The Cedar Springs Place public housing complex doesn't look like a place for dreamers.

The "I Have A Dream" Foundation's after-school center, tucked into a corner of the massive apartment community, tried to go against the grain and instill hope into the students who live there.

One wall is decorated with the names of current "dreamers," children who, against all odds, want to go to college. Now-empty cubbyholes also bear their names, but the dreamers themselves have vanished. Until this week, the Dallas Love Field-area center was their home away from home.

Insurance executive David Disiere had been funding the operation for more than six years. On Feb. 25, he notified the foundation staff and board of directors that funding would end the following Monday and that the doors would have to close.

"My heart has dropped," said Christian Williams, a 15-year-old student who attended the center every day after school. "The center is like family to me. It brought me a long way."

Disiere, a millionaire philanthropist who lives in Southlake, didn't respond to requests for an interview. In a prepared statement, he said he and his company had provided sole funding for the center for six years at a cost of more than $500,000.

"But because of rising costs – such as unprecedented spiraling employee health-care costs – and other financial commitments, we find ourselves having to temporarily suspend our efforts," he said

Disiere did not say why he shut down funding with only three days' notice.

The unexpected news stunned Phillip Lyles, 45, and Sally McMullin, 40, the social service workers who ran the center. They are now unemployed and scrambling to find replacement funds to continue serving the Cedar Springs Place kids.

"We both want to figure out a way to reopen and not lose momentum," said Lyles, the after-school program's executive director. "We are trying to tell everyone breathing about this. We are not going away without a fight."

Within the scope of nonprofit organizations in Dallas, the "I Have A Dream" Foundation was a small operation. Lyles and McMullin estimate the monthly budget at $12,000 to $15,000, or around $180,000 a year.

The Dallas Housing Authority, which runs Cedar Springs Place for low-income families, provided the space and utilities for the after-school center. Periodically, philanthropic angels stepped forward to help the program.

A couple of years ago, the Homebuilders Association of Greater Dallas remodeled the center – a donation of $100,000. Another group donated money for a 15-passenger van for field trips.

But Disiere was the sole financial sponsor for operations, providing the money to keep the center running year in and year out.

Les Titus, a Dallas insurance executive and board chairman of the "I Have A Dream" Foundation of Dallas, acknowledged that he erred in depending solely on Disiere for funding.

"Our goal now is to secure permanent, long-term funding to where we don't get stuck relying on one person again," said Titus, who once worked for Disiere. "I don't want just enough money to stay open for 30 days and then be right back in the position we're in now."

"I Have A Dream" of Dallas had been operating since 1988. Its literature says the center has provided the support that helped 780 students graduate from college over the years.

Crystal Henry, a junior at the University of Texas in Austin, sent an impassioned note to Disiere when she heard that the center had closed. Once a "dreamer," always a "dreamer," she said.

"There are many times that I had no food to eat or no toys at Christmas and the center came through for me," she wrote. "It made me see that there is more to life than suffering in the projects and more to life than just staying in one spot."

A sign on the wall of the darkened after-school center says "Sit in Chair Properly." Another says, "Doe: A female deer. Door: Moveable structure for opening or closing an entrance."

Not only were the kids urged to speak properly, they were taught to do what adults ask them to do without delay, and they learned not to put their hands on other people in a bad way.

The program was much more than a daycare center, Lyles said. A lot of the children are too young to be latchkey kids, going home after school to empty apartments.

What will they do now? he wondered. Hang around outside?

"That's our biggest worry," he said. "At the end of the day, we gave them a safe place to go."

Lyles has spent the last 20 years working for "I Have A Dream." He and McMullin, his program director, said they still believe in the program. They're calling, e-mailing and texting rich people in Dallas to ask for money. But they also are asking for small donations through social-networking media.

McMullin has no children of her own. The center was her family, she said.

"I feel like the mother who is driven to provide for her kids," she said. "We are not in the position to judge anyone based on the amount of money they're willing to give."

Neither she nor Lyles knows how long they can spend trying to resurrect "I Have A Dream." Like everyone else, they have bills to pay. And, as social service counselors, they clearly are out of their element and puzzled about how to raise large sums of money.

"Nobody feels your pain like you feel your pain," Lyles said.

If you want to help an effort to reopen the "I Have a Dream" Foundation's after-school program, send a check or money order to the "I Have a Dream" Foundation of Dallas at P.O. Box 191747, Dallas, Texas 75219. For more information, contact board chairman Les Titus at 214-493-4234 or 214-763-5826 or visit www.ihaveadreamdallas.org .