by RANDALL MURPHREE | AFA Journal Editor

For Jeff Everett, Father’s Day isn’t quite the same as it is for most dads. Oh, he and his wife Jenny will enjoy their two children, Orian (7) and Olsen (1). But they also serve as surrogate parents for eight teenage girls, residents of Girls and Boys Town (GBT) in Omaha, Nebraska. Everett thrives on the extra attention — and the responsibility.

"There’s a little more going on here than in the regular household," said Everett. "It’s much more exciting. Last year, the girls took a big T-shirt and put their hand prints on it." Such mementoes are treasures for Jeff and Jenny Everett. They have been family-teachers at GBT for six years, one of some 75 couples who temporarily fill the roles of mom and dad for kids in need.

The young men and women (ages 9-17) who live at GBT today come from a vast range of family problem situations. Some are placed there by the courts, some by their families, some come by their own choice, and others through unique circumstances.

Johnny is one of those unique residents. The 16-year-old Iraqi youth was befriended by U.S. troops in Iraq after they found him without family and living on the streets. When the unit was being redeployed, they didn’t want to leave him behind, so they made arrangements for him to come to GBT.

The ministry’s goal is to meet whatever needs their youth have — get off drugs or alcohol, accept academic challenge, use their God-given gifts, learn to respect others, develop healthy family and peer relationships, or build self-confidence and self-respect.

More than a home
Everything points toward the students being able to return to their homes and families. On average, a student’s stay at GBT is about 18 months. While there, they live in a family setting with six to eight boys or girls in one of 75 homes on the 1,500-acre campus. They attend either Wegner Middle School or Boys Town High School (BTHS).

The high school graduates about 70 seniors each year. At BTHS they have been prepared academically and vocationally. Junior ROTC is a popular program and about 30% of BTHS grads go from high school into the military.

The health occupations department prepares students for a job in the medical field, perhaps as a nurse’s assistant. BTHS goes the extra mile, arranging for their students to take the state licensing exam before they graduate high school.

"For the last three years, our students have been 100% in passing the state exam," said Jennifer Buth, assistant principal and reading coordinator.

Buth has been at GBT for ten years and is involved with education curriculum and models that are being emulated all over the nation. She travels to other schools, including public school districts, to train teachers in the GBT reading program. A hallmark of every GBT program is that it is heavy on moral development as well as academic content.

Colorful past, constructive present
Boys Town was founded in 1917 by Father Edward Flanagan, a Catholic priest. Fr. Flanagan had encountered countless young boys living on the streets, and just could not get them off his heart.

Finally, no longer able to ignore the growing problem of homeless children, he rented a house in downtown Omaha and took in his first five boys. The house was soon overflowing, and the home moved to a farm some 10 miles outside downtown, and that once-remote farmland has become its permanent home. Now, on any given day, some 575 boys and girls live at GBT. Girls were first admitted in 1979.

The early years of GBT are depicted in the 1938 Boys Town movie starring Spencer Tracey as Father Flanagan and Mickey Rooney as one of the boys. It is one of those enduring films that continue to re-air on classic movie channels.

In those early years, Boys Town athletes traveled across the country on the Flexible Flyer bus, and Father Flanagan’s Juvenile Entertainers used a 1920s circus wagon to tour the Midwest. The early Boys Town chorus sang around the world. The bus, the wagon and Tracey’s Oscar for best actor (portraying Father Flanagan) are on display in GBT’s Hall of History.

Keeping pace with the needs of children and families has always been paramount on the GBT agenda, especially in recent years. The ministry now has 19 locations in 15 states and Washington, DC, and it offers a variety of constructive family-related services.

In addition to residential services for troubled youth, GBT offers emergency shelter, family preservation services, the Research Institute for Child and Family Studies and a wealth of parenting materials through Boys Town Press.

In 2004, more than 500,000 children and parents used the GBT National Hotline, and nearly one million were served through outreach and professional training programs. It is indeed one of the nation’s premier programs designed to preserve and strengthen the family.

Fathers challenged to serve family
Review by Randall Murphree
If a man is honest when he relates his own life stories, he’s still prideful enough to conceal or gloss over some of the unpleasant pieces of his past. But Bill Swindell doesn’t appear to hide much of anything in his book Fathers, Come Home (Boys Town Press, 2005). In fact, he uses his failures as well as his successes to illustrate some deep truths about being a father.

He’s clear about his humble beginnings as a sharecropper’s son in southern Mississippi. Honest about the hardships that came with being among six children of a single mom. Open even about how his later success almost robbed his own children of their father. His openness is what makes this 145-page volume pack such a wallop.

For example, one of Swindell’s stories recalls how he returned home from work one day to their San Diego suburb. He looked out over the Pacific Ocean, still absorbed in the worries and pressures of his day at the office. Without his noticing, four-year-old Sara climbed into his lap, longing for his attention.

When it became evident to the child that Daddy’s mind was somewhere else, she squeezed his cheeks in her little hands, turned his face toward hers, looked directly into his eyes and said, "Earth calling Daddy, earth calling Daddy!"

"At first, it sounded precocious and cute," writes Swindell. "Then the words sank in. They began to echo again and again through my mind. ... What did she mean? What did she see in my eyes? Nothing! While she was silently screaming for a few moments of my time, I was oblivious to her very existence."

For Swindell, it was a turning point, one of many. He packs this book full of such anecdotes, often making the reader laugh and other times tugging at the heartstrings. It is appealing on other levels too — it is just plain easy and fun to read, not only for dads, but also for the whole family. And perhaps most important, its strong moral component challenges all of us to reexamine our life priorities.

Learning to father
Swindell and his wife Linda have two married daughters and two granddaughters. Swindell says those girls have taught him more about being a father than just about anything else could have done. Kari and Sara, his daughters, each contributed afterwords to the book.

Again and again, Swindell makes other men think he’s been reading their minds because they’ve had the same experiences he relates. And with each story, he leads the reader to consider his own relationships with his wife and children.

"I want this little book not to discourage fathers, but to encourage and challenge them," said Swindell. "As the old saying goes, ‘It’s never too late to do the right thing.’"

Swindell served two tours of duty in Vietnam. After the military, he has spent his adult life as an executive in various non-profit organizations including a number of years with the Red Cross and four years at AFA. He is now national director of development for Father Flanagan’s Girls and Boys Town (GBT).

Fathers, Come Home is a collection of poignant vignettes that will strike a common chord with all fathers who have ever let career, success or ambition take them too far away from their families. In addition to opening his own soul, Swindell draws on the experiences of others to expose some of the pitfalls of parenting and offer practical pointers to help fathers return to home and family.