If you plan on sitting down for a chat with Dave Oyler about his 40-year tenure at the Rapid City Club for Boys, don’t forget your box of Kleenex. I defy even the most hard-hearted of souls to spend even a half-hour with Dave, listening to him talk about “his boys,” without shedding a tear or two.Dave doesn’t mean to make you snivel like an emotional fool. It’s just that he’s the kind of rare individual whose passion for his profession has absolutely not dimmed over more than four decades of doing the same thing, with the same people, at the same place, day in and day out. It’s the light in his eyes, the grin on his face, and the enthusiasm in his voice. Where others become jaded and disenchanted with the monotony of a lifelong career, Dave—who supposedly retired last year—can’t seem to stay away.“After 40 years, I still have tremendous passion, incredible awe of this place that, believe it or not, has changed very little through the years,” Dave insists.It was 1965 when a shy and somewhat introverted 15-year-old Boy Scout wandered into a Friday “buddy night” at the Boy’s Club at Sixth and St. Louis in downtown Rapid City. Just shy of his eagle rank, he wasn’t looking for something else to join. But when he walked into the gym full of 400 boisterous boys, Dave was drawn in like a magnet.“I was totally amazed at the number of kids. The diversity. Everybody was having a ball, the time of their lives, and it was irresistible,” he recalls.Irresistible is an appropriate word to describe what Dave saw that first night. He couldn’t stay away. He attended the next new members meeting and joined immediately. His “member” rank was destined to be relatively short, however, for it was clear from the beginning that this young teenager was more of a leader than a follower.
“A few months later, they offered me a job. That first job lasted one day,” Dave says, with a chuckle. The job was coat checker, at 75 cents an hour. The pay was fine for the times, Dave says, but when he lost one of the coat tags, it was a mistake that would cost him $10. “I was pretty much in the hole before I started,” he jokes.
(Read the rest of this story in Winter ‘07 FACES)
