Tyler

Story By
MALENA OGLES

The pink rubber handles and multicolored streamers blowing out the side made 6-year-old Shellie Milton giggle with excitement. It wasn't just any bike. It was hers - all hers.

Thirty-six shiny new bicycles of varying colors and sizes were parked inside the Gentry Parkway Youth Center Thursday afternoon awaiting their riders.

"When you think of Christmas especially as a young boy, what gift can you think of that's as exciting as a new bike?" asked Steve Tanner, student ministry pastor for Grace Community Church. "Nothing is as exciting as a new bike."

Children at the youth center echoed his sentiments with shrieks of excitement when they were told the bikes were theirs to take home.

"I like it," Shellie said. "I like it a lot."

Grace Community Church campuses raised a combined $15,000 to purchase 400 bikes for the Boys and Girls Club, the Lindale Christmas Project, the Athens Help Center and for the GPYC.

"I'm going to ride mine home," said Camethia Mumphrey, who lives in Chapel Hill. "I'm going to ride behind my mamma."

"That's going to be a long ride," her mother said.

Not all the kids at the center are like Camethia, who have a mother to ride their bike behind. At the center, 25 of the 36 children have one or both parents incarcerated.

A lot of the kids are raised by family members who are taking care of four or five other children and will be unable to give even one or two gifts, said Johnathan Pugh, Left Behind coordinator for GPYC.

"It's a blessing to the parents who wouldn't be able to afford a bicycle for their child for Christmas," Averie Mumphrey said.

Along with the present of a new bike, the Pilot Club of Tyler purchased helmets for each of the children.

Pilot club member Ann-Bennett Patterson received training from the Tyler Police Department on how to properly fit helmets, and a line of eager riders wrapped around the GPYC building waiting to be fitted with a helmet.

"I feel happy that all the people got bikes," said 9-year-old Marissa Milton. "They are so excited when they get home they are going to ride it."

Even though the name says Gentry Parkway, the center has moved twice and hopes to make its permanent home on Garden Valley Road.

"I'm ecstatic," said Melanie Roberts, the center's director. "I didn't think anything like this could be possible for them. With us coming to the new center it's like a whole new start for us."

Mrs. Roberts, known to her kids as "the Kool-Aid mom," started the center out of her apartment more than 11 years ago.

At the time, she was afraid of the neighborhood and didn't want her son playing outside.

"I told him and his friends if they wanted to come over and play they could do it in the house," she said.

A self-proclaimed not-a-good-cook, Mrs. Roberts made snacks of pizza, nachos and Kool-Aid for the kids, which attracted even larger crowds to her apartment.

When she noticed some of her newly acquired kids had grades that were slipping, she told them if they wanted to continue coming over to her house to play they had to spent time doing homework.

Even with the no-homework-no-play-time rule, more and more kids made visits to the Roberts' home.

She also learned that many of her son's friends and the kids who were coming over to her home were there because they had nowhere else to go.

"I didn't know it at the time, because I didn't ask them, but a lot had parents in jail," she said.

In 1997, using money saved to purchase a new family car, the Roberts opted to use it to purchase a building on Gentry Parkway. There, kids would have a safe place to play, learn and experience things they would not have the chance to at home.

"I do what I do because I love kids," she said.

Raised in Arizona by her grandmother, Mrs. Roberts said she never understood how much her grandmother sacrificed for her until she was gone.

"I never knew we were broke. She made sure that everything the other kids did I was there," she said. "Granny never did let me know that I was different, and I don't ever want them to know that they are different."

With money raised, Mrs. Roberts takes the kids, many who have never left the Tyler city limits, to museums and science centers - even a Mavericks game - in Dallas.

"I try to get them exposed to as much stuff as I can," she said. "Just because you're in the ghetto doesn't mean you have to stay there, and that's what I tell them."

Through new experiences and a focus on education, Mrs. Roberts hopes she can prevent the children from following the same path as their parents.

Many of the children who have participated in the program have gone on to graduate from Baylor University, Texas A&M and UT Tyler, and have come back to volunteer with the program.

For more information on the Gentry Parkway Youth Center or to volunteer contact Johnathan Pugh at 903-520-1203 or at ampjwp@juno.com

Jacob Pugh, 9, takes the training wheels off one of the bicycles at the Gentry Parkway Youth Center on Thursday.
(Staff Photo: Tom Turner)