Shooting for a better
deal at Deni Playground

By William Kenny
Times Staff Writer

The last time the Northeast Times checked in with Frankford’s Raymond Gant, he was hard at work on what seemed like a million simultaneous projects.
Last month, he added number 1 million and one.
Gant, who is probably best known in the community surrounding his thrift store at Ruan and Leiper streets as a godfather of sorts for Deni Playground, started up the Friends of Deni Basketball League for youths ages 9 to 16.
The league, which includes about 50 kids and features two age divisions, plays on Saturday and Sunday mornings and will continue through this month.
Gant, an ex-convict, continues to oversee his own home improvement charity called Ray of Hope and serve as a project coordinator for the corporate community service partnership Greater Philadelphia Cares. He views the Friends of Deni league as a vehicle for keeping local youths off the streets, filling a need in their lives and showing them the power of community.
"I think the need they all have is to be understood and not necessarily held responsible for the things that are going on with them right now," Gant said as youngsters dressed in bright custom T-shirts raced up and down the well-kept Deni courts one recent Saturday.
Youths, particularly those growing up in less-than-affluent urban neighborhoods, are bombarded with influences, many of them bad, Gant explained. Yet, unless they have proper guidance and mentoring, they can develop a distorted sense of reality.
"People learn what they want to learn and think that what they learn is the truth," Gant said.
The Friends of Deni founder is a firm believer that actions speak louder than words when trying to lead young people down the right path. He put that philosophy into practice at Deni long before the recent creation of the basketball league.
Three years ago, the playground was a mess. In January 2006, Gant opened up his Furniture for Hope thrift store to raise money for Ray of Hope. The charity specializes in making emergency home repairs for seniors and the poor who cannot afford to pay contractors. Gant and his crew work throughout the city.
Gant made a quick impression on neighbors as he always offered to help local folks facing crisis situations. Gant often lent a hand to fire victims and the homeless, providing them with clothes and other necessities from his store, as well as a temporary place to rest.
"(The store) had so much impact on the community. When people needed stuff, we were there," he said.
It didn’t take long for Gant to gaze across the street and notice the wasted resource that was Deni Playground, with its broken basketball hoops, swing sets and sliding boards, its glass-covered asphalt and its trash-strewn ball field.
Many of his neighbors had long thought the same way about the facility.
"Right after I got dug in here, my neighbors came to me and we got to talking in just day-to-day conversations," he said. "And I was asking questions on what we could do to help the park."
Even before they began lobbying city officials for costly repairs to the playground, Gant took it upon himself to organize volunteer cleanup crews. Although new equipment would have to come from downtown, there was no reason neighbors couldn’t pick up the trash, sweep the glass and paint over the graffiti, Gant figured.
Those weekly cleanups continue today.
"It’s twice a week sometimes. We do the whole block," Gant said.
On a recent weekend, about 14 young people from a nationwide faith-based community service organization, the Center for Students Mission, joined in on the work.
"We’ve been able to do so much partnering with Raymond," said Krista Perry, a local coordinator for the mission. "We’re fixing up houses and (doing) litter cleanups. We like to work with people who are really connected and really involved in the community, and that’s what Ray is doing."
Another helper that day was a longtime friend of Gant’s from Chester, Pa., Richard Carter. Like Gant, Carter is a reformed ex-con who has replicated Gant’s charitable efforts in his downtrodden hometown.
In Chester, Carter organized a group that made major repairs at the local YWCA in exchange for some office space there. Called the Human Rights Coalition of Chester, the organization now runs a bicycle program in which volunteers from Widener University have fixed up dozens of old donated bicycles for redistribution to the needy.
Carter readily credits Gant’s model and his can-do spirit for his own organization’s success.
"We’re copycats," Carter said. "But I don’t mind being a copycat if it’s the right cat (I’m copying)."
Gant acknowledges that he’s gotten a lot of help along the way, particularly from public officials like former City Councilman Dan Savage, his successor, Councilwoman Maria Quinones-Sanchez and state Rep. John Taylor.
Gant’s early cleanup efforts first got the attention of Savage, then a local Democratic ward leader, in 2006. He and other key figures also adopted the cause and reformed the defunct Deni Advisory Committee.
Within months, there were new basketball hoops and backboards, new playground equipment, new trash cans and a new spirit at Deni.
Gant and the advisory committee soon went their separate ways as Savage won a special election to serve the final year of imprisoned City Councilman Rick Mariano’s term. Mariano was convicted on federal corruption charges.
The committee envisioned creating a baseball league for kids ages 5 to 12 at Deni, which this summer celebrated its second season. Gant, however, was more focused on the older youths.
At first, he hoped to formalize a football league to replace the pickup games they seemed to play all the time. But basketball ended up as the more practical choice. Plenty of local kids like to play that, too.
Gant’s partners in the Friends of Deni are Dominic Gibbs, who is the FOD vice president and coaches the basketball teams, and Officer Marcus Allen, who heads the local Police Athletic League center and serves as FOD president. Gant is treasurer of FOD.
As the basketball program develops, he plans to incorporate life lessons with the basketball that the kids learn. There will be academic, community service and perhaps employment expectations on the kids. But for the rest of this season, he just wants them to get comfortable with the program and keep the ball rolling.
"What we’re looking to do is have something that’s no cost to the families so people come out," Gant said. ••
For information about Friends of Deni and Ray of Hope charity, call 215-964-7627.
Reporter William Kenny can be reached at 215-354-3031 or bkenny@phillynews.com