For one group of men, Arthur Ashe Jr. is more than a tennis superstar and internationally recognized crusader for human rights and bringing awareness and resources to the AIDS epidemic.

For them, he is also the boyhood pal they went to school with, played baseball with, flew model airplanes with and enjoyed other adventures while growing up in North Side.

“Arthur was quiet, but he was considered the smartest of us all. He got all A’s in every class — from elementary school to high school. I don’t think he ever came close to a B,” said Frank W. Turner Jr., one of the dwindling group now in their 80s that gathers monthly at a Henrico hotel to reminisce and enjoy each other’s company.

Like Mr. Turner, most of the cadre grew up in the Brookfield Gardens apartment complex that sits east of Chamberlayne Avenue and south of School Street.

Most of those who meet monthly were members of the “Dream Boys,” a club the young men from Brookfield Gardens and nearby formed as teenagers and have restarted in the past four years to keep up with each other.

Mr. Ashe, who was younger at the time, never belonged, Mr. Turner said, but he was a regular presence in their lives as a classmate and neighbor.

Othello Scott, a retired pilot, used to live on Brook Road, a short distance from the Ashe home at 1610 Sledd St. “I could yell out my bedroom window at him,” he recalled.

At the time, Mr. Ashe’s dad ran Brookfield Park, the largest city recreation site for African-Americans in segregated Richmond. The Ashe family lived in the caretaker’s residence. The park and home were wiped out nearly 60 years ago by the construction of the Main Post Office. They were eliminated in the city tumult over integration of public spaces.

But before that, the 16-acre city recreation area offered ball fields, tennis courts and a pool, becoming a summer mecca for the Dream Boys and others youngsters in the area.

This was the park where Mr. Ashe learned to play tennis and would daily hit 1,000 balls before breakfast to sharpen his skills, a former mentor in the sport recalled in a newspaper interview.

Mr. Ashe also loved other sports. He was among the boys who took part in a summer baseball camp run by legendary Armstrong High School Coach Maxie Robinson, the father of late pioneering national broadcast journalist Max Robinson Jr. and his brother, anti-apartheid activist and lawyer Randall Robinson, founder of TransAfrica.

“Mr. Ashe wanted to be a pitcher,” said Henry “Chico” Brown, “but we would always hit his pitches out of the park.”

Pernell Taylor, a retired Richmond educator and sports coach and a latecomer to the Dream Boys, said that he’s one of the few that know Mr. Ashe flew airplanes in a model airplane club.

“We were in the club together,” he said.

Mr. Turner said everyone kept up with Mr. Ashe’s tennis exploits and knew that he had to leave Richmond to push his game to the next level because he was barred by the color of his skin from playing on most public or private courts in the city.

Mr. Turner said he followed Mr. Ashe more than most because his brother, Allen Turner, often partnered with Mr. Ashe in doubles play in Richmond.

“One time, I called him,” Mr. Turner said. “When I asked him where he was, he said he was at West Point. When I asked him what he was doing there, he said he was a lieutenant in the Army assigned to teach a general’s daughter how to play tennis. ‘It’s a pretty easy assignment,’ he said. He never told anyone about it.