Denzel looks back fondly on some crucial advice

Denzel Washington joined the Boys & Girls Club of America when he was 5. He’s never really left.

The 63-year old Oscar-winning actor says the lessons he learned from the youth organization became the foundation of his success. One valuable lesson came after a track and field event where Washington found he wasn’t as fast as one other child.

“I was real nervous about that, and I was thrown off by it,” Washington recalled. A counselor noticed that something was wrong and came over.

“I remember him telling me, ‘Yes, that other kid is fast, but he doesn’t know how to run the turns or pass the baton.’ And he said: ‘Your natural ability will only take you so far.’”

That advice paid off when learning his craft as an actor. He started performing as a junior in college and had instant success. But he remembered that his natural ability would only take him so far.

“So I decided to continue my studies and go on to work on my master’s, and that was directly related to an experience I had as a child in the Boys & Girls Club,” Washington said.

Washington was in the nation’s capital for the annual Boys & Girls Club National Youth of the Year award ceremony. This year’s Southwest Youth of the Year recipient was Malachi Haynes, who accepted the honor before an audience that included members of Congress and Boys & Girls Clubs of America supporters, including Washington, who is the national spokesman.

When Washington was young, he spent so much time at the Boys & Girls Club of Mount Vernon, New York, that “literally, they had to send me home.” He remembers at one club talent show he played a member of the Beatles.

“I think I was John, if not Paul. I definitely wasn’t Ringo. Not that I’m knocking Ringo, but I wasn’t playing the drums, I was playing guitar,” he said.

While his children were not as active with the Boys and Girls Club of America, Washington applied the lessons he learned to their upbringing.

“All my children played sports like I did in the club, and that was my way because that’s what I learned. My oldest boy made it all the way to the NFL.” (Washington’s son, John, played for the St. Louis Rams and recently starred in “Blackkklansman.”)

The organization began in 1860, offering a positive alternative to children than roaming the street. The clubs try to foster character development, citizenship and living a healthy lifestyle. Washington also recalls another element.

“Tough, tough love and keeping them busy. We didn’t realize it but we were going from one thing to another. They kept you engaged, involved and busy. But you thought you were just having fun.”