Growing Stronger Together

Celebrating 170 years of the YMCA in Columbus—building community in spirit, body and mind.

By Monica Jones

Before there were YMCA basketball teams, swimming lessons or rooms full of exercise equipment, there was a young man in London who thought people needed somewhere to turn.

In 1844, George Williams, a worker in the drapery trade, helped establish the Young Men’s Christian Association. In a city transformed by the industrial revolution, its early gatherings offered prayer, fellowship and support for young men navigating unfamiliar lives. The idea crossed the Atlantic, and the first American YMCA opened in Boston in 1851. This year marks 175 years of the movement in the United States.

Along the way, the Y helped change how people played. Basketball originated at the YMCA’s training school in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1891. Volleyball followed at the Holyoke YMCA in 1895. Games now played around the world grew from efforts to give people useful, enjoyable ways to move together.

Columbus became part of that expanding story on November 18, 1856. The local YMCA traces its history back 170 years, making it, according to the organization, the third-oldest Y in the country. Among its early leaders was J.S. Pemberton, who served as president in 1859, decades before developing the Coca-Cola formula.

As the nation marks its 250th anniversary, the Columbus Y celebrates a history that includes rebuilding the association after the Civil War and adapting repeatedly to a changing city.

Those dates become more personal when current YMCA Board member, Jack Turner talks about his great-grandfather.

D.A. Turner arrived in Columbus as a young man working for a power company, Jack recalled. He needed somewhere to stay. He found it at the YMCA.

There were rooms, but there were also people. He played baseball and basketball and participated in an acrobatics team. The Y became his community, beginning a relationship that would extend through his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

For Jack, that history includes childhood basketball at the old Central YMCA, watching his father coach and eventually becoming a player himself. Today, he serves on the YMCA’s board.

“A lot of the friends that I made when I was playing basketball are still my friends today,” he said. “That might not have happened without the YMCA.”

Sitting with Turner, John P. Thayer and YMCA President and CEO Scott Balkcum, I was struck by how readily each man turned the conversation toward someone else’s contributions. A question about one person’s involvement became an appreciation of another’s leadership. Family memories led to stories about volunteers, staff and members.

Their affection for the institution was inseparable from their respect for the people who sustain it.

For Thayer, the connection reaches back to childhood swimming lessons in the old downtown building. After returning home from school and entering working life, he began going regularly in the late 1960s. Exercise offered a way to manage the pressures that followed him out of the office. “It really became a sanctuary for me,” he said.

That personal experience helped shape his commitment to keeping the Y available for others. He recalled working to develop the Warm Springs Road property donated by D.A. Turner, convinced that the YMCA needed to reach children and families beyond downtown.

The Northside YMCA opened there in 1968. In 1983, following Turner’s death, the facility was renamed in his honor.

Decades later, another major decision would reshape the association.

Thayer recalled an initial fundraising plan focused on replacing the old downtown YMCA. Conversations with Bill Turner encouraged a broader ambition that included the other branches. The campaign, conducted between 2006 and 2010, ultimately raised approximately $16 million, Balkcum said, supporting the downtown relocation and renovations at D.A. Turner.

The John P. Thayer YMCA opened at 24 14th Street in 2010.

Jack remembers the difficulty of seeking major gifts during the economic turmoil of 2007 and 2008. He also remembers a community willing to invest in something it believed mattered.

That willingness has shaped more than one chapter of the Y’s local history.

The Ninth Street Branch YMCA began in 1901, during segregation, through the organizing efforts of Black residents and support from the Peabody family. Its historical marker records an offer from George Foster Peabody and his brothers: residents would raise money, obtain a building lot and recruit members to help establish the facility. The story belongs both to philanthropy and to the people who organized to make the institution their own.

On New Year’s Eve in 1963, snow and ice contributed to the collapse of the Ninth Street building’s gymnasium roof. A replacement facility rose on Brookhaven Boulevard, now Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

It would later bear the name of Arthur Joseph “A.J.” McClung, whose YMCA leadership spanned 1954 to 1978. His work extended into city government, where he served as a councilor and mayor pro tem, briefly becoming mayor after the death of Mayor J.R. Allen in 1973. His career connected recreation, public service and community leadership.

Today, a mural by Ernel Martinez honors McClung alongside Ma Rainey and Alma Thomas on the branch’s exterior. Unveiled in 2022, it places the building’s ongoing work within a larger celebration of Black achievement in Columbus.

Inside the association’s three locations, that history continues through daily work: teaching children to swim, supervising after-school activities, coaching teams and helping members build strength and confidence.

The YMCA currently has more than 11,000 active members, according to Balkcum. In 2025, it taught 717 swim lessons, served 430 children through after-school programs and recorded more than 1,100 youth sports participants. Summer day camp served 629 children in 2026.

At the time of the interview, 183 children were enrolled in after-school care, and 59 percent of those families received financial assistance.

Those opportunities depend on memberships, donations and support from partners including United Way, local foundations and government grants. A volunteer board guides the organization’s governance and major decisions; staff members then turn those commitments into programs and relationships.

“Everything that we do is not just for members; it’s for the community,” Balkcum said.

He recently sent board members a photograph of all 13 treadmills in use. Looking across the machines, he could recognize different goals and circumstances: someone preparing for a first 5K, someone receiving financial assistance, someone who had helped support the organization. Each person had a reason to be there.

Balkcum recalled an 87-year-old member facing terminal cancer whose classmates asked to organize a birthday celebration in the lobby. They had come to know him through their exercise class. When he returned from a hospital stay, they wanted to show up for him. The equipment brought them into the same room. The relationships gave them a reason to stay connected.

For the children arriving today, the memories may begin with a first goal, a swimming instructor or a summer camp field trip. Jack still remembers a YMCA trip to an Atlanta Hawks game—and the bus breaking down on the return journey. Even the inconvenience has become part of a fond childhood memory.

Asked what a child might remember 50 years from now, the men returned to friendships, opportunities and the people who helped along the way.

It is a fitting measure of an institution whose anniversary reaches far beyond the age of its buildings. The gifts that sustained it become useful through the hands of instructors, coaches, caregivers, volunteers and staff. Members give those places their daily life.

“If you have the ability to take care of other people,” Jack said, “it’s what you’re supposed to do.”

For 170 years, people in Columbus have found reasons to carry that responsibility forward. A child walking through the doors of the Y today may be the next.