By Miguel Almeida, Staff Reporter
As Neil Berger gazed at snapshots of smiling children, taken over the years at summer camps and athletic competitions, the memories came flashing back.
"We've had the best kids in the city," said Berger, the salt-and-pepper-haired director of Castle Hill's Pathways for Youth. "They return the affection we give them. We're blessed."
Working at the center for 25 years -- first as an assistant softball coach, then as a counselor at its upstate summer camp -- Berger has worked to shelter hundreds of Castle Hill teenagers from the perils of the streets.
Many of them have gone on to scale great heights: scrawny Frank Acevedo is now a lawyer with the city's housing court, and gap-toothed Brian Reese led the North Carolina Tar Heels to the NCAA Championship in 1993. Others thrive as teachers and police officers.
"They are the true measures of success," Berger said, pointing out his favorite Polaroids. "They still come back and speak to the kids. Even the ones that went the other way, they were special. They have a heart."
Berger knows a thing or two about going the other way. Growing up in the colossal housing project that looms over the youth center, Berger hung out with Castle Hill's street corner toughs.
"I look at where my friends are now," he said. "Buried before their time in St. Raymond's Cemetery, or in prison. I try not to think about it. It's too scary."
But Berger had a savior -- a Pathways counselor who saw enough promise in the young rowdy to offer him a coaching position on the softball team.
"His name was Thomas W. Harris," he said. "We would say that the `W' stood for wonderful. He predicted that I would one day become the head of the center. I dare to guess where I would be without him."
Having come full circle, Berger now tries to give a new generation of teenagers the kind of opportunities his mentor offered him.
Arriving at Pathways every day at noon, he seldom leaves before the lights are turned off at midnight.
"My family rarely sees me," said Berger who lives with his wife, Selma, his Monroe High School sweetheart, and three daughters. "But they understand. They know it's something I've done for some time -- that the kids here also form part of my immediate family."
After school every day, over 300 youngsters, most of them students at Castle Hill's public schools, come to the center to shoot a basket or slap a puck, to play computer games or to just hang out and talk. Some are so comfortable at the center that the counselors recently began serving them dinner.
Walking the halls, Berger doles out advice and ribs the kids about their favorite sports teams and trendy haircuts. At night, after the phone calls and paperwork, he dons a T-shirt and shorts and shows the young hoopsters a thing or two on the basketball court.
"He'll take care of you," said Tyrone Tucker, 26, who has been coming to the center for 16 years. "He'll help you in any way he can. He's a good man. And he's got a good jumper too, a Larry Bird jumper."