The late Leonard Hargrove recognized a need for mental health services in Oyster Bay shortly after he arrived in the community as a high school social worker in the late 1960s. His efforts to address that need led to the founding of the Youth and Family Counseling Agency of Oyster Bay, an organization that continues to provide counseling and community support decades later.
Hargrove, who died in 1996, at age 64, was known to his family as Lenny. He helped establish the agency in 1969, after assessing the needs of residents and working with community members to develop a counseling program serving Oyster Bay and East Norwich.
His daughter, Rhonda Hargrove, who now serves as the agency’s president, said her father’s commitment to helping people extended beyond his responsibilities at Oyster Bay High School.
“He didn’t just stay in the school, taking care of the kids who had problems,” Ruby Hargrove, his widow, said. “He extended himself to the community, and reached out and saw that there was a need not only for the children but for the community at large.”
That broader vision helped lay the groundwork for an organization that has expanded its services while maintaining its focus on mental health and strengthening families.
Hargrove’s path to Oyster Bay began in Rocky Mount, N.C., where he was born in 1932 and where he met Ruby Jones, his high school sweetheart. After graduating from North Carolina Central University, he served in the Army for a year, including time stationed in Copenhagen, before coming home and pursuing a career in social work.
He later moved to New York City, worked for the Department of Social Services and attended New York University, initially studying law but eventually focusing on social work and earning a doctorate in psychotherapy, according to Ruby, 92.
“He was just a go-getter, you know?” she said. “He believed in achieving, not only for himself but for others.”
In 1968, after spending roughly a year and a half as a school social worker at Oyster Bay High, Hargrove began working with community members to determine what services residents needed. Among those who supported the effort were George and Abby O’Neill, who helped assess people’s needs and encouraged the development of the Youth and Family Counseling Agency.
Hargrove became the organization’s first executive director, a position he held for over a decade before leaving to establish his own counseling practice.
Building awareness of the new organization depended largely on making personal connections. Hargrove reached out to community organizations, attended meetings and worked with people who could help connect residents with services. Local churches, notably First Presbyterian, also helped spread the word, referring people who needed help and establishing relationships that have continued over the years.
The organization has since broadened its offerings beyond counseling. Its programs include the Bulluck Horizons Mentor Program, which connects young people with mentors, and the Parent-Child Home Program, which supports young children and their families as they prepare for school.
The agency also operates the Neighbor to Neighbor Store, also known as the Community Closet, which offers gently used clothing and household items at no cost, ensuring that residents can obtain necessities while being treated with dignity and respect.
Additional initiatives include holiday assistance in an adopt-a-family program, enrichment activities and services addressing substance abuse and other mental health concerns.
Rhonda Hargrove, 67, said that the agency has adapted to meet changing community needs while retaining its original purpose. Her own involvement began decades after her father’s founding work. After a career in publishing, she joined the agency’s board in 2012, and eventually became its president. Now retired, she said she values the opportunity to help sustain her father’s legacy and ensure that the agency remains accessible to residents who need help.
At her father’s funeral, she recalled hearing from former students, patients and people who had received services through the agency. Their stories underscored how much the organization had meant to people whose lives might otherwise have taken a different course.
“I’ll never forget at my father’s funeral, people would come up to me — students that he had taught, patients that he had had, people that he saw as a clinician at Youth and Family and then in his own private practice,” she recalled, “just saying how the organization, and how his being a part of it, had changed their lives.”
The agency continues to respond to crises and changing circumstances. For Ruby, a retired social worker who remains involved with the agency’s Community Closet, the organization’s continued work reflects the importance of its original mission. And for her daughter, preserving that work means ensuring that the agency remains a trusted resource for generations to come.
“Every time there’s something that needs to be done,” she said, “Youth and Family finds a way to get it done.”
