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bit the mission endured. Sitting back in his chair, his ofce partially boxed up, cofee getting cold, Wilbon wonders aloud, "Did we do what we could to make sure operations sustained?" W www.kyoms.com www.loucol.com www.loucol.com 30 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 10.13 hen Lavel White was a kid, he could spot PCC from his Sheppard Square apartment. Cross Jackson Street, run through a play feld and burst through the doors. "It's an institution," he says on an August morning, leaning on a chain-link fence that now surrounds the renovation at Sheppard Square. From this vantage point he can see the old brick PCC that's slated to become elderly and disabled housing as part of the redevelopment. Prior to PCC's current location on the 700 block of South Hancock, the old PCC sat just a few blocks away. As the 26-year-old with a clean-shaven head watches construction, memories stream back. On nights when neighborhood kids would bully him, he'd sprint to PCC and hide out until it closed. Since cupboards at home didn't guarantee food, he ate dinner at PCC three days a week. His frst-ever road trip, a trek to Chicago, was a PCC venture. He served on a leadership board and played countless basketball games. Even when White moved away in high school, he took the bus to Smoketown. "It felt like home," he says. Te night before PCC's closing, White showed a documentary he produced and directed about the history of Sheppard Square. While Sheppard Square and PCC are separate — one run by the Louisville Metro Housing Authority, the other a private nonproft — the two were inexorably linked. In the frst 14 minutes of the documentary, titled More Tan Bricks and Mortar: Te Sheppard Square Story, PCC is mentioned six times, mostly by those who spent the hours between school and sleep there. PCC's board is still fguring out what's next. Perhaps an outside agency will take over. A plea for donations was made the night White screened his flm. At this point, there's not enough money to reopen. "It was bittersweet," White refects. "(PCC) was a saving grace for a lot of people in difcult times." As we stand talking, a driver honks his horn. It's Wilbon, who leans toward the passenger side window, waving. White considers Wilbon a "mentor" — one of many he found at PCC. Today's the day Wilbon and the rest of the PCC staf will turn in their keys. Tears will likely fow, followed by jokes to cut the sadness. But for now, Wilbon smiles at White as he heads down Jackson Street, past dust pufs and grunting machinery.