Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Redlands-Riverside is remembering former San Bernardino County Supervisor Dennis Hansberger, who died May 6.
The Club named its first permanent home the Dennis Hansberger Clubhouse for the supervisor’s critical role in its construction. He helped secure around $4 million in federal funding to build the clubhouse, which was dedicated in 2007.
“When building the first-ever permanent home for the Club, we were faced with skyrocketing construction costs as Katrina just ravaged the Gulf Coast,” said Club CEO P.T. McEwen. “Dennis stepped up and help direct some funds to help ensure our dream of a clubhouse was not lost. We at Boys & Girls Clubs are ever in his debt. We are proud to have our clubhouse bear his name and carry on his legacy of caring for the youth in communities.”
Hansberger said in a 2017 interview for Boys & Girls Clubs’ Mission Moments newsletter that he saw an opportunity for the north side of Redlands “to have a place to be proud of, where kids would like to go to and they’d connect to.”
He was quick to point out in the interview that he was just one cog in the machine that brought the clubhouse into being. He didn’t want his name on it.
“I appreciate that, I’m proud of what we did, but I want to be very clear that the credit deserves to be shared very broadly,” Hansberger said. “There were a whole lot of people who worked hard to make this work long before there was a lot of money to deal with it. I just happened to be in a lucky spot to be able to help.”
He said that when he was a kid, “there wasn’t really a place for me to sit down and study” like Boys & Girls Clubs, which offers homework help, tutoring and literacy programs.
“Had my peers and I sat down together to study, I probably would have worked harder at it when I was young. So I think it’s a great thing to be doing,” he said.
Hansberger said that when he was a county supervisor, he sought them out people who had influenced him in his youth to thank them, including his second-grade teacher and a YMCA camp counselor.
“(Boys & Girls Club staff) do this all the time. They do it every day and it makes a difference,” he said.
The clubhouse that bears his name “looks beautiful today 10 years later, and is well cared for and clearly an active place for a lot of people,” he said in 2017.
The Club gave him its National Award of Merit, which is given to individuals outside Boys & Girls Club who have provided outstanding support to the local Club.
Pat Caudle, vice president of the Club board of directors in 2006, said that Hansberger’s support “will dramatically impact the lives of thousands of children in the city of Redlands. The first permanent home of the Club will provide a larger, safer location where members will be able to participate in even more Boys & Girls Club programs than at our previous smaller and scattered sites. Supervisor Hansberger’s help is greatly appreciated by the children, staff, and board of the Boys & Girls Club.”
Since the opening of the Hansberger Clubhouse, the Club has been able to offer programs that build academic success, good character and citizenship, and healthy lifestyles to youth from Redlands and the surrounding communities.
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