Every Sunday morning, when Tom Herget drives past the old YMCA from his home on the West Side of Aurora to his church on the city’s East Side, he feels the tug of nostalgia, accompanied by the slight sting of sadness.
Over the years, this massive brick building at Garfield and View streets, once the childhood playground for thousands of Aurora youth, gradually lost its relevance, fell into disrepair, became problematic for its current owners and the city and finally was abandoned.
Now its walls have come tumbling down.
Over the last few weeks a significant portion of the 180,000-square-foot facility, deemed unsalvageable by the city that ordered the $1.5 million demolition, is being razed.
But all that dust and debris is also raising plenty of precious memories, noted Herget, who at age 74 recalls countless stories from this facility that served as an “after-school home” for at least a generation of kids, many now on Medicare.
The Aurora YMCA, which opened in 1958, was indeed a hopping place after classes were dismissed, with students walking or catching a bus for 10 cents a ride to take part in swimming, basketball or other games in the huge two-court gym.
Saturday mornings offered more of the same, noted Herget, with additional activities like bumper pool, movies (mostly westerns) and a BB-gun/rifle range in the basement.
And in the summer, he added, there were day camps, “with a bus ride taking us all out to Camp Kedeka,” where the kids roamed around freely, along with taking part in crafts and games.
It was through the Y, Herget told me, where kids met their future classmates in middle and high school, not to mention those from the East Side schools who would become their crosstown “rivals.”
Speaking of high school, who could forget those popular Friday night dances that featured great local bands – often taking place after football and basketball games – where hundreds of teens from all over Aurora, including Marmion and Madonna, would fill that huge gym.
The YMCA “was our stomping grounds for those best of years,” he recalled. “We did not know how good we had it.”
Herget, a retired actuary who, except for a brief stint after graduating from the University of Illinois has spent his entire life in Aurora, echoes many of the feelings of Baby Boomers who appreciate the benefits of being raised in those prosperous post-World War II years that were deemed more innocent but also led to a cultural revolution that continues to impact much of society today.
And the YMCA, he insisted, represented the best of those times.
For those reasons Herget decided to share photos of the Y’s demolition with old friends and classmates via emails and social media, inviting others to add their own thoughts. What he got back “were short bites of emotion” that mirrored his own feelings about the importance of this building, its programs and those who worked there.
For example, Jeff Gatesmith, who walked with “frozen hair” in January and February from the old Franklin Junior High to P.E classes at the Y, recalls not only learning how to swim there but also shooting a rifle in the basement gun range, playing basketball, handball, bumper pool, ping-pong, weightlifting, hitting the boxing bags and attending Indian Guide meetings.
Likewise, Steve Marshall “grew up there” with swimming lessons, judo, Indian Guides, basketball, softball leagues and hockey, even earning a paycheck from the Y for a couple years after college.
Bill Wright, who was a youth counselor as a teenager, described the building as “the center of our lives,” and declared his best memory was when he and a few friends “spotted” for future Miss America Judith Ford when she was practicing her trampoline talent act at the Aurora Y prior to winning Miss Illinois.
Roger Curless, who arrived in Aurora as an intern doing youth work at the YMCA in 1967, recalls collecting a whole lot of confiscated drinks from the kids in his desk drawer, and shooting off fireworks from the field behind the building on the Fourth of July … prior to knowing a permit was needed.
“I still have a set of keys to the place,” he said, adding that he’s having “a hard time watching them knock” the building down.
So are others, including Linda Jones Bloom, who now lives in Florida and admitted the photos Herget shared “made me cry.”
Still, as some pointed out, there’s no way to stop the march of time and the toll it often takes.
In this case, park district programs began eating away at the building’s relevancy. But the writing was clearly on the wall in 2007 when what was left of this local YMCA merged with Heritage Y – with buildings in Naperville and Oswego – because this groundbreaker-turned-dinosaur at Garfield and View was far too expensive to maintain.
Current owners, Freedom Development Group, had plans to expand it as a much-needed affordable housing option. But problems mounted, including major water issues in the basement, and dozens of violations ensued that led to the eviction of the 30 residents who lived there.
In 2020, Aurora filed for demolition in circuit court, which a judge agreed upon, even though the city was not the owner. And the rest, as they say is history – including when the Hi-Y Youth Club, which raised money for good causes, stepped in to host West Aurora’s first-ever post-prom party when no one else was willing to orchestrate such an event.
Or listening to Shadows of the Night, a Chicago band that performed at some of those Friday dances before making it to the big(ger) times.
“So many memories,” noted now-California resident Kathy Tastad Crookston. “Plus it was a landmark. When I visit I won’t find my way around.”
As the remembrances rolled in, there was plenty of praise for Thomas “Tim” Rusch, who was initially the youth director in the Y’s early years, and in 1964 became the executive director.
More than a few commented on how the kids felt loved and accepted by this “class act,” who was credited with starting a teen hotline and providing a league for boys to play basketball who did not make their high school team.
“Although several on the board and in the community questioned a lot of music/dances and youth hangout activities, Tim was the one who made this happen,” insisted Marshall, who worked there for two years.
“He made it a safe and welcoming environment for all,” Gatesmith added.
According to the late Tim Rusch’s son Lee, now living in Chicago, his dad knew first-hand how important the YMCA was because as a kid growing up in Minneapolis, it “was his refuge.”
And because “he knew what it meant to him,” said Rusch, his father “did his best to bring that quality to the Aurora Y – and to his family.”
Reading through these thoughts and memories from his classmates and friends couldn’t help but send a “warm wave” through Herget’s body, he told me later. While watching bulldozers and cranes demolish a precious childhood playground is not easy to see, he’s grateful for this chance to remember – and to remind others of – “what good times the kids of our era had.”
His hope, Herget added, is that following generations can, likewise, “experience such friendships and experiences from which they can grow.”
dcrosby@tribpub.com
