Bill Day knows the importance of education and Christian character building. After spending almost his entire life in classrooms and congregations learning or teaching — sometimes both — Day has worked with Alabama Citizens Action Program (ALCAP) for the past 15 years to pass these values along to Alabama students.
Although he recently retired as ALCAP’s education director, Day is still serving part-time with the ministry to continue its American Character Builders (ACB) program, which he hopes will help students as the state’s education environment changes.
“The idea is that if you can prevent something, you have a much better opportunity to have a healthy wholesome life than trying to correct a bad choice,” Day said. “When I came in 1995 about all we did was get into the schools and provide programs about drinking and tobacco. That’s why we developed all these other (character building) areas to get in schools and open doors and make our program relevant to the needs of the kids.”
To meet these needs, Day has developed brochures and PowerPoint presentations on suicide prevention, character development, violence prevention within the school, gang awareness, bullying and gambling.
Before joining ALCAP, Day was no stranger to the threats to today’s children and youth. He had served as executive director of the Iowa Council on Alcohol Problems; was a high school history and Latin teacher as well as a football, basketball and tennis coach; and had served for 43 years as pastor of numerous churches in Kentucky, Indiana, Iowa and California. Day held his first position as pastor at age 17 and then earned a bachelor’s degree in history and Latin at Georgetown College in Kentucky in 1960; a master of divinity from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., in 1964; a master’s degree in history from Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Ky., in 1967; and a doctor of philosophy in social and intellectual history from Vanderbilt University in Nashville in 1971.
Joe Godfrey, who has served as executive director of ALCAP for the past two years, said Day has a “tremendous mind” and working with him has been a pleasure.
“Most of the materials that ALCAP has produced since he’s been there, he wrote,” Godfrey said of Day. “He has a real love for the young people of our state and their families.”
ALCAP Director Emeritus Dan Ireland worked with Day from the time Day joined ALCAP’s staff until Ireland retired in 2008. According to Ireland, Day was instrumental in helping ALCAP begin educating youth at various stages in their lives.
“At the public school level, every year the NCAA was doing a youth week camp on various colleges in Alabama, and Bill did the drug education series at these meetings every summer reaching right at 16,000 young people from about ages nine to 15,” Ireland said.
Ireland, who is now executive director of The American Council on Alcohol Problems, believes Day’s work has also opened many doors in Alabama schools, churches and other organizations interested in dealing with alcohol and drug education in youth.
“As far as we can tell, he has developed one of the best drug education programs in the schools of Alabama than any other state has,” Ireland said. “In addition to that, he developed a lot of good, solidly researched information on various aspects of moral and drug education to go into schools. The bullying program is one of those. … The material he helped develop is being used in other states as well.”
In his part-time role, Day hopes to continue producing materials for ACB, which he said has had to change its strategy for reaching students since schools have become so busy with other requirements. He said ALCAP plans to begin offering the information in packages making it easier for schools to use.
“Much of what we were able to do 10 years ago we are not able to do now because of the reading initiative (in schools), the tests they (students) have to do and the stress on academics,” Day said, noting that prevention programs in schools are still very necessary. “We are beginning to see state and national trends where children are beginning to smoke again, alcohol use is rising, methamphetamines are a problem … because in the school they are not providing times for prevention programs. … It’s like a pendulum swing. … Every 12 to 15 years, it’s a swing one way or the other where people get concerned (about prevention) and you make a difference. Smoking and drinking goes down. Then, they don’t emphasize it and the problems come back. We have been on a downward trend of all the emphasis and now we are beginning to turn around, and it’s starting in the other direction.”
Day, who has served as interim pastor in about 11 Alabama Baptist churches, hopes the faith community will become involved in character building programs to help combat the types of problems and trends he is seeing in today’s youth.
“I think it’s so very important that somehow we are able to motivate and activate the church to provide after-school programs and opportunities for education,” he said.
For more information on American Character Builders, visit www.alcap.com or call 205-985-9062.
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