Keeping it fresh

YMCA has had to adapt to an ever-expanding ethnic clientele

Mohender Maan, who immigrated to the United States from India in 2003, with his son, Vikrant, 5, who takes gymnastics lessons at the Y. (Evan Richman/ Globe Staff)

Shortly after Jack Fucci became executive director of the Allston-Brighton Y, he found himself embroiled in a tempest in a steam room.

In the tradition of their homeland, some Russian-born members were sweating it out in the nude. They would no more wear a bathing suit in the steam room than in the shower. Y rules, however, require a bathing suit, not for reasons of modesty - the sexes are separated - but of hygiene.

Fucci tried explaining that to the Russians. Using an Internet program to translate the policy into Russian, he posted it in the locker room. Within hours after the notice went up, the front desk was besieged by, well, steamed-up bathers. Something got lost in translation.

Fortunately, a Russian-speaking staff member saved the day, and Fucci can laugh about the mix-up today. It was just one of the challenges running a YMCA that really ought to be spelled with the letters U and N.

Drop by and you might hear Russian in the locker room, Chinese in the hallways, Portuguese in the weight room, Spanish in the fitness center, and Italian in the Jacuzzi. Members stick pins in their home country on a map recently posted in the foyer. Some 45 nations have already been pinned.

"It's a welcoming place," says Donna Sullivan, the associate executive director of the branch. "Everyone is different, but all have a common interest in living a healthy life."

The Y doesn't keep statistics on its membership's nationalities. Nearly one in three Allston-Brighton residents is foreign-born, according to the 2000 US Census. Asians increased from 6 percent in 1980 to 14 percent in 2000, and Hispanics from 5 percent to 9 percent.

Since moving in 2001 to its new quarters in Oak Square, the branch has seen its membership more than double to 6,500. The building is triple the size of the old one and features such additional facilities as a gym and a child-care center. With 800 members visiting a day, the Allston-Brighton branch is the busiest in Greater Boston.

Y fitness trainer Piero Melia moved to Brighton from Sicily in 1968 when he was 5. Back then, he says, Irish, Italians, and Greeks were the dominant ethnic groups. Melia speaks Italian and Spanish and, like his colleagues at the Y, has become adept at using pantomime to demonstrate exercise routines.

Irina Wertheim, who works the front desk at the Y part time, immigrated to America in 2000 from Russia when she was 19. Wertheim says she is often asked to translate and occasionally coaches Russians on American manners. When she first came to America, Wertheim was taken aback by how "nice" people were. "I didn't understand why they were all smiling," she says.

Steve Maas is a freelance writer and a member of the Allston-Brighton YMCA.