new house building 05.06.2021

Sources

• Duncan native Bonnie Talley shared a few aspects about Gabriel’s House with the Duncan Noon Lions Club, featuring many things happening with the program, as well as the building.

Founded in 1998, Gabriel’s House has expanded throughout the years. Gabriel’s House is an after school program in which when it was started it was for at-risk kids.

“What we do is we’re looking for children who were being raised by a single parent, grandparents, other family member, parents who were incarcerated, non-English speaking parents,” Talley said.

Kids become a part of the system in a variety of ways. “We started in little houses, close to each one of the grade schools back in 1998,” Talley said. “A church would buy the house, they would insure it, maintain it and provide the utilities for us.” According to Talley, the little houses would only hold about 12 kids. “There’s so many more kids out there that need our help and we can’t do it,” Talley said. “Actually, it was Sherry Labyer who was superintendent of Duncan Public Schools, she offered to let us move our program into the elementary buildings at her school.”

Talley said this move allowed Gabriel’s House to house more kids. “After the first year, we realized it really wasn’t working,” Talley said.

They needed more available space to put the fun back into their program according to Talley.

“Eventually we were reduced down to having our program in the cafeteria’s,” Talley said. “The kids felt like they were in detention or something, it was something that wasn’t fun anymore.”

In order to bring back the original feeling to their program, fun and excitement, the group changed course once again.

Then, Gabriel’s House was invited to the old junior high building. “Which is now the Ninth Street Center,” Talley said.

The first year they were there, they had 100 kids and they were already outgrowing the space once again.

“We’ve always done a lot of physical activities with our kids,” Talley said. “When we moved into that building, we didn’t know that the Hoover family was going to remodel that gym.”

Talley then shared a little about her dream that she shared back in 2018. “At our fundraiser in 2018, I got up and I shared a dream that we’d have a place to call home,” Talley said. “That we’d have our own building and our own resources and have everything so we’re not always hidden in somebody else’s facility.”

What happened later that night got the ball rolling; Gabriel’s House received their first funds for the project.