Above / Adam Alonso, President and CEO of the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago, and Erika Wood, Executive Director of Fry Family YMCA, are pictured after the annual Mayor’s Community Prayer Breakfast in December 2025.
Updated Post, June 25, 2026 / During festivities to recognize Erika Wood’s retirement from leadership at the Fry Family YMCA while surrounded by family, friends and co-workers, Mayor Scott Wehrli read a proclamation stating that June 25, 2026, was “Erika Wood Day in Naperville.”
Erika will retire from her position on July 3, 2026, but she says she’ll still be around the Y and available to support other good things happening in the community she calls home. Cheers!
Original Post, June 19, 2026 / Fry Family YMCA Report
After 43 years of dedicated service to youth, families and communities, Erika Wood, Executive Director of Fry Family YMCA, has announced her retirement from the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago.
Erika’s YMCA journey began on Chicago’s South Side at the West Communities YMCA when she was just 12 years old. Encouraged by her mother, a Chicago Public Schools teacher, to spend her summers volunteering, she began helping with preschool programming, participating in YMCA Leaders Club activities and later teaching swimming lessons. Those early experiences sparked a lifelong connection to the YMCA and inspired her career path.
“The YMCA was where I felt like I belonged, like I was making a difference and connecting with other people,” she said.
Erika landed her first YMCA job at age 16 and jokes that she has “been getting paid by the Y ever since.”
Erika’s grandmother saved newspaper clippings of good times and fundraising campaigns at the West Communities YMCA back in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Inspired by her experiences, she pursued a degree in recreation and was offered her first Program Director position while completing her internship at Lawrence Hall for Boys, a community-based service agency committed to helping heal the effects of childhood trauma.
Her career later took her to YMCA of Metro Denver for 10 years before returning to the Chicago area to join the Indian Boundary YMCA team in Downers Grove and eventually helping lead the Fry Family YMCA’s Safe ‘n Sound afterschool program for more than 15 years.
Throughout her career, Erika said she was never motivated by titles.
“Titles didn’t matter,” she said. “The learning, the people, and the programming fueled me.”
Among the moments she is most proud of was helping the YMCA respond during the COVID-19 pandemic. Fry Family YMCA quickly adapted to provide emergency childcare and support families during an incredibly challenging time while continuing to create safe, engaging experiences for children.
“It’s our responsibility to make a difference,” she said.
Erika says what she values most is the opportunity to help people feel connected and supported, while creating experiences that bring communities together.
“The Y has given me a lot,” she said. “It allowed me to dream.”
As Erika Wood’s time with the YMCA comes to a close, leaders across the organization reflect on her lasting impact.
Fry Family YMCA Advisory Board Chair Adam Johnson shared, “Erika’s 43 years of service reflect a lifetime of commitment to community, families, and the mission of the Y. We are deeply grateful for her leadership.”
YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago President & CEO Adam Alonso added, “Erika’s legacy is one of compassion, leadership, and unwavering dedication to strengthening community. On behalf of the entire Y community, I wish her and her family all the best that life has to offer.”
Her final day with the YMCA will be Friday, July 3, 2026.
Editor’s Note / Friends of the YMCA appreciate its longstanding presence in Naperville. As Executive Director, Erika Wood has been known to share tidbits of rich history that started via the YMCA, both locally and internationally.
Under Wood’s local leadership, the Y’s Safe N’ Sound Summer Adventure Camps continue to offer engaging child care options for many youth, while also helping to re-acclimate them to peer interaction, in-person learning and social-emotional development. One of those popular innovative Summer Adventure Day Camps is hosted at the Judd Kendall VFW.
And Wood continues by connecting the Buddy Poppy program for disabled Veterans, an initiative that began in November of 1919 when Monia Belle Michael, on duty at the YMCA Overseas War Secretaries’ Headquarters in New York, read Canadian Army Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae’s poem titled “In Flanders Field.” On that day the YMCA secretary vowed always to wear a red poppy to represent Flanders Field as a sign of remembrance. These days, artificial poppies are distributed by Veterans’ associations in exchange for charitable donations for Memorial Day every May. Funds go directly toward medical, financial and practical support for Veterans and their families.
Erika also is quick to share information such as the YMCA was the birthplace of basketball, volleyball and racquet ball.
And just this month, Erika’s column enlightened readers that Father’s Day has an historical link to the YMCA. She notes, “In 1910, the Spokane YMCA hosted one of the first-known Father’s Day celebrations after Sonora Smart Dodd sought to honor her father, a Civil War Veteran and single dad who raised six children on his own. What began as a heartfelt tribute at the Y eventually grew into the national holiday celebrated across the country today.”
At the moment, Erika is busy purging files and cleaning out her office, a tough job “because so much is history,” she said Thursday evening, taking a break to attend this week’s Naperville Municipal Band Concert in Central Park.
Though she and her husband, John, may do some traveling, Erika says she’s not going any place. She’ll stay connected. Naperville is her home. —Stephanie Penick, PN
