Father Flannagan founded Boys Town in 1921 based on the idea that there are no bad boys just good boys reacting to bad circumstances. This is the cause of crime and delinquency. Boys Town was created as a home for boys that had no one to care for them or no one who wanted to care for them. Every boy in Boys Town had unique reasons for being there. The only thing the kids in Boys Town had in common is that they were all different. In 1940, at the age of thirteen, my father was sent to Father Flannagan’s home for boys after his father and mother had passed away.
He joined the high school boys’ choir directed by Father Francis P. Schmitt and remained in the choir until he graduated in 1947. A year before his death, Father Flannagan hired my father as a counselor at Boys Town. After serving in Korea and graduating college, my father returned to Boys Town to teach music and in 1975 became the director of the Boys Town choir. He found his calling. Teaching over forty high school boys to sing classical music couldn’t have been easy but the choir received invitations to sing at various venues from around the country. They toured the country every fall. Their repertoire varied and they sang anything from madrigals in opera houses to the national anthem at baseball games. With my father as director, the choir recorded three albums. The boys, who previously had nothing and no one that cared for them, found themselves entertaining thousands of people around America through the beauty of the music that they were a part of. Their success didn’t come without hard work. My father was hard on them and was strict. The choir practiced every night during the week and sang every Sunday at mass. I cherish the times that I spent with my father at Boys Town because I knew his students respected him even though they may have feared him a bit.
I was so touched nearly a year ago when I was talking with one of his boys who is now in his forties. He told me stories of his difficulties when he first arrived at Boys Town. How hard it was fitting in and his discipline problems. My father took him under his wing and this boy excelled to become mayor of Boys Town during his senior year of high school and left Boys Town with a full scholarship to Cornell University. With tears in his eyes, he said to me “your father saved me.” He’s now a teacher in New York City.
Another boy told me of the trouble they would get into when they were on tour. One time, a hotel employee took it upon himself to discipline the boys. My father heard the employee yelling took the employee aside and said that these are his boys and that he had no right to yell at them regardless of the issue. The boy told me that he and the other boys stood in awe and were a bit afraid. In awe because Moe (my father) called them his boys and no one had ever stood up for them like that and afraid because they knew they would get in trouble by my dad later.
So, the teacher that had the biggest impact on me was my dad. He taught me through his examples as a teacher to some very tough students that all kids need good teachers but the ones who can’t afford it need extra care for they usually don’t have any advocates fighting for them. The kids who are nurtured and trusted grow up to be really good people. All kids, regardless of ethnicity, religion or background, deserve a good education. Good teachers are rare.
-- Mary Hentschel, American University