A Man’s Vision : Volunteer Efforts Revive Church’s Youth Program

They lost the basketball game, 49-28.

But the kids bounding off the worn gym floor behind a grand old Wilshire Boulevard church the other night were still winners.

They are among 180 inner-city teen-agers who have a surrogate father who organizes sports competitions for them, helps them with schoolwork, teaches them art and aerobics, and feeds them hot meals on Saturdays.

The youth program is run by Mitchel Moore. He is a Santa Monica designer and studio vocalist who two years ago noticed teen-agers loitering outside Immanuel Presbyterian Church.

At the time, Moore had been hired as tenor soloist at the church, housed in an elegant, Gothic-style building a block from the old Ambassador Hotel in the Mid-Wilshire area.

Built in 1929, the church had been a favorite of the city’s wealthy and powerful. The movers and shakers began moving to the suburbs in the late 1950s. In their place came Latino and Korean immigrants and struggling, low-income families.

Moore discovered that the church’s youth program had foundered in the mid-1980s when church attendance dropped drastically. Its seven meeting halls and third-floor gymnasium were scarcely used.

“Driving back and forth to the church I noticed all the kids on the streets,” said Moore, 40, who lives in Sherman Oaks. “I said if you give me your gym on Saturdays I’ll give a shot at a youth program.”

Five Salvadoran teen-agers showed up to dribble basketballs on the first day. Moore quickly decided that the program would have to expand if attendance was to do the same.

He recruited art students from the nearby Otis/Parsons School of Art and Design to teach painting to the kids, and asked a friend, Ronda Rodriguez of Santa Monica, to teach them aerobics.

Moore also persuaded church janitor Sam Nickles to coach basketball, got an old college buddy, Lee Conger, to help tutor teen-agers with their schoolwork, and lined up screenwriter Bill Bentley to teach creative writing. Weightlifter Hector Figueroa agreed to run a weight-training room.

Church member Jim Anderson, a retired manufacturer’s representative, volunteered to cook lunch for every teen-ager who showed up.

These days, it all seems to be working.

Seventy-five youngsters spent a recent Saturday morning in various activities before filing into the church’s 275-seat dining room to dine on Anderson’s tuna casserole, cake and punch.

Fifteen-year-old Selvin Mochez was working in art class on an oil portrait. Mochez has already sold several of the impressionistic-style paintings for $80 each. He is eyeing a career as an artist.

“I’d just be sitting at home watching TV if it wasn’t for Mitch,” said the Hollywood ninth-grader.

Otis/Parsons student-teachers Barnaby Menduz and Martha Cole say several other teen-agers have also sold artwork.

Volunteer writing coach Bentley said he hopes to open a study hall at the church where teen-agers can do schoolwork and learn computer skills. He also plans to help the kids write one-act plays that they can perform on a seldom-used church stage at the front of the dining hall.

“When you’re around kids like these, you aren’t surprised at the talent that’s here,” Bentley said. “It makes you eager to get here. . . . Every adult who works with Mitch will tell you the same thing.”

Moore said he does not have to twist arms to get helpers. There is no pay, although Immanuel Presbyterian Church contributes $150 a week for supplies, food and miscellaneous expenses.

As a singer and voice-over artist, Moore has done vocals for such films as “Beauty and the Beast” and sung with artists ranging from Al Jarreau to Whitney Houston and Petula Clark.

His interior design work with partner Nick Berman has graced the homes of celebrities.

When he organized his basketball team last fall, Moore teamed up with youth leader Jeff Carr of the First Nazarene Church at 3rd Street and Vermont Avenue to create a 10-team league.

Various community groups and agencies such as the LAPD’s Rampart Division sponsor the other teams, which will compete through this month. The season will end with a banquet for all 120 players and tickets to a Clippers game.

“This is important. There was nothing like this before,” said Officer Andrew Voge, who helps run the Rampart station’s team.

“Because of poverty, most parents aren’t as involved with their children as we’d like. Sometimes they both work 16, 17 hours a day, six or seven days a week just to make ends meet. And there’s a cultural difference between some (immigrant) parents and their kids.”

The gritty reality of the streets is not lost on Moore, who grew up in the 3,000-resident farm town of Paulding, Ohio. Three weeks ago, one of his regular Saturday attendees was gunned down in a drive-by gang shooting and left partly paralyzed.

“I found out how unprepared I was to deal psychologically with gangs,” Moore said. “Most of these kids are at risk--either they’ve been in gangs, or toyed with the idea of joining.”

Gang member Max Bonilla, 18, said he shows up for Moore’s program in hopes of making new friends. He said the program will soon offer piano lessons for teen-agers--something he is looking forward to.

The Rev. Gary A. Wilburn, senior pastor of Immanuel Presbyterian Church for the last four years, acknowledged that Moore’s program has attracted some youths who have never been in church before.

That is important if the historic church is to once more become a dominant force in the neighborhood, he said.

A banner hanging out front along Wilshire Boulevard says it all, Wilburn noted. “It says we’re ‘In the heart of the city for Good.’ ”