Education: Rebuilding Boys Town

Boys Town, founded in 1917 by Father Edward Flanagan and celebrated in film and folklore, still beckons homeless boys to its 1,500-acre campus just outside Omaha. The statue of a tattered waif, a smaller lad slung over his shoulder, still stands at the entrance with the legend: “He ain’t heavy, Father. He’s m’ brother.” Otherwise, Boys Town is a community rocked by change.

First came the shocking disclosure in the Omaha Sun papers two years ago that Father Flanagan’s ragtag “city of little men” was probably the richest incorporated village in the U.S., with a per boy wealth of close to $300,000. Assiduous fund raising and sound investing had built its endowment to $209 million; money was literally coming in faster than it could be spent. Unlike the endearing statue out front, Boys Town was finding its burden—wealth—embarrassingly heavy.

New Emphasis. To cut the dollar glut, the board of directors announced in June 1972 that it would spend $30 million “for the study and treatment of hearing and speech disorders in children” at nearby Creighton University.

Last year Boys Town put up $40 million for the study of juvenile problems and the training of youth workers. Conservative Boys Town patrons soon began to complain that the board was spending money merely for the sake of spending it. Moreover, many alumni feared that the new emphasis on physical and emotional problems might smudge Boys Town’s reputation as a community of healthy, normal boys. Declared The Wanderer, a conservative Catholic journal: “Boys Town is dead.”

Discontent deepened after Founder Flanagan’s ailing successor was replaced last October by Father Robert P. Hupp, a fatherly former Navy chaplain. Hupp recruited psychologists, counselors and social workers—including an ex-convict —to bring the community out of the 1940s. Boys Town also bought a house in Omaha to aid older boys with their reentry into society.

One of Hupp’s most controversial moves has been to relax Boys Town’s almost monastic regime. He has ended the censorship of mail, tolerated longer hair, and even endorsed dating. “My first impression upon coming to Boys Town was that this place was a minimum-security prison,” said Mike Casey, the ex-con.

“They were doing things here they haven’t done in prisons for 20 years.”

Not all of Hupp’s disciplinary reforms have worked.

After he liberalized curfews, merchants at a nearby shopping center complained about shoplifting; the open-campus policy has since been curtailed. Old-guard alumni, and even some of the boys, are alarmed at the new permissiveness. “Now you can get away with anything,” says Jay Salyers, 17.

The critics are also aghast at Hupp’s reduction of Boys Town’s population from 700 to the present more manageable 510, a move that has forced its athletic teams to compete in a small-school class. The school’s chorus director warned that disgruntled donors would sue if more Boys Town money is spent on anything but “caring for homeless and neglected boys.”

Counters Hupp in defense: “Today there is almost no kid available who’s a true orphan. The boys at Boys Town either ran away from home or got kicked out. They have more deep-seated problems than needing only a place to sleep and something to eat. This is why we’re going to make some big changes.”

Boys Town has been making big changes so fast that expenditures now outrun donations. So the twice-yearly mail solicitations that had been suspended after disclosure of the huge endowment have been reinstated. “Boys Town is recovering the sense of mission lost when Father Flanagan died,” says Warren Buffett, owner of the Sun papers.

“After all, it’s much easier to accumulate wealth than it is to spend it wisely.”