The Parent-Child Program was developed in a deliberated way to support the father’s vital family role as teacher, counselor, and friend to his son. Harold S. Keltner, St. Louis YMCA Director, as an integral part of Association work, initiated the program. In 1926 he organized the first tribe in Richmond Heights, Missouri, with the help of his good friend, Joe Friday, an Ojibway Indian, and William H. Hefelfinger, Chief of the first Y-Indian Guide tribe. Inspired by his experiences with Joe Friday, who was his guide on fishing and hunting trips into Canada, Harold Keltner initiated a program of parent-child experiences that now involves a half million children and adults annually in the YMCA.
While Keltner was on a hunting trip in Canada, one evening, Joe Friday, the Indian, said to his white colleague as they sat around a blazing campfire: “The Indian father raises his son. He teaches his son to hunt, to track, to fish, to walk softly and silently in the forest, to know the meaning and purpose of life and all he must know, while the white man allows the mother to raise his son.” These comments struck home, and Harold Keltner arranged for Joe Friday to work with him at the St. Louis YMCA.
The Ojibway Indian spoke before groups of YMCA boys and dads in St. Louis, and Mr. Keltner discovered that fathers, as well as boys, had a keen interest in the traditions and ways of American Indian. At the same time, being greatly influenced by the work of Ernest Thompson Seton, a great lover of the out-of-doors, Harold Keltner conceived the idea of a father and son program based upon the strong qualities of American Indian culture and life-dignity, patience, endurance, spirituality, felling for the earth, and concern for the family. Thus, the Parent-Child Program was born a half century ago.
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