I Remember Father Flanagan

By Clifford Stevens

A young boy walks into a hotel to meet a great man and it changes his life forever. The man: Father Flanagan of Boys Town - and the boy, one of the 30,000 citizens of that "City of Little Men", tells is own story of Boys Town and Father Flanagan.

The Irish lad who stepped off the S.S. Celtic in June of 1904 was to leave an indelible mark on the American dream, a story told in the movie "Boys Town" in 1938. Butthe story is richer and more astonishing than a movie could dramatize and in this memoir the range and scope of Father Flannagan's achievement is seen against the background of the early years of the century, with massive social problems that accompanied an exploding national economy. Immigration was high and cities, like Omaha, were filled with crowded neighborhoods of immigrants, most of them not speaking English, living in small ethnic neighborhoods, where violence was frequent. Many of the children of these immigrants roamed the streets, unsupervised, most of them ending up in the courts, and sent immediately to the state reformatory.

This brought the young Father Flanagan into the courts, after he became aware of the army of youths roaming the city streets, most of them sons of immigrants. First, he had them paroled into his custody, meeting with them each week, and arranging sport events for them. But soon he asked that five of the boys in trouble be placed in his care.

He searched for an empty house to begin his work and opened "Father Flanagan's Boys Home", then moved them to the country where he established, not only a larger home, but a village for boys. In 1935, his "home" became an incorporated village called "Boys Town", and the rest is history. It is also part of the personal history of a young boy who met him in a hotel lobby and asked to go to Boys Town.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jun 4, 2013
• ISBN: 9781475990843

Clifford Stevens

Father Stevens a priest of the Archdiocese of Omaha, Nebraska, and the founder of Tintern Monastery. Born in Vermont, he graduated from Boys Town, Nebraska in 1944 and was ordained in 1956. In 1961 he entered the U.S. Air Force as Cha[plain and served in California, Alaska, New Mexico and Japan. After leaving the Air Force, he became Executive Editor of Th e Priest magazine and was editorpublisher of Schema XIII, a journal for the Priest in the Modern World. He was also associate editor of Liturgy in Santa Fe, a liturgical institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Father Stevens is the author of seventeen published books and his writings on religious and theological subjects have appeared in several newspapers and magazines throughout the country. He currently serves as Senior Priest in Residence at Boys Town.

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Copyright © 2013 by Clifford Stevens.

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ISBN: 978-1-4759-9083-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-9084-3 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013908748

iUniverse rev. date: 05/16/2013

Contents

How I Met Him

I Learn About Him

How He Worked

How He Became Father Flanagan

The Last Time I Saw Him

-1-

How I Met Him

I met him in a hotel lobby. I remember him as a tall figure coming down the stairs and meeting me with the kindest smile I ever saw, in my life. He was a famous man, and I was enchanted by this. He was Father Flanagan of Boys Town and I looked upon him with breathless wonder. I asked him that day if I could go to Boys Town and he listened to my story and took notes. He told me he would see. In two months I was on my way.

This was a familiar scene to Edward Joseph Flanagan. I was not unique either in the way I had met him or in the result of our meeting. This man had built Boys Town with boys like myself and he had built it with a touch of greatness given to very few men. With an idea, a dream, with a rare and magnificent courage he built a city of boys and caused a revolution. There were those who called him a crackpot and a dreamer, but the fruit of his work is there for all to see.

On a February day in the Hotel Brooks in Brattleboro, Vermont, I met him. It was only later that I learned his story.

He had not planned it this way, but he was destined for greatness. Even as a young priest, he was deep and different, and very bold. In the cold winter of 1913, he saw hundreds of homeless men walking the streets of Omaha. He went to a friend and together they found an old deserted garage on one of the back streets of the city. He bought a bale of hay and spread it on the floor of the garage. You can sleep here, he told the men.

People instinctively came to him; he listened and did something. Those who called him impractical were those who were not interested, those who did nothing. He never looked at obstacles, only to the deed to be done, then he did it in the simplest most direct manner.

In later years, a man told me: I met Father Flanagan once, at a football game, I think. Then one day in Washington, D.C., he burst into my office. I need twenty dollars, he said. I gave him twenty dollars. What do you do with such a man?

At first it was the derelicts, the jobless and the alcoholics. He found a place for them to sleep, found them jobs, gave them food tickets. He made arrangements with grocery stores and restaurants and printed his own tickets. The news got around, tongues began to clack. He spent his time with odd specimens of humanity, and many did not like it. They told him so. The Flanagan temper flared; he told them to mind their own business. He did not preach, he did not defend himself. He simply acted. But it did hurt, and he mentioned in later years that his biggest critics were the good, the ordinary good people who could not understand. He let them go their way and he went his.

Soon there were