As a Bryan Adams High School cheerleader in the early ’70s, Wendy Barber practiced with the rest of the squad on the lawn of the White Rock YMCA.

“I never really went inside, though,” she says.

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Today, Barber spends at least 14 hours a day inside the branch, which still serves many of the friends with whom she grew up.

She is the executive director of the White Rock YMCA. But Barber’s connections to the YMCA are nothing new. In fact, it began back in those cheerleading days 20 years ago.

While Wendy and her mother, Betty, researched endowment opportunities for college, a friend told them about YMCA scholarships.

Barber says she was skeptical.

“I felt like since I had never been a member, there was no way I would qualify,” she says.

So she dropped the application into the trash.

Her mom, however, “had a good feeling” about applying to the YMCA and fished the form out.

“I was selected,” Barber says.

Four years later, Barber graduated from Texas Tech with a B.S. degree in telecommunications.

“After three years in the industry, I just didn’t like it,” she says. “I needed a change.”

Coincidentally, a friend mentions an opportunity at the YMCA. A career stretch, Barber thought.

But within weeks, she not only joined the Dallas Metropolitan YMCA, she held the very position that signed off on her education at Texas Tech. Barber was scholarship director.

She says the highlight of that job was contacting the 100 area students awarded college scholarships annually.

“They would be so thrilled hearing the news,” she says. “It made me feel like I had a part in their getting a good education.”

Now in her second year at the White Rock YMCA, Barber says being executive director brings even greater rewards.

“Many of these children are from less fortunate circumstances,” she says. “We become very close to those children who may need counseling, guidance or just a hug.”

Barber laughs when thinking that she almost “trashed” the YMCA opportunity.

“The ‘Y’ not only enabled my education, they have become my family,” she says.