In the summer of 1968, Lou Dantzler, a South Central Los Angeles father of two, came home from his gardening route early one day to discover his neighbor's 11-year-old son breaking into his house. Though angry to see the child commit such a crime, sadly Lou was not surprised. Lou knew that his young neighbor, like many other kids in the community, didn't have a father around. No one to take an interest in him and give him the attention and discipline so desperately needed to keep him out of trouble. Sadly, Lou knew dozens of kids like his young neighbor.

 

Lou Dantzler also knew what it was like to grow up without a father. The youngest of 22 children born to a poor South Carolina sharecropper, Lou lost his father when he was just seven years old. While his father's death devastated Lou's family economically, he later realized as a teen how much his father's absence also affected his well-being and self-confidence.

 

So when Lou caught that young boy stealing from him, he didn't call the police. He was well aware that simply having the police cart an impressionable kid off to juvenile hall -- finishing school for budding criminals -- was neither going to help that child nor the community in the long run. Like the dozens of other fatherless children in his neighborhood, Lou knew that what this boy needed was someone to teach him right and wrong and help him become a productive adult.

 

Lou had an idea. He decided to take an interest in his young neighbor's life; to give him and some of the otherwayward boys in his community something positive to do. He invited his neighbor and eleven other neighborhood kids for a day of fun at a nearby park -- a place that not one of them had ever visited. To them, it was like paradise. Amidst a day of sports and recreation, they opened up to Lou about their problems and he offered guidance; when they got out of hand Lou firmly brought them back into line. For these boys, Lou was a revelation.

 

As they were preparing to leave, Lou asked them if they wanted to do this again. Cheers went up amongst the group, and then one boy asked, "Can I bring a friend?"

 

The following Saturday, instead of twelve kids, Lou had twenty-five. A month after that, there were fifty. Lou enlisted some of his friends to help and soon he had a network of parent volunteers helping him organize the more than one hundred kids he took to the park by the end of that summer. Seeing how much enthusiasm and pride these kids now had, Lou wanted to give them something of their own, a feeling of ownership and belonging that would unite them into something positive - a club. After Vons, a local grocery chain, donated a storefront on 51st Street and Vermont Avenue, abandoned since the Watts Riots, Lou's group of boys became "Challengers Boys Club," becoming the first of more than 35,000 boys and girls to walk through its doors and become part of what has come to be called the "Oasis of South Central Los Angeles."