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Lyles Carr on community service -\n\n"I get much more credit than I\u2019m due. To me, it\u2019s the almost irrationally committed leaders and staff of the community service organizations in this Region and their supporters that really deserve the applause. They\u2019re the ones that do the real work. We just try to support them."\n\nLyles Carr, Senior Vice President The McCormick Group - Leadership Greater Washington\n\nA Ockershausen: This is Andy Ockershausen and this is Our Town and we have the pleasure, a distinct personal pleasure to me to talk with a very dear friend who's made a great impact on the city of Washington. A name most of you don't know but you should is Lyles Carr is with The McCormick Group. Lyles, welcome to Our Town.\nLyles Carr: Andy, I'm pleased to be here although I figure you needed some comic relief at some point so that's how you got me. \nThe Early Years\nA Ockershausen: Until we talked, I had no idea you were a suburban guy. I always thought of you for whatever reason as Northern Virginia and DC. Then I started talking to you and found out you're from Palmer Park. \nLyles Carr: Yeah, it's interesting.\nA Ockershausen: It's incredible. \nLyles Carr: I was born over in Eastern Maryland and ...\nA Ockershausen: Waterfowl country. \nLyles Carr: Yep. My mother's family is from down there and my mother's still there and so I feel like Easton Maryland's home but my father and our family moved into Palmer Park in 1957 when I was six or seven years old and at the time we were the first family into the second section of Palmer Park. \nA Ockershausen: They expanded. \nLyles Carr: That was really the farthest outlying suburb. Well, there became five sections all together. This is pre Bowie and so I grew up in there. I used to take music lessons down on Minnesota Avenue and go to church in Seat Pleasant. \nA Ockershausen: You don't go there now do you?\nLyles Carr: Actually I do go there but it's for different reasons.\nA Ockershausen: It's a different world. \nLyles Carr: My friend Butch Hopkins down there then ran Anacostia Economic Development Partnership and down and around Marshall Heights with some of the non profit work. \nA Ockershausen: Those names are so familiar to me. I'll give you my little story and then I'll let you get yours. Charlie Brotman a very dear friend of mine started representing ... He said, "I've got a kid out here that's going to be so great in Palmer Park and he's in the boys club and we're prepping him for bigger things like the Olympics." He said, "I'm not getting paid, I'm doing this," this is a true story, "as a pro bono." The kid's name was Sugar Ray Leonard. He was Ray Leonard then. Then they added the Sugar Ray. I knew about Palmer Park and all those kids that grew up there. There's some terrific athletes. Lyles, how did you get connected then? You went to high school? No, you didn't go to high school back then.\nLyles Carr: No, I went to elementary school and junior high. In fact, Kent Junior High is now a police substation in Palmer Park and then I went away to Episcopal High School in Alexandria. \nA Ockershausen: You crossed the river?\nLyles Carr: Yeah, I was third generation and had an option. You can go to the school or you can not got to school I think. Both my father and grandfather had gone so as a legacy they probably had to take me if I went.\nA Ockershausen: Were you a boarder? Of course. \nLyles Carr: Boarder. They're all boarders. At the time, it was 270 boys and since then, 1991 they brought in girls as well and I think it's been terrific for the school. \nA Ockershausen: We went through the same thing at St. Stephens and they joined with St. Agnes. Now it's one school. That was a Till Hazel effort. Another Board of Trade guy that I got to meet through the Board. That got you started in a different world. It was a different world than where you grew up. \nLyles Carr: It was. It's interesting,