Don was at the mayor’s property early, eager to make a good impression on his first day of mowing the huge estate. He hummed along with the louder hum of the ride-on mower, as the sun’s rays lit up the bright green grass. The ripe smell of the fresh cut lawn made him smile. His older brother Bob had done this job for years. Now it was his turn, since Bob was off at college. This was Don’s chance to be more than just a little brother. He would show his father he was responsible.

When the land sloped toward the pond, Don tightened his grip; his knuckles turned white. He held his breath; his pulse pounded. How had Bob managed this? Maybe he hadn’t come so early.  The dew on the grass was making the hillside slick.  The wheels were spinning, the mower leaned…yikes! As the mower splashed into the pond, Don jumped off and ran home to hide.

Years later, Don laughs off this story. But at the time it was devastating, more evidence that he’d never measure up to his older brother. His father often compared them, and criticized the things that meant the most to Don. His father said Don’s friends were from “the wrong side of the tracks,” his love for sports was a waste of time, and his interest in the minister’s sermons was laughable.

To be honest, Don felt critical of his father too. Although his parents were leaders in their church, and required the whole family to attend regularly, they didn’t take the messages seriously.  He heard messages of “do unto your neighbor as you would have them do unto you” and “blessed are the poor,” but noticed his father’s shame when Don hung out with kids from “the poorer side of town.” Don watched his father, who had plenty of money, put only an occasional dollar in the collection plate. 

Don took the sermons to heart.  One day he said, “Maybe I’ll become a minister.” His father scoffed, “Don’t go off half-cocked and overboard. That’s totally unrealistic. You have to be clever with words to be a minister, son. Give it up.”  When Don wanted to play sports, his father said, “Son, you could break a leg. Don’t do it.”

But his father set one example that Don valued, and that was to work hard. Don did every type of job a kid his age could find. He shoveled walks, mowed yards, sold magazines, and worked as a carpenter’s helper with his father and grandfather.  On payday he loved the feel of the soft envelope of hard-earned money. Don grew in confidence, in spite of his father’s mockery. He had dreams of his own to follow.

His father had reason to question his youngest son’s judgment.  Don wasn’t always “Mr. Responsible.” One time he took his dog “across the Delaware River, like George Washington” when the river was not quite frozen.  Another time he got some laughs by dragging dead Christmas trees into his school and got into big trouble. He was known as a “rapscallion.”

Even though Don was the class clown, he was elected Class President his junior and senior years of high school, and was president of the Christian Endeavor Club at his church.  He played every sport, some more seriously than others, and loved to be in on the action. 

By the end of high school, Don was aware of three things:

1)      He loved sports,

2)      Money and racial differences between people bothered him, and

3)      He had a hungry spirit.

Don was seventeen when Pearl Harbor was hit, and the U.S. entered World War II. Don wanted to fight for his country, but he wasn’t old enough.  His school principal said, “I’ve never seen a boy change as quickly as Don McClanen did from Pearl Harbor.” From being the class clown, Don became serious. While he waited to turn eighteen, he signed up for pilot training in the Naval Air Corps. Unfortunately, they accepted more students than they needed, and he was part of a “wash out.” Minor reasons were found to fail trainees out of the program. Don missed one question on a physics test and he was out of the air corps.

Sick with disappointment, he didn’t give up.  Don tried another strategy. He started over with “submarine boot camp.” He went from up in the air to under the sea. Then he found out that his group would be stationed “state-side.” In other words, they would not see any action. This was unacceptable. He wanted to be in the action.  Don found out which sub would go into the war. Boldly, he visited the captain at home. Don offered himself in whatever way he could be used.  The captain liked his assertiveness. 

“You’re the kind of guy I want on my boat, but the crew is already full,” the captain told him.

However, before the sub pulled out of port, a seaman became sick. The captain called Don.  For the next eighteen months, the captain of the U.S.S. Chub was like a father to Don, believing in him and encouraging him more than his own father. 

Don had something persistent inside him that would not be discouraged.  In high school, he played every sport with his whole heart, even if sometimes he was second string.  When he faced obstacles in joining up in the armed forces, Don literally kept knocking on doors until one opened up. 

Home from the war, Don met up with Gloria, whom he’d known since high school. By this time she was working for the Bell Telephone Company. Although she turned him down the first time he asked her out, he asked her again.  Don knew she was the one for him.  They made a deep connection.  When he told her about his disappointing journey (being failed out of the air corps), his eyes had tears in them and she cried too. They married.

The GI bill and Gloria’s telephone company job helped Don through college. During his college years, in 1947, Don went to a Physical Education Conference in Oklahoma City. There, H. Clay Fiske, a former coach, declared, “A coach can lead kids up a mountain or down the drain, depending on how he lives his life.” Don took his message to heart. He wanted to lead kids up a mountain.  He became a coach at Eastern Oklahoma State College.

Don loved kids and was thrilled when Gloria became pregnant.  Then Gloria lost the baby.  The joy went out of their young ambitious hearts. A coaching friend suggested that Don pray for help through this hard time.  Don had always gone to church, and seriously listened to the ideas, but he had never had a personal experience of God.

At lunchtime that day, he took a walk, and found the doors open at a Catholic Church. In a quiet chapel where no one could see, Don kneeled and asked the Lord into his heart.  In Don’s words, “that was the conversion of this cantankerous soul.”

Over the years, Don collected articles that mentioned sports personalities willing to talk about their faith.  These courageous athletes were his heroes.  One by one, Don wrote to each of them. He never gave up.  He wanted the inspiration and strength of hearing their stories, personally and professionally.  A new dream was nudging him.

Finally he got a response from Pittsburgh Pirate General Manager, Branch Rickey. Don was told that he could have a five minute appointment.  The five minutes stretched into five hours. Together they imagined Don’s dream, “The Fellowship of Christian Athletes.”  Rickey found some start-up funds, and Don did the footwork.  Don made the contacts, shared the vision, and did more fund-raising and organizing.  It took so much time that Don had to leave his coaching job.   He and his wife and (by then) three children lived on very little. But step-by-step the dream became a reality. 

The Fellowship of Christian Athletes is over fifty years old now, and is the largest inter-denominational, school-based, Christian organization in America. It even reaches athletes internationally.  The FCA encourages coaches and athletes on the professional, college, high school, middle school, and youth levels to use athletics to “impact the world through their faith and example.” 

The Fellowship of Christian Athletes was his first big dream.  It joined his hungry spirit with his love of sports.  Step by step, his vision grew, far beyond where he ever dreamed. But he was still bothered by racial differences, and the uneven distribution of wealth. 

His longtime questions about money and race and faith have led him all over the globe. After he created the FCA, Don founded Washington Lift, Inc. (an inner-city youth ministry), the Ministry of Money, Inc., and Harvest Time, Inc. When I asked him why he started these organizations, Don’s words were simple. “I thought somebody else would take it and run with it.  When no one did, I did.” 

Although Don doesn’t play sports anymore (except golf), he still dreams dreams and works to make them come true. Don’s playing field has changed, but at 81 years old, he’s still in the action. Like the mower that splash-landed in the mayor’s pond, Don’s dreams have rippled out all around the world.  He hopes that by one strategy or another, he has helped kids around the world to climb mountains.

To learn more about Don’s dreams that came true, check the following websites:

www.ministryofmoney.org (Ministry of Money)

www.sirchio.com/harvest.html (Harvest Time)