Sally Young

College Friend

“SMC is always a little nudge, a push-push-push, a pat on the back that’s always there.”

Sally has very strong feelings about the real value of SMC. “It’s a crucial—and maybe the only—option for a lot of people,” she says. “If you want to be an artist, a finish carpenter or a mechanic like my Dad, there are so few places to turn to. The world is full of good human souls,” she continues, “who need a place to start. And if they don’t find one, they’ll be under-employed or never make it at all.”

Sally’s own SMC start happened unremarkably enough. “I just thought everyone went to SMC after high school,” she remembers. “But when I first walked on that campus, I though I’d died and gone to heaven. This was during the 60s and it was a place of relative calm where you could concentrate on classes and collect your own thoughts.” Sally had planned a career with the National Parks Service. “So I thought I’d have to marry a bear and live in the sticks,” she says. But while working her way through school she met her future husband, Allen, in a classroom. And now, years later, she and Allan are both directors of Santa Monica athletic clubs for children, Sally with the Santa Monica YMCA and Allan with the Santa Monica Boys and Girls Club.

“I can’t imagine the city without SMC,” says Sally, who brings her scores of children to the campus pool during summers. “It’s a convenience but it’s also a comfort. In a very real sense, SMC is the neighbor who lives nearby that you always know you can go borrow a cup of sugar from. And somehow,” she continues, “it puts your mind at ease, knowing that it’s there for the neighborhood and the kids.”

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