Every weekday until 2:59 p.m., Stacy McClendon is all business at the Pete Nance Boys & Girls Club in Greensboro, wearing a sport coat and a serious look.
“But when I open the door at 3 o’clock,” Stacy says, “everything changes.”
More than 150 kids arrive from all directions. Stepping off buses. Walking from practices. Skipping from somewhere. As many as 40 volunteers come, too. Stacy is the Club’s director, though he could pass as the maître d’, welcoming every person with a firm handshake and a smile as wide as the doorway. He wears a pair of basketball shorts under his slacks and, inconspicuously, a pair of Air Jordans at the bottom of his 6-foot-3 frame.
“This is a haven for these kids,” Stacy says. “It’s a haven for me, too.”
It’s hard to question Stacy when he says his own life path has formed a divinely woven network that connects the lake to the streets and little kids to big kids. If one life can provide a summary of the Club, it’s Stacy’s.
“The first time I met Stacy, his enthusiasm and attitude struck me as unique,” says the Boys & Girls Club’s former Board Chair and current Reynolds Member Mike O’Neal. “When you know his personal story, you understand why this means so much to him.”
Stacy grew up 20 minutes from the site of today’s front door of the Boys & Girls Club. He barely knew his father. His mother tragically died when he was seven years old, leaving his great-grandmother to raise him. “I called her ‘Ma,’” Stacy says. “She showed me what it means to care for people.”
Stacy’s childhood blended sports, education, and hospitality. It often required creativity. He made a basketball hoop by nailing a bicycle rim to a wood plank. He used a balloon instead of a ball. During storms, Ma would tell Stacy to sit and listen to the rain on the tin roof.
“She said it was ‘the sound of the Lord,’ a time to pause and be thankful.”
Stacy accompanied Ma, who was Cherokee Indian, to work in homes and shower love on others — all kinds of others. “She saw every person as God’s creation.”
As Stacy grew into a tween and teen, he noticed kids following him everywhere. They’d shoot hoops with him and surround him when he took a break. When Ma fell ill, Stacy eschewed college to take care of her while working as banquet server for a beautiful place in a corner of the greater community: Reynolds Lake Oconee. Members sensed the same qualities in Stacy that drew kids to him. Kindness. Gratitude. Childlike joy. His engaging character earned him promotions up to banquet director. During one event, he saw the general manager of the soon-to-be-opened Ritz-Carlton Reynolds, Lake Oconee.
“I always wanted to work at a Ritz-Carlton,” Stacy says. “When I saw the GM, I recited the company’s credo and mission statement, word for word.”
When the hotel opened on April 11, 2002, the first guests walked through the front door held open by the happiest, biggest kid in the world: Stacy McClendon.
“Preparation,” he says. “It’s a life lesson for kids at the Club.”
So is giving. When Stacy wasn’t working at The Ritz-Carlton, he volunteered to read with kids in underserved neighborhoods and coach basketball at Lake Oconee Academy, always viewing the region and the people in it without boundaries. When Bob Mackey invited Stacy to visit the Boys & Girls Club in its former building, he expected to see a playground and gym. He did not expect to see a theater, STEM lab, art projects, carwashes, financial literacy, and volunteers he’d known as Reynolds Members.
“Everything and everyone I would have loved to have available as a kid, they were all in one place.”
Before he opens the door to the Club, Stacy walks into the gym to shoot a few baskets in the peacefulness. He explains how the adult kids teach the little kids good citizenship and how the little kids teach the adult kids about unity by simply being themselves. Look around and listen. This is why he left his dream job at The Ritz Carlton to start his dream job as director of the Boys & Girls Club.
“I’m serving alongside colleagues from The Ritz-Carlton, friends from Reynolds and with families from the area where I grew up. When I was a kid, I wanted to see people working together like this. And today, right here, it’s like my life has come full circle.”
