Clyde's Unexpected Legacy

I took the youth to do some mission work today. We spent the morning at a homeless shelter downtown called the Dallas Life Foundation. We worked in the basement sorting clothes and then in the kitchen serving lunch. After that we visited the Wesley-Rankin Community Center in West Dallas where we spent time with kids from the neighborhood who attend a VBS-like program called Project Transformation. Overall, it was a very rewarding experience to serve and give our time to help others. And along the way we learned a little history.

While at the Wesley Rankin Center we toured the facilities and learned one of their buildings, an old house, is historically linked to Bonnie and Clyde Barrow. At this former home of Lillie McBride, the sister of Raymond Hamilton (a gunman associated with the Barrows), Clyde shot and killed a sheriff's deputy who had been staked out trying to apprehend a friend of Clyde's named Odell Chambless. Incredibly, this incident is actually indirectly responsible for the center that now stands on that property.

The center's namesake, Hattie J. Rankin, learned of the plight of the children and youth in West Dallas from ministering to Mrs. Steve Davis, mother of "Pretty Boy" Floyd and Ray Hamilton. She reacted to the wayward activities of young men like Clyde and Ray by helping to create something that would give kids in that area a hope that they did not have before. Because of her efforts a church was first built and then years later a center evolved to serve the community.

Who would have thought that an outlaw from the 30's could influence a woman to create a youth center. Certainly not Clyde Barrow.