Although technically on vacation, you could find Herman Harried walking through the doors of East Baltimore’s Cecil Kirk Recreation Center most mornings this summer. He wasn’t there on the clock, but to support YouthWorks students from Lake Clifton High School.
As he made his rounds through the center, checking in on students and encouraging them in their role as camp counselors, he also served as a cheerleader of sorts, doling out positive reinforcement with playful winks, mischievous smiles, and high-fives as they studied with volunteer tutors to increase their math and writing proficiencies.
“Back in the day we had rec centers all over the city,” said Harried, the head basketball coach and athletic director at Lake Clifton, who has accumulated more wins and state championships than any coach in Baltimore City history. “Every neighborhood had a rec that kids could walk to, unlike today. And those places were sacred.”
Cecil Kirk was instrumental in his life trajectory in more ways than one. At the age of nine, he tried out for their competitive 10-and-under hoops team. When the coach first glanced at the lanky kid with seemingly interminable arms and legs, he assigned him the nickname that would follow him around for the rest of his life.
“Michael Jackson was the biggest thing in our community back then, and I had this huge afro like him,” said Harried. “It was this big old circle, and it was glistening too. The coach took one look at me and said, ‘I’m gonna call you Tree.’”
Under the tutelage of nurturing mentors Anthony “Doodie” Lewis, Calvin Dotson, and Vernon “Sonny” Francis, Harried blossomed into one of the country’s most gifted basketball recruits during his days at Dunbar High School, where he won a national championship in 1983 playing alongside future NBA pros Muggsy Bogues, Reggie Williams, and the late Reggie Lewis.
After his college career at Syracuse University, which included a trip to the NCAA national championship game in 1987, he spent five years playing professionally in Europe. Coach Tree, as he’s affectionately called, returned to East Baltimore when he decided to stop playing, determined to endow others with the mentorship he was so freely given.
“Those recreation centers were the soul and heartbeat of our communities,” Harried said with a fondness. “That’s where I was given the opportunity to dream of a future that extended beyond my neighborhood.”
His achievements over the past 30-plus years, along with a natural affinity for motivating and spiritually elevating those in his orbit, have garnered numerous overtures from major colleges asking him to join their coaching staffs.
But his heart is just too invested in Baltimore’s youth.
More than just serving as third spaces for youth and their families, rec centers have also become a way for residents to give back to their neighborhoods. The rewards, for them, dwarf the mere cashing of a paycheck.
“I love what I do as an educator and a life coach,” said Harried. “This is my calling. And every day I walk through those doors at Cecil Kirk, I’m transported back to living in a rowhouse on the corner of Homewood and Greenmount and bouncing into the rec as a kid. All the trophies and newspaper clippings from back in my day are gone, but the love we were given? The pride that was instilled in us? That hasn’t gone anywhere.”
“All the trophies and newspaper clippings from back in my day are gone, but the love we were given? The pride that was instilled in us? That hasn’t gone anywhere.”
Herman Harried, the head basketball coach and athletic director at Lake Clifton
The municipal rec center movement in America gained steam in the late 19th century after the release of Jacob Riis’, “How the Other Half Lives.” The groundbreaking photojournalism book depicted the jarring filth and squalid living conditions of tenements that were occupied by European immigrants on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
With the belief that healthy bodies bred healthy minds and spirits, locally-funded government recreation centers began popping up in impoverished urban neighborhoods to provide beneficial services to poor children and families.
Baltimore’s first was the Roosevelt Rec, opened in 1911 thanks to a dedicated group of Suffrage Movement reformers. They believed in the power of recreation to improve and direct lives toward positive outcomes. Renovated in 2006, Roosevelt is still in operation and remains a vibrant fixture in the tapestry of the Hampden community.
Another historic rec, the Chick Webb Memorial Recreation Center, opened in 1947. It was the city’s first that was fully funded (thanks to major monetary contributions from the likes of Joe Louis, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, and Louis Armstrong) and built by African Americans to serve their segregated East Baltimore community. It closed for renovations in 2022 and is slated to re-open later this year.
In the early ‘80s, Baltimore City owned and operated approximately 130 rec centers. In 1993, that number hovered around 70. The city’s website currently lists 43 centers under the management of the Department of Recreation and Parks, with an additional six being operated by private organizations.
As the budgetary neglect accumulated over the years, older, dilapidated centers were closed while others had basic infrastructure maladies that pointed toward an inevitable end of their life cycles. When then-Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake was pushing to privatize and close many of the city’s rec centers as severe cost-cutting and budget-balancing measures in 2011, among the most vociferous voices in opposition was that of her own City Council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young.
Those proposals struck a nerve with Young, who’d later go on to occupy the mayor’s office himself after the resignation of Catherine Pugh in 2019. As a kid, Young was a ubiquitous presence in many rec centers, including Greenmount, Johnston Square, Tench Tilghman, Madison, Oliver, and Chick Webb, among others.
When asked about the people that influenced him toward seeing a possible future in politics during his school days, the names fire out of his mouth in rapid-fire succession — all people he met through spending time at rec centers.
“William Wells, Mr. Wainwright, ‘Captain’ Smith, Bob Wade, Mr. ‘Dot Eye’, Mr. Wise, Ms. Swann, Mr. Pratt, ‘Tootsie Roll’, Rodney Ford, Leon Love, Dickie Kelly, Mr. Heyman, and so many others helped to shape our lives,” said Young. “You’d swear Miss Eva had eyes in the back of her head! She wasn’t even looking and she’d yell out, ‘Jack Young threw that rock that broke that window!’”
“They were instrumental in raising us,” Young continued. “They’d pick us up to play organized sandlot baseball games and would be on the grill all day cooking. They fed you, taught you, disciplined you, encouraged you. The recs were an extension of our family. That’s what has been taken away today for kids that don’t have access like we had.”
“The recs were an extension of our family. That’s what has been taken away today for kids that don’t have access like we had.”
Bernard C. “Jack” Young, former Baltimore City mayor and city council president
As part of Mayor Brandon Scott’s “Rec Rollout” initiative that launched in 2022 with a $120 million commitment from various city, state, and federal funding sources — including a $41 million infusion from American Rescue Plan Act money, Community Development Block Grants, Maryland Department of Natural Resources grants, and the city’s Capital Improvement Program — the mayor has cut ribbons and broken ground on new construction and renovation projects at seven pools, 25 playgrounds, and seven rec centers as the city attempts to reverse decades of financial neglect, disrepair, and closures.
On September 10, Scott and other city stakeholders celebrated the reopening of the new Dewees Park Playground in Northwest Baltimore, the final project funded by the American Rescue Plan Act through the Mayor’s Office of Recovery Programs. Earlier this year in May, ground was broken on what is soon to be Southwest Baltimore’s sparkling new Congressman Elijah Cummings Recreation Center.
“More than anything, [Congressman Elijah Cummings] was a champion for the young people of our city,” Scott said that day, as he stood within walking distance of Bay-Brook Elementary Middle and Benjamin Franklin High. “This rec center honors his legacy, serving young people in Brooklyn Homes and Curtis Bay.”
The building’s blueprint evokes images of a community sanctuary with a fitness center, an indoor regulation gymnasium, locker rooms, and a mixed-use community meeting space that fully opens onto a lawn that can be utilized for a variety of festivals and events. Three other new recreation centers are currently under construction and slated to open in 2026: Parkview in West Baltimore, Gardenville in the northeast part of town, and Bocek Gymnasium on the east side.
The new centers are not only addressing years of neglect but bringing new high-end amenities to neighborhoods as well.
Last April, Scott and other city officials also celebrated the re-opening of the renovated Medfield Rec in Northwest Baltimore that features a state-of-the-art e-sports gaming lab.
“These rec centers are gathering places where everyone should feel welcome, safe, and able to explore new activities and hobbies,” said Scott at the Medfield ribbon cutting ceremony. “Our dedication to this work is fueled by our commitment to unravel the decades of disinvestment in our neighborhoods, particularly our Recreation and Parks facilities.”
Young is encouraged by the new investments directed at what he considers the city’s most precious natural resources — its youth. But years of neglect cannot be healed overnight, and a sustained commitment will ultimately prove necessary to maintain this welcome new momentum.
“I doubt we’ll ever get back to where things were, where you had a choice of centers within walking distance,” Young said. “But the centers that are open are still making a great impact today. If it wasn’t for those centers and those people, I don’t know if I would have ever dreamed about a career in politics, let alone becoming mayor.”
For Joyce Venable, a 65-year-old resident of Barclay on the city’s east side, rec centers were one of the first places she felt that safe and welcoming environment Scott describes.
Venable can recall her slender elbows resting on the windowsill of her East Baltimore rowhome and staring out as National Guard units marched down the streets in the aftermath of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, the distant sounds of arson, gunshots, looting, and the smell of smoke wafting in the air.
She also fondly remembers a few years later, in the early ‘70s, when she got her very first summer job at Cecil Kirk helping out at the Mayor’s Station medical and dental clinics, sweeping the streets, assisting the elderly, and being a junior summer camp counselor.
“There were certain places that Black people could not go,” said Venable, whose parents managed a bustling household with 13 children. “But we never felt like we were missing anything because we had Cecil Kirk. Inside those programs and activities was this intense love that was shared by wonderful mentors who truly cared about us.”
When she graduated from Eastern High in 1978, her first real job was at Cecil Kirk. 47 years later, she’s still doling out that old school love as a Recreation Aid/Leader at the Rita R. Church Community Center in Clifton Park. She also works full-time as a secretary with the city school system.
And she continues to maintain that mentor-mentee relationship with those kids — now adults with AARP cards.
“Joyce Venable is a true icon and unsung hero in Baltimore, a certified landmark in the city’s Recreation and Parks Department,” said one of those former children, Harried. “All she knows and all she wants is to be of service to kids.”
Among her fondest memories are the numerous road trips with Cecil Kirk’s exceptional hoops teams over the years. She still laughs about the jokes on the team buses to Philadelphia and plane rides to Los Angeles with neighborhood kids like Kevin “Stink’ Norris and Shawnta “Nut” Rogers, who both went on to exceptional college careers at the University of Miami and George Washington University respectively.
During one tournament in Memphis, she corralled the group and informed them that they’d be visiting the Lorraine Motel, the site of Martin Luther King’s assassination.
“They kept saying, ‘We don’t want to go there!’ And I kept saying, ‘We’re going!’” said Venable, who’s known throughout the city as Mama Joyce or Aunt Joyce.
She warned them that if they couldn’t answer questions about the visit at dinner later that evening, they wouldn’t be allowed to eat. A few months later, she came across a heartfelt paper her son wrote for a school assignment describing the experience, leaving her in tears.
“My heart just smiles thinking that I’ve been able to touch so many lives,” said Venable. “I don’t do what I do for accolades. It just makes me feel good.”
That sentiment is shared by many whose formative years were shaped and molded within the hallowed halls of Baltimore’s recreation centers.
“People don’t really understand how these programs and rec centers shape our youth,” said Danielle “Pig” Biles, who currently works full-time with the Johns Hopkins Health System and as a part-time recreation arts instructor at South Baltimore’s William J. Myers Soccer Pavilion. “Taking away those rec centers has hindered the growth of so many young people in our city.”
When Biles was young, she was a self-admitted nerd who didn’t have many friends. She preferred the companionship of a good book. While the neighboring kids were outside playing, she’d skirt around them en route to the Enoch Pratt Library on 33rd Street.
Spending time at Cecil Kirk expanded her social and communication skills. The center’s legendary director, the late Lewis, would often brag about her intelligence and enlist her to speak at City Council hearings to advocate for recreation funding when she was merely seven years old.
“He’d say, ‘Listen, doll, we’re going down to this symposium, and this is what you’re going to talk about,’” said Biles. “Because of those experiences and his belief in me, I always had a sense of self-confidence and never had a fear of public speaking.”
She absorbed her mother’s work ethic, watching her trudge between two full-time jobs, one at Superfresh and the other at the Caldor’s department store on York Road. At 14, when she was dealing with the murder of her father, Lewis stepped in to play a more prominent role in her life. That’s when she got her first YouthWorks job at the rec center.
“Doodie was like a father to me,” said Biles. “He, and the entire staff, was so instrumental in keeping us on the right path. I also had great teachers as a kid, and all of those people drilled into me that education was the key to success.”
Her first part-time job while a student at Dunbar in the mid-‘90s was in the Rec and Parks’ division of youth and adult sports. The work fascinated her, especially the psychology of how some kids who didn’t hail from good households achieved success while some who grew up with advantages didn’t.
“So many kids are going down the wrong path,” Biles said. “These are places with dedicated mentors that can teach life skills. 90% of the people I know or associate with today, I met through Baltimore City Recs and Parks. Those interactions helped shape my mindset and the person I am today.”