LeMoyne center celebrates 60 years
Instructor Emily Huber works with Ian Praster, right, on reading homework at LeMoyne Community Center Thursday.
Joyce Ellis, executive director of LeMoyne Community Center, holds a photo of Pearl Harris, who was a teacher at the center from 1945 to 1966.
A dozen youngsters run uphill toward LeMoyne Community Center, their piercing shouts fading as they spend last reserves of boisterous energy pent up from the school bus ride. They’re getting ready to buckle down on homework before tackling an activity such as African drumming, piano lessons or making movies.
It’s part of the expanded “Homework and More” after-school program the center is hosting into its eighth year as director Joyce Ellis celebrates recent and deep-reaching history of the center. The center will be celebrating four honorees with awards Oct. 16 as part of its 60th anniversary and the continuing mission of mentoring children in Washington.
“We started with 17 kids in 2008. In 2011, we had about 60 kids, and more than 40 had failing grades. That was alarming. Now, we have a hundred kids from four area districts, and since then some have had failing grades, but no student has failed a class,” Ellis said of the K-12 program she and education director Linda Harris coordinate every day during the school year.
The two are further encouraging students to value their work in school with special incentives like field trips. This year will be the first time students will be able to qualify for a trip to the recently opened National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., in May. Kids who kept good grades can go on the trip. Even if a student missed the cut, programs are offered every day to students after completing their work to hearten their attitudes toward education.
“The choice to do a workshop on broadcasting or chess club, photography or art or fashion classes, they’re empowering themselves to figure out skills and talents they want to pursue,” Harris said.
When Ellis took over the center in 2007, most programming was centered around recreation. As Ellis found artifacts in the attic over the years from the center’s teachers from the 1960s, she leaned on her Christian faith for inspiration on how to rededicate its purpose to education.
“People who came through here when they were kids who are now in their 30s, 40s or older – they remember playing basketball here. We haven’t turned out a single NBA player, but since returning to education we’ve helped produce a lot of doctors, lawyers and teachers,” Ellis said.
The integration of recreation with education is important for the center to offer unique opportunities for kids to engage beyond the classroom. That inspiration comes from Robert Forrest and other center forebears whose names are on the awards to this year’s recipients.
The three other namesake awards that will be presented at the anniversary fundraiser dinner at the DoubleTree hotel on Racetrack Road are T.S. Fitch, the former mayor of Washington; Pearle Harris, the brain behind the now-national Headstart Program; and center founder Dr. Julius Francis LeMoyne. The honorees this year are Dean Ellis, Gregory Spencer, Robin Winston and, posthumously, Frances “Funny” Vactor.
“This place started out as a counterpoint to the Brownson House – a place for poor, black youth to play and learn. And the only way we can move forward and improve is to recognize where we came from,” Ellis said.
The center is no longer under the shadow of segregation. Youth of every ethnic and racial background skipped and ran into the gymnasium, where homework tables were set up with student teachers from Washington & Jefferson College. If nothing else, the students are reinforced with a simple lesson every day: work before play.