About The YMCA

History

YMCAs have played a significant role in the history of America. YMCAs invented basketball, volleyball, and racquetball, and pioneered camping, physical fitness, and swimming lessons. YMCAs helped found the USO, Boy Scouts of America, and Camp Fire Girls. YMCA volunteers provided support and services to millions of soldiers in many major wars, including the Civil War, World War I and World War II. Now in 2001, YMCA's across America celebrate 150 years of service. After nearly 20 years of trying, the Grand Strand Family YMCA was incorporated on April 14, 1983. The effort to incorporate was spearheaded by members of the South Strand Kiwanis Club and other interested community leaders. Under the leadership of its president, Otis Allen Jeffcoat III, the board of directors hired Bruce Boyer as the executive director, operating from a small office on Oak Street. The first program offered by the Y was an instructional swim class taught by Boyer's wife Kathy. In 1989 when a lease from Horry Georgetown Technical College, which had purchased the former Coastal Academy was offered, the YMCA was blessed with a gymnasium, locker rooms, classrooms for fitness equipment, weights, aerobics, offices, and a pre-school area. The YMCA continues to lease the property today from the First United Methodist Church, but has a strategic plan to develop program centers in other areas in the near future.

The Grand Strand Family YMCA is a United Way Agency

O

R

E

S

YMCA character development also differentiates us from other ogranizations that exist soley to provide recreational programs. We have always maintained that we are not in the child care, fitness, or sports business. Our programs are simply a vehicle through which we deliver our Mission. Character development is the final product.