To honor his uncle Tom Buttafaro’s memory and to help continue the legacy of a place he literally grew up in, Cleveland Browns tight end and Jamestown native Stephen Carlson has agreed to be the honorary project chairman of the proposed new $26 million YMCA, which will be located on Harrison Street in the city. AP photos

When Stephen Carlson first started playing in the Tom Buttafaro Basketball League as a youngster, the games were contested in the Love Elementary School gymnasium, located on Main Street in Jamestown. Once he reached a certain age, however, they were moved a few blocks away to the lower gym at the YMCA on Fourth Street.

“I remember it being packed full of people,” he said recently. ” … I think the games were Saturday mornings, and it was just like a full morning and afternoon of hanging out in the Y and all the areas they had. Everyone in the city was hanging out there for a few hours, and it was a lot of fun and socialization.”

The time on the hardwood had special meaning to Carlson for another reason — the youth league was named in honor of his late uncle, who passed away in 2002 at 43.

“I know he was important and just a good role model for the community,” said Carlson, now a third-year tight end with the Cleveland Browns. “He was involved with a lot of things.”

To honor Tom Buttafaro’s memory and to help continue the legacy of a place he literally grew up in, Carlson has agreed to be “involved” in a prominent way as the honorary project chairman of the proposed new $26 million YMCA, which will be located on Harrison Street in the city.

“The past couple years I’ve been looking for things to do to give back,” Carlson said, “because of everything the city has given me, done for me and still does for me. I think I’ve done a lot of little things, but I think this is a step into a bigger direction where I can directly give back to something bigger than myself.”

Tom Benson, the new Jamestown YMCA project chairman, couldn’t be happier.

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Introduced to the YMCA by his grandfather, Benson has been a lifelong member and recognizes first hand the impact it can have on a community.

“Basically, the Y was like my home,” he said last week. “Whatever I could possibly do there, I did there, and talk about life lessons? … There are hundreds and thousands of stories of people who maybe wouldn’t have gotten to where they are and become the person they became without the Y influence.”

There is also a more immediate impact.

Did you know that, according to a packet of information supplied by the Jamestown YMCA:

¯ 55,422 summer meals were provided at 18 locations to nearly 700 children in the summer of 2021, and more than 48,000 out-of-school meals were provided to children at seven locations.

¯ More than 9,000 children were engaged in programs at the Y, including licensed child care, and summer and overnight camps.

¯ One in five area residents had a connection with the YMCA in 2019.

¯ More than 2,000 youth became safe swimmers by participating in swim lessons through the Y.

“In today’s world, where it’s so divisive and there are so many angles and everything is sharp, the Y is homogeneous,” Benson said. “Boy, now more than ever, we need to get back to that mentality. I don’t know if it’s possible, but I sure hope so.”

In order to help make that happen, a new facility is necessary, Benson said, because the current location at 101 E. 4th St. is nearly 100 years old and has several maintenance issues. The new proposed YMCA would be two stories high and include many of the same features that the current location does, in addition to 10,000 square feet of child-care and pre-kindergarten space, and two parking lots. The hope is to have it completed by 2024.

“You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take,” Benson said. ” … It’s not sustainable where it is, and there’s a really tight window of what’s happening at the (current) Y now and to (its) survival. This project is the one chance to get it done.”

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Carlson’s athletic accomplishments are well known in these parts — two-time, first-team all-state football player at Jamestown High School; All-Ivy League wideout at Princeton University; and a three-year veteran tight end with the Browns — but the foundation of it all began at the Jamestown YMCA.

“It was definitely very important to my childhood, staying busy, and basically living there when I was young, kind of instilled that hard-work mindset a little bit,” said Carlson who is rehabilitating his surgically repaired knee after suffering a season-ending injury in August. “The work was fun, but we were just having fun playing with friends, and that carried on to high school and on to college and even past that. It was definitely very important to my development and my friends’ development. Everyone I grew up with had a part in training and having fun at the YMCA.”

Now, Carlson, 24, has decided to pay it forward.

“This is one of the best things I could do,” he said. “I could give money here and there, but … this is just a project that was really important to my development. I’d like to share that with other kids … so they can have a straight path to develop as young adults, have fun, be involved with exercise, stay active and live a healthy lifestyle.”

Added Benson: “Here’s a guy who could have easily said, ‘I’m too big for you.’ He never would … but if you asked 100 (people like him) to come and do something like this to benefit your hometown, how many would you guess would actually say, ‘yes?’ It would be a handful, but it certainly wouldn’t be a lot.”

But for those who have known Carlson through the years, one thing is also pretty clear — he never drops the ball, literally or figuratively.

“It’s a good deal,” Benson said of Carlson’s connection to the YMCA project. “In the world that he lives in now — with the Browns and the NFL and the horsepower of social media — who knows who might see that story somewhere who has ties to Jamestown who wakes up one day and says, ‘I owe that place a lot, too.'”