Published: November 25, 2005 11:32 pm         

Youth services founder celebrates 100th birthday

As the woman who founded a local organization dedicated to supporting youth celebrates her 100th birthday, administrators and volunteers are kicking off a fund-raising campaign for facility improvements.

Thelma Gungoll, retired school teacher and founder of Youth & Family Services of North Central Oklahoma, was honored Friday by family, friends and supporters of the organization with a birthday party.

Gungoll founded the organization in 1974. She celebrated her 100th birthday Nov. 19.

“I knew for a long time that Enid needed something for young people to help them get along in life,” Gungoll said in a recent interview at her home in Enid.

Youth & Family Services is a non-profit agency that provides therapeutic foster care placement, counseling and other family-centered services to children, youth and families. The agency primarily serves Garfield, Grant and Major counties.

Administrators and volunteers just last week kicked off a capital campaign with the hope of raising $900,000 for facility improvements and a new building to house the area’s only emergency youth shelter.

Jane Martin, immediate past president of Youth & Family Services, said Gungoll’s lifelong goal was to help youths be the best they could be.

“I think she recognized children weren’t in as good of a situation as they should have been,” Martin said.

Now retired, Gungoll is allowing others committed to the goal to provide the best for the area’s youths.

“We’ve never had to be in a capital campaign before,” Martin said. “The building is very old.”

The current building, bought in 1984, was constructed from three World War II-era barracks. There are currently 12 beds in the shelter. Funds raised from the campaign will be used to construct a new 6,200-square-foot youth shelter at the intersection of Midway and Oxford. Youth & Family Services owns the property, and board members believe the location provides privacy for the clients its serves. The new building also would allow the agency to move the offices on West Willow to the Midway and Oxford location.

Brad Blankenship, co-chairman of the Youth & Family Services capital campaign with Mike Barnthouse, said he believes the community will step up and give generously to the cause.

“Anything we can do as a community to provide a safe and comfortable environment for the kids is worth (it),” Blankenship said. “I feel very confident that the community will respond. Enid has always been very generous with these kinds of projects.”

Youth & Family Services serves more than 200 children through the youth shelter each year.

“These kids deserve a decent place to stay, and we’re going to build it for them,” Blankenship said.

According to Barnthouse, he and Blankenship have been busy building a volunteer group of approximately 100 people to help solicit funds from residents, businesses and foundations.

“Our goal for the project is $900,000, and with the great group we have working with us we will reach that goal by spring,” Barnthouse said.

Martin said the agency’s goal is to encourage youths who come to Youth & Family Services.

“They can become anything they want to be, Martin said. “All they need is a helping hand along the way — not to be reliant upon the system, but to let the system help them. That’s our main thing.”

The Youth & Family Services emergency youth shelter has been serving the community for nearly 30 years.

Blankenship’s wife, Coni, is the current Youth & Family Services board president.

“We feel like it’s very important for this community,” Brad Blankenship said.

For more information about the YFS capital campaign, or to schedule a tour of the current shelter, contact YFS Development Director Heather Leonard at 233-7220.