Beth and Patrick Morrissey recall a critical conversation from 1972

The birth of the Baker County YMCA happened on a fall day in 1972.

Beth Morrissey was driving to pick up her daughter, Betty, from Baker High School when she noticed something that upset her.

“Kids, all standing around on the street corners,” Beth said recently, remembering that day almost 43 years ago.

“Talking and smoking with nothing to do.”

Beth was concerned – for those kids, and for her daughter, who was a junior in high school.

She expressed her fears to her husband, Patrick, when she got home.

At the time the Morrisseys had been married just over a year.

They had six children between them, all from previous marriages.

But the conversation the couple had that autumn afternoon led to the conception of what became one of the Morrisseys’ favorite sayings, one Beth recites now with a laugh:

“The Y is our child.”

What Beth told Patrick when she returned home that day in 1972 is that she thought the kids she had seen merely needed an option besides loitering on the streets.

“I thought if they had a place to go and exercise, maybe they wouldn’t do that,” Beth said.

The problem, Patrick told her, is that unless kids were good enough to be on organized sports teams, there were few outlets for them to do that.

One of those few options was due to Beth’s efforts. She would teach an occasional exercise class in a local rented building.

Patrick understood the dilemma at a personal level.

Patrick served three years in the Army during World War II, sleeping in foxholes, dodging enemy shelling and dive bombers. Yet he will be the first to tell you that he wasn’t cut out for organized athletics.

“I was little, immature, there was no way I could be in sports,” he said.

Knowing what it felt like to miss out on those opportunities, Patrick, after hearing Beth’s worries, also wanted to do something to help the youth of the town so that they could feel included and active.

Patrick approached John Brown, spokesman for Sig Ellingson and the Ellingson Lumber Co., about a donation to help build an athletic center for the community.

Ellingson, whose mother worked at the Klamath Falls YMCA for 35 years, said he would be willing to contribute on the condition that the facility would be a YMCA.

Patrick agreed.

With the $4,000 donation from Ellingson, each of the four banks in town (Pioneer Federal Savings, Western Bank, U.S. National Bank and First National Bank) agreed to contribute $500 a year to the project.

St. Francis de Sales Cathedral offered free use of its gym, on the west side of the cathedral on Church Street. The gym had not been used since St. Francis Academy closed in 1970.

The Morrisseys were delighted to see their idea come to fruition.

Both Patrick and Beth were working full time while tackling the YMCA project.

Patrick was managing his family’s ranch, Steward and Morrissey Inc. and upholding his position as head of the Animal Health Committee for the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association. Beth was working as secretary to the manager of Western Bank.

Sam-O Swim Center

A few years later, in 1979, Patrick got a call from an accountant representing the late Mildred Rogers. The accountant asked Patrick whether the YMCA could build a pool with a donation of $350,000.

“No,” Patrick said. “But we sure as heck can’t build one without it.”

In partnership with the YMCA, Beth and Patrick set to work on securing the additional money. They hired a professional fundraiser. Beth worked as the small gift chairman, Patrick as the large gift chairman.

“It was the biggest fund drive this town had ever seen,” Patrick said. “We raised $900,000.”

But they needed $1.3 million to build the pool. Unwilling to give up the fight, the Morrisseys did some digging.

“We found out that if Baker City were to own the pool instead of the YMCA, they could get a grant of $600,000 for municipal improvement from the federal government,” Patrick said.

They gave all the money they had raised to the city, and in exchange, the city would take ownership of the pool. The YMCA would handle the operation and staffing of the facilities.

The Sam-O Swim Center opened to the public on June 18, 1983, and it remains Baker City’s only public swimming facility.

See more in Friday’s issue of the Baker City Herald.