Boys Town New England Youth Leave Their Mark

Family Teacher James Brown guides a Boys Town youth as he helps assemble a picnic bench.

This summer, Boys Town New England youth enjoyed many experiences – miniature golfing, visits to the ocean beaches of Rhode Island, a trip to the historic Naval ships of Battleship Cove - but one of their 2009 activities will leave a legacy on the Bazarsky campus.

After looking into purchasing picnic tables for each home and seeing the expense, Family-Teacher James Brown saw a golden opportunity for Boys Town New England youth to do something enjoyable that would also benefit the campus, now and in the future.

Working as a team, residential youth from each home built picnic tables for the homes on campus. Brown, who enjoys woodworking, laid out the plans for the benches and purchased wood and materials using part of an environmental grant from the local Walmart store. Brown and the other Boys Town New England Family-Teachers supervised the project, but the youth did the work. Starting from scratch with wood, tools and instructions, the youth measured, drilled, sanded, filled holes and put the finishing touches on each picnic table.

"The kids really loved it,” said Brown. “They really got into it, even the ones we didn’t expect to.”

The project was also a good lesson in economics, explains Brown. “We got a whole lot of picnic tables for a little bit of money because we made them ourselves.”

There are three operating Treatment Family Homes for Adolescents on the Bazarsky Campus, one for girls under Family-Teachers Blake and Julie Brokaw and two for boys under Family-Teachers Molly and Dan Clements and James and Jeanette Brown.

John and Allyson Etzell’s Treatment Family Home for Young Children also has two new picnic tables, one of which is specially adapted to their smaller size. Brown did most of the work on it, but he made sure every child at the young children’s home had some hand in it, whether it was pounding a hammer, a little sanding, or finishing work.

The younger children had their own environmental project as well – creating and painting wooden bird houses for the campus.

Father Flanagan would no doubt he pleased with the work of the Boys Town New England Bazarsky Campus this summer as he firmly believed in the value of hard work and teaching life and vocational skills.

“At the end of the day, when these youth leave Boys Town, they will leave something of themselves behind,” said Brown.