WELCOMING VOICE, HELPING HAND

Gabe Mayfield Gives

Life House Youths Someone To Look Up To

Gabriel Mayfield nodded and led a young woman through a swinging door at the Life House dropin center. Mayfield has worked at the nonprofit organization serving at-risk homeless youths for more than three years.

During lunch recently, young adults filtered in for help with basic needs: food, clothing, camaraderie. Mayfield glided through the downtown Duluth facility, towering but not domineering at 6 feet, 7 inches tall.

He walked past a young man, giving him a low high-five. He sat down at the kitchen table with another. His voice was animated, his laugh boisterous and welcoming.

Mayfield is the youth center program manager, so he oversees grant reporting, administrative duties and supervision. While his main job is helping keep Life House safe, he said he relishes connecting with the youths.

Christa Ricci, 24, of Duluth has been coming to Life House since she was 16.

“They’ve been here. Through the birth of my kids — I’m married now … and pretty much every life event, they’ve been here,” Ricci said of the staff during a recent stop at the center.

Ricci used to co-host the annual Life House Got Talent Variety show with Mayfield. “Gabe is so nice; everybody adores him,” she said.

The variety show is one of the offerings Mayfield launched as the youth activities coordinator, along with karaoke and trivia nights, a choir and a songwriting group.

It’s all “creating good outlets for the youth that I felt helped me out in life and gave me a path to deal with my frustrations and struggles,” he said.

Mayfield moved to the Twin Ports from Chicago in 1999 to play basketball for the University of Wisconsin-Superior, where he majored in visual arts and minored in theater.

Arriving in the Northland was a weight lifted off his shoulders, he said. He grew up on the South Side of Chicago, and when he left: “There was no love in the air, no happiness.”

Predominantly in black culture when a grandmother dies, the family breaks apart, Mayfield said. Typically, a cousin or aunt will step in to keep the family going, but that didn’t happen in his family. “People just went their own ways, so I took my own little path and came this way and looked for a new life,” he said.

Mayfield’s first impression of the Twin Ports: “The streets were white. I thought it was snow, but it was just cold,” he said with a laugh.

Since then, he has immersed himself in the arts. His artistic resume includes shows with the Lyric Opera of the North, the Duluth Playhouse, Renegade Theater Company, and the recent Lake Superior Community Theatre production of “Fences.”