A Ride to the Park Becomes the Route to Hope for Kids Long Deprived

There was no master plan, no grand design that served as Lou Dantzler’s guide.

He was simply a school custodian with a new pickup truck and a dozen neighborhood kids clamoring for a ride. “So I loaded them up in the back of my truck and took them over to Centinela Park in Inglewood. And we played ball.”

That day’s game led to another, and Dantzler wound up spending most every Saturday at the park, hiking and playing ball with “his” kids, most of them young boys without fathers.

Soon, with the help of neighborhood parents, Dantzler was hauling dozens of kids on weekend outings, along with his own two young sons. They took to calling their group the “Challengers,” after a popular crew of comic book heroes.

That was 30 years ago, when their clubhouse was a tiny $6-a-month room in a Pico Boulevard office building.

Today, the Challengers Boys and Girls Club on Vermont Avenue in South-Central L.A. is a beacon of hope on a blighted inner-city horizon, with a new clubhouse that spans a city block . . . a $5.2-million architectural wonder that 2,000 kids call their second home.

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With its sleek design and cotton-candy colors, it is easy to spot the Challengers’ center among the jumble of liquor stores and storefront churches that surrounds it.

And it is easy, once you step inside, to feel the love and dedication that sustain it.

The halls are bustling with volunteers and hundreds of kids, ferried in via the Challengers’ vans from two dozen local schools. There is a gym, weight room, science lab, computer center, and classes in everything from home economics to math to arts and crafts.

The club has been hailed by police and civic leaders as one of the region’s best gang-prevention efforts.

But Dantzler’s club is more than a way to keep kids off the streets and out of trouble. It is a testimony to the notion that one man, one small gesture, can make a difference in thousands of lives.

There are Challenger alumni who’ve gone on to success . . . celebrities like film producer John Singleton and baseball player Eric Davis, and unsung heroes like Dantzler’s son Corey, who helps run the center with his dad.

The group receives financial support from charitable groups, corporate donations and foundations, so membership dues--$15 annually--can be kept low.

But belonging doesn’t come cheap. There are strict rules, unbending and unbreakable.

Homework must be finished before play can begin. No baggy pants or sloppy clothes allowed. Boys cannot wear earrings, braids or ponytails. Everyone must wear Challenger T-shirts, tucked neatly into pants or skirts.

The rules extend to parents, as well. They must volunteer for five hours each month. No-shows and tardiness are not tolerated. “It’s all about standards, about priorities. . . . I tell them, ‘I love you, I care about you. But this is the way it is.’ ”

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Dantzler, 62, grew up on a farm in South Carolina, the youngest of 17 children. His parents were sharecroppers; his father died when he was 7.

“My mother was the kind of person who, when someone was sick, she’d take them food. And I’d think, ‘We need that food.’ But we always survived,” he recalled. “That taught me a lot about how to live.”

She encouraged him to think beyond his surroundings. So he left the farm as soon as he was able.

He was marked by the little things he saw. “On my first visit to Disneyland, I remember seeing a guy go around sweeping up every bit of trash, and I thought, that’s how I’d like to keep my place, so people feel pride, they feel good about it.”

He didn’t know then what his “place” would be. “I never went to school do learn how to do this or anything. . . . I just took bits and pieces, whatever opportunities came my way.”

And if he had never gone beyond driving kids to the park in his pickup truck? Well, even that would have been OK.

“If you’re doing something good, just stick to it. If you make a difference in one person’s life, that contribution’s worth something.”

Sandy Banks’ column is published on Sundays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is sandy.banks@latimes.com.