Charles Cooke Spalding was born into a life of privilege but created a legacy as the founder of what is now known as the Boys & Girls Club of Hawaii, which continues to help thousands of children on O'ahu and Kaua'i, many of whom don't even know Spalding's name.

"If you walked by him on the street, you wouldn't know that he was that gentleman," said David Nakada, current executive director of the Boys & Girls Club of Hawaii. "He was very low-key about everything. He was very warm. He was very kind. He was just a wonderful man."

Spalding died March 14 in his Waikiki home at the age of 89. At 3 p.m. Saturday, all of the Boys & Girls Clubs will be closed for a service in Spalding's memory at the site of the original club he founded on the grounds of what is now Washington Middle School.

If it weren't for the original club, since named in Spalding's honor, Jason Takara isn't sure what direction his life would have taken.

Takara's parents worked all day and long into the night running the E & R Koffee Kup coffee shop. Takara would have been playing football and baseball in a parking lot near the restaurant as a 12-year-old — or worse, getting into trouble.

The Boys Club "was a safe haven, a place you could always come back to," Takara said. "Mr. Spalding genuinely cared about the youth and the development of us, giving us the place to grow and learn. It definitely had an impact. It changed my life."

Takara is now a captain with the Honolulu Fire Department, with a son of his own.

The original Honolulu site of the Boys Club of America was part of a nationwide effort aimed at helping "disadvantaged boys." But Spalding, who opened nine clubhouses on O'ahu and three more on Kaua'i, let girls in from day one.

"I could kind of guess that didn't sit well for the national organization," Nakada said. "But Charlie felt it was best for the kids, which was pretty remarkable."

Today, 4,800 boys and girls visit the nonprofit O'ahu and Kaua'i clubs at least three times per week. They get everything from hip-hop dance classes to field trips to surfing lessons — at a cost that remains at just $1 per year for membership. Another 5,000 young people are touched each year through the clubs' outreach programs.

(The Boys & Girls Clubs on Maui and the Big Island are run by separate organizations).

Spalding was the scion of two 19th century missionary families that sailed to Hawai'i from England: Amos Starr Cooke and Juliette Montague were his great-grandparents on one side; William Harrison Rice and the former Sophia Hyde were his great-grandparents on the other. His grandparents Charles Montague Cooke and Anna Charlotte Rice created the Honolulu Academy of Arts on the site of the Spalding family home on Beretania Street.

Spalding grew up swimming in the family pool and playing tennis every day after classes at Punahou School. He also attended Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts and Yale University.

He was a Navy lieutenant during World War II and after the war joined one of the Islands' "Big Five" companies, C. Brewer & Co. Ltd., serving as assistant secretary from 1950 to 1961. In the 1960s, he moved to Hawaiian Insurance & Guaranty Co. Ltd. and served as its president from 1962 to 1967.

In the 1950s, the father of Spalding's first wife, Nancy Milbank, began encouraging Spalding to start a Boys Club in Hawai'i. Spalding's father-in-law was the treasurer of the national organization, Nakada said, and the idea began a 15-year effort by Spalding to create a similar organization on O'ahu.

State Sen. Wadsworth Yee came up with the idea to lease land on the site of what was then Washington Intermediate School and Spalding created an organization — and donated thousands of dollars of his own money — to open the first club in 1976 at a cost of $1 million.

Art Kamisugi's three children also attended Punahou but he sent them to the Boys & Girls Club after school, where they were offered lessons in everything from wood shop to cooking to sports for just $1 a year.

"The went camping, they played basketball, they met other kids," Kamisugi said. "They had a great staff, and I felt very comfortable sending them there."

Kamisugi became a member of the club's board of directors and now mourns the loss of a man he called "a very generous person with a big heart."

"He touched thousands of kids," Kamisugi said. "They don't know who he was, but through his generosity and vision, he's helped them."

At the original club yesterday, 20-year-old David Foumai of Nu'uanu returned to help younger children, just the way he was helped as a teenager.

"It kept me doing my homework," Foumai said. "It kept me off the street. It kept my grades up. It gave me a place to go to."

Spalding is survived by his wife of 28 years, the former Joan Baldwin; sons, Charles Spalding Jr. of California and Stephen Milbank of Vermont; stepson, Arne Gordon Westly Jr. of Hau'ula; and three grandchildren.