Summer recreation programs offer structure and role models for youth
It was the summer of 1976. Everywhere I looked, there was bicentennial paraphernalia. Gerald Ford was in the White House, and the Watergate scandal that led to Nixon’s resignation was mostly in America’s rearview mirror. I was a 16-year-old, high school sophomore in Berea, Ohio, looking forward to my first real job at the city recreation department. It was a big step into adulthood, beyond cutting lawns or shoveling snow, where I was paid at someone’s front door. I was poised to get a real paycheck.
