Boys and Girls Club working for happy birthdays

Lynn Doan

Friday, Aug. 13, 2004 | 5:19 a.m.

WEEKEND EDITION

August 14 - 15, 2004

Devon Singleterry's birthday was July 1. Shaking his head, the recently turned 8-year-old said he didn't have a party or cake on his birthday. And the only present he could recall receiving was a $20 I-owe-you from his grandmother, "Nana."

Devon, who hasn't quite grasped the difference between his birthday and Christmas, said he was just glad that he wouldn't have to spend his $20 on presents for his family.

"They said I don't have to get them anything," he said.

Devon is one of a dozen children with July birthdays who were thrown their very own, and for some their very first, birthday party at the Boys and Girls Club of North Las Vegas at the end of the month. If it weren't for the club's monthly birthday celebration, club director Kathy Stenberg said, 80 percent of the club's kids would have turned another year older without a party.

Sixty percent of the children in Las Vegas Boys and Girls Clubs live below the federal poverty level, and 56 percent of them live in single-parent homes, according to the club's spokeswoman Karry Rathje.

Boys and Girls Club board member Laura Coleman, who owns the Poker Palace on Las Vegas Boulevard North, began throwing the birthday parties in January after she won a long-running golf bet with her husband.

"We decided that every hole I beat him at, he had to pay me $50," she said. "By the end of the bet, I had $1,500."

Coleman said she wanted to donate the money, but she didn't know where she wanted to donate. Then, she thought of her aunt-in-law, Eve, who had thrown a birthday party for her 88-year-old boyfriend, Al, last July. Al grew up in a low-income neighborhood in Chicago and had never celebrated his birthday until last year, Coleman said.

"He had never even seen his name on a birthday cake," Coleman said, shaking her head. "There are a lot of kids out there like Al who have never had a birthday party."

From that, "Al's Birthday Club" sprang. Coleman and Stenberg decided to begin the parties in January to give it a fresh start. Coleman said her bet money is now "long gone," but she continues to pay for pizza, presents and game prizes each month.

For hygiene purposes, the children don't blow out the candles on their birthday cake. Instead, they each receive a cupcake with a lit candle on top, while Coleman cuts the cake.

"Oh no, kids, I feel really bad, but I just cut right through the sun," Coleman said laughing, pointing to the yellow frosting on top of a large, square cake. A mix of laughs and sighs swept through the crowd of 12 kids wearing birthday hats propped on their foreheads like rhino horns.

Stenberg and Coleman prepared three games for the birthday girls and boys: a beanbag throw, toss-a-cross and Hula Hoop.

Shaunta Grayson, 11, won two out of the three games, which meant two trips to the treasure chest, a box of miscellaneous prizes. She walked away with a T-shirt and a "Boogie Bobber," a plastic figurine with a bobbing head.

But games and prizes are just the icing on the cake. Near the end of the birthday party, Coleman passes out the presents, for which she personally shops, matching their ages and genders.

Devon pulled out a set of Super Soakers from his large giftbag and lifted them above his head.

"I'm going to spray my brother with this," he said, running a hand across the water guns. Since he got two, Devon said he planned to give one to his 6-year-old brother, so they could spray each other.

Thirteen-year-old Chrystal Watkins received a set of plastic jewelry and two journals at the party. On her birthday, July 7, Chrystal said her parents gave her money to spend at Circus Circus and paid for her cellular phone bill, which she usually pays on her own.

She said it doesn't make sense for her parents to pay for her phone bill when she can afford to pay for it with her Christmas and birthday money.

Coleman also gives each birthday kid a goody bag filled with books.

Coleman said that though she can no longer talk her husband into shelling out $50 for every hole she makes, she plans to continue the Al's Birthday Club because it makes her as happy as it does the children.