Larry Moody

Larry Moody is known as an “inviter.” Through his energetic nature and focus on possibilities, he opens doors and invites people into places they didn’t know were available to them. But the youth program director had experienced some opportunities closing to him before he discovered that calling. After a personal crisis interrupted his successful career in the hotel industry, the recession hit, and he found that he couldn’t get a job driving a shuttle bus, let alone return to his job managing guest services.

“I saw it as God closing those doors,” Moody recalled. “My calling is very clear. I’m to be involved in the development of youth.” He discovered this almost accidentally one day when he went to a Peninsula gym, and started playing ball with a boy and his father. The gym manager immediately noticed that Moody, an ex-college athlete, was not just good at sports, he had a natural flair for engaging young people. That encounter offered him entrée to a job with the city’s Midnight Basketball program. Within a year, he was running that program and urging the city to start another, Twilight Basketball, that would go beyond intervention to prevention.

From that point on, Moody has started and run a series of youth development programs. His smile and easygoing personality enhance his “inviter” role. It’s not unusual to find “Uncle Larry” driving a group of kids to a ball game or to Stanford University for a walk around the campus. “I like to energize youth to dream and consider possibilities,” he says. As recreation coordinator for the city of East Palo Alto, he expanded programs, built bridges with area sports teams, and led some area teams to national competitions. In his current position, as program director for a local church, he runs programs for entire families, such as Parents Night Out, and a mentorship program for grandparents who are raising their grandkids.

His role as “inviter” may have evolved out of his hospitality industry career and his background in athletics, but Moody is taking it in another direction, by studying to become a minister. When he recalls his parents’ activism in the civil rights movement, Moody realizes he is carrying out their legacy in a unique way. “God has brought me back to a place where I can appreciate what it is to give,” he said. “I have tremendous anticipation for East Palo Alto and how it’s going to end up.”

Moody has been a Wildflowers fellow since 2002.

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