The place looks a little different than it did in Donald Norris’ day.

“Oh, wow, we never envisioned anything this big,” boomed the animated, chatty gent, his eyes wide and arms outstretched as if to embrace the present-day version of the little grass-roots drop-in center he and a few business associates nursed from idea to reality some 40 years ago.

Indeed, from the days of kitchen-table board meetings, borrowed classrooms at Rivier College and occasional use of the old James B. Crowley School gym for basic activities to today’s sparkly bright, multitier clubhouse that could be the envy of many small-college campuses, the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Nashua is looking better than ever at Fabulous Forty.

That’s mainly thanks to concerned Nashuans such as Norris, Dr. Robert Moheban, Tom Osgood, Phil Lamoy, Pat Bronstein, Ellen Aruchon, Dave Hamilton and an army of others who jumped aboard over the years.

On Wednesday, the far-reaching club community, including many alumni, will gather at the club to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the grand opening of its first home, a tired, leaky former office building at 315 Main St.

The event, called “40 Years of Greatness, will start at 6 p.m.

The new headquarters for what was then called the Boys Club of Nashua opened on April 6, 1971, to great fanfare. Labeled a “drop-in center” so it could qualify for government anti-crime funding, it stood just south of Lake Street, part of the old International Paper Box Machine Co. complex that had recently moved to a new location.

When papers were passed in January 1971, former Telegraph staffer Donald Dillaby snapped a photo showing then-President David Hamilton accepting the keys from property owner Paul Simoneau, who helped the fledgling club along by charging only nominal monthly rent.

Several other men in the photo, arranged in the classic “line-’em-up” pose so popular at the time, included then-Mayor Dennis J. Sullivan and founder/benefactors Lamoy, Moheban, Win Carter and the venerable Isabelle Hildreth.

Someone who obviously was delighted with what was going on wrote on the back, “A great day … just like a Christmas morning. So exciting after four years of work!”

Norris, at various times, was a machinist, engineer, leading regional hydroelectric expert and fiber-optic pioneer, and now is a Christian missionary overseeing programs at five churches in and near Lima, Peru. This week, he sat in front of several open scrapbooks in a conference room at the Boys & Girls Club and reminisced.

“I coached some kids teams back then. I saw how important it was for them to have something to do in their spare time,” Norris said.

But he also knew that for every kid who played ball, there might have been a dozen who didn’t.

A man of faith, Norris’ belief that “God puts the right people in the right place at the right time” couldn’t be a more appropriate description of the way the local club began.

Norris, a longtime Nashua Kiwanis Club member, was at a meeting one day in the mid-’60s when he was introduced to a fellow member who was visiting from the Brockton, Mass., area. Joe McDonald happened to be the regional services director for Boys Clubs down his way, which caught Norris’ attention.

“I told him, ‘Hey, that’s what we need up here in Nashua,’?” Norris said, recounting how he picked McDonald’s brain about how Nashua might go about starting a club.

Enter another sort of serendipitous component: Among Norris’ band of early movers and shakers was Carter, of the Nashua Corp. Carters. The firm’s western headquarters, in Omaha, Neb., was also where the most comprehensive Boys Club model was developing.

Through that connection, the local men set their sights on one of the club’s charismatic young leaders, agreeing to approach him about coming East to work his Boys Club magic in Nashua.

“One of the biggest boosts we got was getting Dom from Omaha,” Norris said, referring to the club’s first of just two executive directors, Dominick J. Giovinazzo.

“Dom’s the one who took the Boys Club way beyond checkers and Ping-Pong,” then-board member Jim Lambert said during the club’s 20th anniversary celebration in 1991. Looking back now, even that is an understatement.

After leaving 315 Main St., the club moved to the old Palm Street School building for a short while to give leaders time to organize a major capital fund drive that culminated in the 1974 opening of its present-day digs on Simon Street.

Despite being sort of the point man who got the ball rolling, Norris is quick to spread the credit for the idea that flourished.

“There were a lot of people around who felt the same way,” he said. “It was then, and still is now, all about getting the kids off the street and growing in the right direction.”

Dean Shalhoup’s column appears Saturdays in The Telegraph. He can be reached at 673-3100, ext. 31, or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com.