at
235 Fourth street. The East
Liverpool
YMCA was incorporated on
June 19, 1891.
By 1899, YMCA
President John J. Purinton
presided over a membership
of 240 local men. By
1905,
200 members a day were using
the YMCA. Ten "physical
culture'' classes
were offered, a mandolin
club was formed, and new
showers
and
baths were installed.
Beyond the sports, classes
were offered in everything
from penmanship to
electricity, from mechanical
drawing and book-keeping
to music.
The growth in
membership encouraged the
board members to begin
searching for a permanent
site for the Y, said at the
time
to be the only one in
all Ohio not to have its own
building. It was eventually
agreed to purchase a
building at the site of the
current Elks Lodge, but by l907, fire had destroyed the
building. After installing
the YMCA temporarily in
rented rooms at the Odd
Fellows building, the board
decided in 1909 to hire
Briggs and Nelson, Cleveland
architects, to begin drawing
up plans for a permanent
YMCA building. Prominent
East Liverpudlians joined
the effort by giving
"subscriptions,'' or
donations, to help fund
construction. Will
Thompson, famed East
Liverpool composer, gave
$5,000 towards the effort on
the condition that 19 others
give a like amount.
Construction on the new YMCA
building began in 1912. The
Finley Brothers, a Chester,
West Virginia firm, were
hired to do the work and the
building opened on
February 27th, 1914. At the
time, the editor of the
Evening Review trumpeted
the building's completion
as the "greatest civic
movement in the history
of East Liverpool.''
The Tribune wrote,
"exclamations of approval
and delight were heard to
escape from the lips of the
guests as they were ushered
about through the various
parts of the building and
allowed to linger
in the rooms which are soon
to be overflowing with East
Liverpool's boys and men,
where it is the purpose to
enlarge them morally,
mentally, socially, and
physically".
The new YMCA was an enormous
success. In the first
year alone, 10,000 area
residents participated in
gymnastic classes, and over
30,000 used the swimming
pool. By 1921, the YMCA had
organized a series of
industrial competitions
involving nearly all the
local potteries. These
included boxing, wrestling,
relay racing and volleyball,
but by
far the most popular league was the YMCA
Industrial Baseball League.
The league included teams
from Homer Laughlin, the C.
C. Thompson Pottery, the
Potters Co-Operative
Company, Knowles, Taylor and
Knowles, Hall China. and
Taylor, Smith and Taylor,
among others. The league
averaged three games a week,
with up to 6,000 spectators
attending each game.
Competition was fierce and
most sponsoring potteries
began to hire workers based
on their athletic prowess as
opposed to their skill with
ceramics.
By 1923, the
YMCA was offering summer camp at a lovely site
on
Little Beaver Creek which had been
purchased from the Youngstown YMCA. One camp
period was ten days, costing $1.00 per camper.
According to the 1930 pamphlet,
Pine Ridge Camp was "A Distinctive Boy's Camp'' and offered to
campers "Days that are never forgotten". It also ventured the
opinion that, "The call of the out-of-door life comes every year
with its irresistible force and appeal to every normal boy. He wants
to get away from the everyday conventionalities and live out in the
open with his chums." By sometime
in the 1930s or 1940s, girls were also encouraged
to attend Pine Ridge.
The YMCA continued to offer innovative
attractions and classes. One of the most popular of these was
the Electric Train Derby, first held January 8th,1936 in the gym.
Boys of high school age or younger were encouraged to enter the
derby, which offered "O" gauge and standard gauge categories.
Entrant trains included everything from sleek Zephyrs to boiler
locomotives complete with coal tenders. That first train derby
attracted 500 spectators, and proved so popular that it became an
annual event up until sometime in the 1950s.
In the 1940s, the YMCA was home to
Hi-Teen, a club that became the place for local teenagers
to
pass their Friday evenings. It was typical for 500 high schoolers to
attend Hi- Teen on any given
Friday evening. The kids would pass the evening visiting,
dancing to music blaring from the jukebox, and sipping Coca-Cola. The Evening Review noted that " . . . it was the only spot in town
that teens could call their own."
The frenetic and varying social activity
at the YMCA began to ease off somewhat as both the local Y and the
national organization began to focus attention less on team and
social activities and more on personal fitness. With this new
priority in mind, the Y installed considerable new equipment,
including weight-training machines, and turned toward a wider range
of fitness classes, especially in the newly popular field of
aerobics.
Although the YMCA was founded as the
"Young Men's Christian Association'' in an attempt to give young
disadvantaged men the spiritual and moral tools to make something
of their lives, the Y's mission soon expanded to include people of
all faiths, races and creeds - not to mention both men and women.
Beyond this generous and undiscriminating
embrace of all who walked through its doors, the Y also began to
explore physical fitness in a more personal manner. By 1980,
aerobics and weightlifting were both exploding as methods of
keeping in shape. In response to the demand for both programs, the Y installed Nautilus machines and other weight-lifting equipment
and offered a wide range of aerobics classes: The emphasis was still
on keeping physically fit - always an integral part of the Y's
tenets - but the Y had moved away from exercise that came only in
the form of team endeavors.
The YMCA continued to be involved in the
community
in general
as well. Just one example of this is the Y's long-standing
support of the Bill Booth Memorial
Award. Bill Booth was a promising
East Liverpool High School
football player who was killed in
a car accident on September 4th, 1937. His tragic early death at the age of 21 became the
inspiration for the annual Bill
Booth Memorial Award, given to "the senior football player deemed
most valuable to his team and (who) at the same time has shown
sportsmanship exemplified by Booth throughout his shortened athletic
career.'' First given
in 1938, the award recipients
include such illustrious East Liverpool Potters as Larry Bruno
(honored in 1939), who went on to coach Joe Namath; Charles Means
(honored in 1945), a West Point
graduate and retired two-star general; Tom
Bell (honored 1947), one of seven brothers who played for the
Potters over
two decades; Dan Cooper (honored
in 1951), a three-star Vice Admiral with the U. S. Navy; Bob Mackall (honored
in 1959), Executive Vice President
of a New York City advertising agency;
Mike Mcvay (honored
in 1967), head football coach at Wellsville High School and former
Columbiana County Coach of the
Year; Jim Musuraca (honored in 1968),
Notre Dame outside linebacker and General Counsel to the Assistant Ohio Attorney General; and Lou Volino (honored in 1969), former health and
physical education teacher at East Liverpool High School. We are
disappointed not to be able to recognize every single Bill Booth
Award winner here, as they were all outstanding athletes who went on
to do good things for their communities and uphold the principles and character
exemplified by Bill Booth and the YMCA.
It's a cliché to say that life just isn't
like it used to be, but it's also increasingly true. The YMCA, born
of the social and cultural upheaval precipitated by the industrial
revolution, continues to claim its place as an important haven in
the sped-up, image-heavy, not-enough-time world we live in today. The information and technological revolutions have created
their own tidal waves of unrest and discontent, just as did the
industrial revolution.
As some portions of our society seem to
fracture, the YMCA has increasingly moved back to its roots as a sanctuary - a
fulfillment of the need every individual has for a sense of
community and belonging. The Y's mission of helping to encourage and
support the age-old triad of spirit, mind, and body remains vitally important.
1905,
200 members a day were using
the YMCA. Ten "physical
culture'' classes
were offered, a mandolin
club was formed, and new
showers
and
baths were installed.
Beyond the sports, classes
were offered in everything
from penmanship to
electricity, from mechanical
drawing and book-keeping
to music.
n
February 27th, 1914. At the
time, the editor of the
Evening Review trumpeted
the building's completion
as the "greatest civic
movement in the history
of East Liverpool.''
The Tribune wrote,
"exclamations of approval
and delight were heard to
escape from the lips of the
guests as they were ushered
about through the various
parts of the building and
allowed to linger
in the rooms which are soon
to be overflowing with East
Liverpool's boys and men,
where it is the purpose to
enlarge them morally,
mentally, socially, and
physically".
far the most popular league was the YMCA
Industrial Baseball League.
The league included teams
from Homer Laughlin, the C.
C. Thompson Pottery, the
Potters Co-Operative
Company, Knowles, Taylor and
Knowles, Hall China. and
Taylor, Smith and Taylor,
among others. The league
averaged three games a week,
with up to 6,000 spectators
attending each game.
Competition was fierce and
most sponsoring potteries
began to hire workers based
on their athletic prowess as
opposed to their skill with
ceramics. 
on
Little Beaver Creek which had been
purchased from the Youngstown YMCA. One camp
period was ten days, costing $1.00 per camper.
According to the 1930 pamphlet,
Pine Ridge Camp was "A Distinctive Boy's Camp'' and offered to
campers "Days that are never forgotten". It also ventured the
opinion that, "The call of the out-of-door life comes every year
with its irresistible force and appeal to every normal boy. He wants
to get away from the everyday conventionalities and live out in the
open with his chums." By sometime
in the 1930s or 1940s, girls were also encouraged
to attend Pine Ridge. 
to
pass their Friday evenings. It was typical for 500 high schoolers to
attend Hi- Teen on any given
Friday evening. The kids would pass the evening visiting,
dancing to music blaring from the jukebox, and sipping Coca-Cola. The Evening Review noted that " . . . it was the only spot in town
that teens could call their own."
Bell (honored 1947), one of seven brothers who played for the
Potters over
two decades; Dan Cooper (honored
in 1951), a three-star Vice Admiral with the U. S. Navy; Bob Mackall (honored
in 1959), Executive Vice President
of a New York City advertising agency;
Mike Mcvay (honored
in 1967), head football coach at Wellsville High School and former
Columbiana County Coach of the
Year; Jim Musuraca (honored in 1968),
Notre Dame outside linebacker and General Counsel to the Assistant Ohio Attorney General; and Lou Volino (honored in 1969), former health and
physical education teacher at East Liverpool High School. We are
disappointed not to be able to recognize every single Bill Booth
Award winner here, as they were all outstanding athletes who went on
to do good things for their communities and uphold the principles and character
exemplified by Bill Booth and the YMCA.