In Denver’s Cole neighborhood, Reverend Leon Kelly has spent four decades guiding youth

On a quiet afternoon inside Denver’s Tramway Nonprofit Center, Reverend Leon Kelly leans back in an old office chair and remembers a simpler time. “My mom made potted meat sandwiches and Kool-Aid, and we had a party because my father got a job here at the Tramway Bus Company,” he says. “Innocent times.”

It’s in this same building that Kelly spent much of his four decades mentoring thousands of young people, turning a former bus maintenance facility into a safe, social space for inspiring Cole neighborhood youth.

Today, Rev. Kelly runs his nonprofit, Open Door Youth Gang Alternatives, mainly from a downtown location. He still keeps office space in Denver’s Cole neighborhood at the Tramway Nonprofit Center alongside a dozen other local nonprofits. He speaks plainly about Open Door’s mission.

“The actions of the few have the reflections of the many,” he says. “And the many we’ve dealt with have gone on to make good choices.”

Founded in the early 1980s, Open Door has touched the lives of tens of thousands of Denver youth. Rev. Kelly estimates that between 75,000 and 100,000 young people have passed through the program, which mentors and guides young people away from the dangers of gang involvement. Several have gone on to become civic leaders, including former Denver Mayor Michael Hancock and current Denver Sheriff Elias Diggins.

Rev. Kelly’s connection to Tramway is also personal and rooted in family. As a child in the 1950s, he watched his father celebrate landing a job at the Tramway Bus Company, housed in the same building. So, for him, staying put has been a deliberate choice.

“This place here,” he recalls. “My father worked here, and my uncle. I’ve been all over the place, but I’ve always favored being home—where my beginnings began.”

Now, at Open Door’s modest space at the Tramway Nonprofit Center, kids from the neighborhood Wyatt Academy, across the street, gather to play games, do homework, and talk. “We are one of the oldest nonprofits in this building. We got what we call a little hub here,” Rev. Kelly says.

These days, Rev. Kelly finds himself reflecting more and more on Open Door’s legacy and the timeline of his life in the Cole neighborhood. Always direct and never one to mince words, Rev. Kelly keeps in the front of his mind a message from Reverend Jesse Jackson that has shaped his life and shaped his view of the community where he serves to this day.

“In all the time I’ve been doing this here,” Rev. Kelly says, “I’d like to think about hope. When the Reverend Jessie Jackson says ‘Keep hope alive,’ I like to think I’m helping to keep hope alive and keep a vision alive, because without hope, we ain’t got nothing to live for.”