Sam Frisby walks fast as he leads a tour of the newly opened Trenton YMCA on Pennington Avenue. “We renovated it with a new gym, cycle room, showers, and lockers,” says the organization’s CEO — and Mercer County Freeholder. “There’s a new yoga class, Pilates, and a new fitness center with weights and treadmill, a 2,000-square-foot exercise room for adults while their kids are taking classes.”
With a sweeping arm gesturing to the structure, the slender man in business attire adds, “It’s an old supermarket, built in the 1940s. It became a Boys and Girls Club and then was empty. “
The more he walks, the more he tells: The old YMCA — operating in the circa 1920 building with an indoor pool, inside track, basketball court, and weight and steam rooms, and 90 apartments on Clinton Avenue at East State Street — filed for bankruptcy in the 1980s, and the building was razed. Since then the idea of reopening a Trenton Y was a civic hope that only picked up momentum in 2014 when the Trenton YMCA organization purchased the Pennington Street space from the city for $1.
Now after three decades, the Y is back in the capital city. “We want to take Y back to what it is known for: a family organization,” Frisby says, adding that the official opening is really a series of successes launched over the past several years. “Our dance program is wildly successful. And our basketball program is largely successful. We are copartners for Healthy Kids with Robert Wood Johnson at Greenwood Market. And during the summer months we are the mangers of the pools for the city.”
The Y’s current budget of $2.7 million, the 47-year-old says, is made up of a patchwork quilt that includes 1,200 members, state subsidies for child care, a preschool, facility rental as a temporary Trenton High School gym facility, and contributed support from PNC Bank, Princeton Area Community Foundation, Wells Fargo Foundation, Junior League, Times-Kiwanis Camp Fund, Novo Nordisk, Christine’s Hope For Kids, and others.
After a quick stop at the gym to view an after school volleyball session, Frisby says he wants the community to know that the Y is back, and again talks history. “The Trenton Y is the oldest nonprofit in Trenton and one of the 12 oldest YMCAs in the country, founded in 1856. The YMCAs came to America from England in 1851.”
Frisby’s youthful memories of attending the Trenton Y — or any Y for that matter — are purely imaginative. “I didn’t grow up with a YMCA in my town,” he says with a smile. “I am Salem County (New Jersey) born and raised, near Cowtown (rodeo). We moved to Sicklerville when I was eight.” It was his home until 1987, the year he left to attend Howard University to study sociology and psychology.
Frisby was raised by his mother, Jeannine Frisby LaRue, originally a Penns Grove High School English teacher and adjunct professor at Glassboro State College (now Rowan University). “She then became a lobbyist for NJEA. She’s the first African-American female lobbyist in New Jersey. She started in 1978 and is still lobbying today,” says Frisby, referring to her current position of senior vice president of the public affairs company Kaufman Zita Group in West Trenton.
She also served as deputy chief of staff for Governor Jon Corzine and vice president of public affairs at Rutgers University. While she currently lives in Trenton, her mid-1990s decision to accept work in Newark became a life changer for her son who, he says, moved there after he graduated from Howard to help make her feel more “comfortable” in the city.
As the founding executive director of 10,000 Mentors Inc., a Newark-based nonprofit organization that matches accomplished professionals with elementary school students, she became the connection to both Frisby’s future wife, Teska, and the start of a career.
Of the former, he says, his wife’s sister worked in an office across from his mother. The two women talked about family members, including a sister, and a son who were conservative churchgoers. “They thought the two ‘dull’ people would get on well,” says Frisby. They two have been married for 18 years and have two sons, Samuel and Theodore.
The career path came from Newark connections that led Frisby to interview with former Governor Tom Kean to create a mentor program at Drew University in 1996. According to the Center for Nonprofits, “Frisby was responsible for more than 200 mentors developing relationships with 200 children in the city of Newark. The Mentors of Drew program won a Daily Points of Light award from the Points of Light Foundation in Washington D.C., which was established by President Bush Sr. This award was so prestigious because it recognized the Mentors of Drew program nationally as being in the top two percent of more than the 3,500 programs reviewed. The following year he developed Drew’s tutoring program which worked in concert with the mentoring program.”
In 1998 he began working for Communities and Schools of New Jersey, the nation’s largest stay-in-school network, replicating programs statewide and basing himself in central New Jersey.
Then in 2003 he solidified his connection to Trenton by becoming the City of Trenton’s director of recreation, cultural resources, and culture, serving under Mayor Douglas Palmer and overseeing the city-wide Student Career Opportunity Outreach Program (SCOOP).
He says that the Trenton SCOOP grew to involve 14 non-school educational and cultural programs around the city. “The program involved 4,000 students and (transported) 1,500 a day. It was exhilarating and scary at the same time. Many times we had to make sure that every kid got back to their (home organization) to be picked up by their parents.”
Other director duties, he says, involved participating in various committees and boards, including Artworks, New Jersey State Museum, and the YMCA in which he become more and more involved.
“The only thing I knew about the YMCA was the song,” he says, referring to the popular song by the Village People. “I quickly learned.” The process involved raising funds and membership, and renovating the building.
His position with the city required the Frisbys to move to Trenton, and the couple purchased a home in the Cadwalader Heights section, now a feature of the Cadwalader Heights House Tour.
After leaving the city job at the end of the Palmer administration (2009), he started a consulting company. In February, 2011, he was appointed as a Mercer County Freeholder, replacing Dan Benson after his election to the New Jersey Assembly. Frisby successfully ran for freeholder that November.
At the same time he had became the YMCA president and was faced with hiring the first full-time executive in decades. “I called Francis Blanco” — former department of recreation, natural resources, and culture director for Mayor Palmer and current chief of staff for Mayor Jackson — “and said I need a CEO and asked her (for input). She said, ‘Why don’t you think about leading the organization?’ It didn’t seem right. It looked like I maneuvered the situation. But the board didn’t want to do a national search. I think it was one of the best decisions I made in my life. This is the only place where my vocation and avocation cross paths.”
As he pauses in the new lobby and interacts with staff, giving directions, signing a check, Frisby seems at home. And if he summed up his situation as “blessed,” it would be consistent with his avocation as a music minister for two churches: Westminster Presbyterian Church in Trenton and Second Baptist Church in Moorestown, in southern New Jersey.
“I play piano and organ,” he says. “I wanted to play, but my mother wouldn’t give me piano lessons. I prayed and fasted for the gift to play. I learned. I can’t read music, but I can play anything I hear. I’ve been doing it since I was 16 — that’s 31 years now. I accompany the service and teach the choirs.”
About his Freeholder work, he says, “I want to make sure that government works well for those people who need help. Government is a safety net. I want to make sure that people in Trenton are getting equitable service.”
Frisby adds, “I’m a moderate. I am liberal in my thoughts, but I have to be practical in the application. There are certain things that you just can’t do. It’s not always what government is going to do. Government is not here to do everything for you. How do we balance that? How do we get people to take responsibility on their own? I don’t see things as black and white, there is always a bit of gray in there. How do we help people understand that?”
His thought quickly moves to a quote from his mother. “It’s framed on her wall: ‘The first place we have to strengthen is our own home.’ We have to look in before we look out. We have to strengthen our home before we strengthen our community,” he says.
Frisby checks his watch and sees he’s late for the freeholder session, smiles, and glances around the new space. The look on his face repeats what he said earlier: “This is the only place where my vocation and avocation cross paths.”
Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) of Trenton, 431 Pennington Ave., Mondays through Fridays, 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Child, adult, senior, and family memberships available. Registration and monthly fees. 609-599-9622, www.trentonymca.org.
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