A.M. Cannon Parks’ baseball field named Rick Harris Field in honor of longtime West Central center youth programs director

Rick Harris, the youth development and facilities manager at the West Central Community Center, knew something was up when his family walked into the community center’s board meeting Tuesday night.

What he didn’t expect was that his co-workers had spent months arranging to have the baseball field in A.M. Cannon Park named Rick Harris Field in honor of his contributions to the community.

“I’m humbled,” he said after the room rose into a standing ovation. “I don’t know what to say. Just don’t call it the Rick Harris Memorial Field.”

Harris has been working at the center for more than 27 years, said executive director Kim Ferraro. “His first job out of college was in the Department of Corrections,” she said. “He was there two years and it hurt his heart.”

Instead he decided he’d rather help kids stay out of trouble and avoid jail. Since then he’s taught classes on making positive life choices and organized all the sports programs run by the center. “He’s helped hundreds of kids,” Ferraro said.

The center is located in a low-income neighborhood and many local kids have nontraditional living situations because one or both parents are in jail or other circumstances. “In the past we’ve had a lot of troubled kids,” she said. “Rick’s demeanor is so calming yet he’s very direct. He just redirects anger into something more positive.”

His bond with the kids is so strong that people who attended the center as children have brought their own children in to meet Harris, Ferraro said.

Harris is so fiercely protective of “his” kids that he once interrupted a gang recruitment in the park.

“They were kind of my kids,” he said. “I kind of got in the middle of them and asked what they were doing.”

This summer the center got a $25,000 grant from the Spokane Parks and Recreation Department to offer programs in Cannon Park, which is next to the center. The goal was in part to keep the park busy to keep undesirable elements out, Ferraro said.

In years past the center staff has found needles from drug use in the playground almost daily. This year only a handful of needles were found so the program seemed effective, Ferraro said. The extra programs, which included sports both for those who participate in center activities and children in the neighborhood, were run by Harris.

“It helped redirect the kids,” she said. “We have kids here who are unsupervised. I mean little kids just running wild in the park.”

Harris said he wanted to get kids out of their houses and away from their electronics. “It was different when we were growing up,” he said. “We were outside. We were playing.”

The grant paid for extra staffing, but it also paid for a lot of sports equipment the center can keep using each summer, Harris said. “It’s all about trying to provide a positive experience, a positive activity,” he said.

He’d like to find the funding to bring the program back next summer. “I think it’s very beneficial to the community,” he said.

Ferraro said that Harris never wants recognition and always deflects praise to his team. He showed that quality Tuesday while people came up and congratulated him after the board meeting.

“I’m shocked and humbled,” he said. “I’m not sure I’m actually deserving of something like this.”

Ferraro said she thinks the neighborhood, particularly the children, will like the baseball field’s new name.

“This is their neighborhood hero,” she said.