Programs Don't Change Kids -- Relationships Do

I wasn’t a high school dropout. I’m sure I would have been, but I didn’t get the chance—the school kicked me out before I could quit. 

It was 1957, I was 17, and by most people’s standards, I had it made. I was a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. I grew up in a middle-class suburb of Pittsburgh on a quiet, shady street in a nice neighborhood. My father and his brothers had a good business, and the country club was at our disposal. 

But that was just on the surface. Underneath, my home was a mess. My mother was chronically ill with emotional and physical problems, and my father was distant. I had two brothers, but they were much older and had already moved out of the house by the time I entered my teens. I’m sure my parents loved me, but they couldn’t be there for me, emotionally or in any other way. 

I started to rebel against all the 1950s conformist values around me as a way of hiding the loneliness and hurt I felt. And I hated school. I felt inferior to most of the students, and my D average reflected it. I couldn’t read well and bluffed my way through most classes. Many years later, I found out that I “learned differently,” but back in my day, they called it “being dumb.” And so I told myself none of it mattered to me anyway—school was just a bunch of facts that I didn’t need or care about.

I started getting in trouble, getting sent to detention, and hanging around with the “bad crowd” at Nobbie’s Pool Hall. They called us the “Green Street Animals.” Finally, the principal brought my mom into school and told her that she ought to take me out. The reason I was in so much trouble, he said, was that I “couldn’t handle the work.” Once again, that meant only one thing: I was dumb. No surprise, really—for three years I’d been in a special class for “slow learners.” We were all labeled, and the other guys who weren’t making it were my only friends. 

The closest I came to feeling anything like acceptance was at that pool hall. There, hanging out with a couple dozen guys my age and older, I talked the way I liked to talk and didn’t feel rejected for it. In that scruffy room with its six pool tables and dim lights, there was a sense of community that I felt nowhere else. It was real, it was honest—but also violent and purposeless. What I remember most is how the time dragged and stretched. We had all the time in the world to go . . . nowhere. I used to lie in bed at night in tears, wondering what I was doing, where I was headed, and what my life was about. 

One day at Nobbie’s, an older guy came in, a guy in his 30s whom I’d never seen before. He just sat there and watched us. I turned to my friend Lefty and asked, “Who is that guy?” Lefty had no idea. The man showed up each day, but we never spoke. Finally he offered to shoot a game of pool with us—“I’ll pay,” he said, which sounded good—and we kidded him about his lousy cue technique, and he took it and kidded us back, and eventually I got around to asking him his name and what he was doing there. “My name is Bob, and I’m trying to start a club for kids from your high school.” 

“Good luck, man,” I told him. 

Bob was part of Young Life, a nondenominational Christian organization committed to making a positive impact on kids’ lives and preparing them for the future. It was founded in 1941, and it’s still going strong today across the United States and in more than 100 foreign countries. You can be sure I wasn’t too interested in the Christian stuff at first. The group sponsored a camp at a ranch in Colorado, and that was more to my liking. “And we’ll give you a scholarship,” Bob said when he told me about it. No one had ever offered me a scholarship for anything before. Even better, he told me it was a co-ed camp. I took a look at the photos of the girls riding horses. “Okay,” I said, “I think I can make time for this.” 

So, along with five of my friends, I rode a bus out west, and on the bus I met Jerry Kirk, the man with whom I went on to form the most important relationship of my life so far. Jerry was the head of Young Life in Pittsburgh. The first thing I remember noticing about him was that he could fall asleep on the road in the midst of all the ruckus we were making. He even had a smile on his face while he slept! 

He was a slight, wiry guy—he’d done a lot of long-distance running back in school and still had the look of an athlete. At this time he was perhaps 30 or so. I liked him right away, but he puzzled me just as much as Bob had. What was his angle? Why did this guy seem to care about me? 

At the camp there was plenty of stuff to do: horseback riding, basketball, hiking. But most of all, there was time to hang out. In addition to Jerry, there were two other counselors assigned to my friends and me, and once again . . . what was it with those guys? I could see immediately that they wanted to know me as a person; they cared about who I was, no matter whether I “believed in God” or was willing to accept what Young Life was all about. I didn’t know what to call it, but I perceived that Jerry Kirk loved me unconditionally. He believed in me as a human being, whatever I did—there were no strings attached. 

It was the first time I’d ever experienced anything like this. Shouldn’t I have received unconditional love from my parents? Sure—but like millions of young people, I didn’t. I was desperate for a caring adult in my life. 

I didn’t open up to Jerry or the others right away. I was extremely distrustful, and I had to do a lot of testing to find out if their caring was real. We had work crews at the camp, doing things like filling holes in the roads. One morning I was slacking off, and Bob, who was the crew boss, said, “Milliken, you’re lazy!” (Did I mention he was an ex-Marine?) Wham! My next shovelful of dirt just happened to catch him right in the face. 

The staff had a big meeting over this incident. I knew they were going to send me home. But instead, they told me that they were going to stick it out with me. I realized that Bob wasn’t being a jerk; on the contrary, he was consistent and fair, because when I did my job well, he was there to tell me so. When I didn’t, he told me that, too. I was inconsistent, but he was not. And he had a sense of humor. So I apologized to him and found that I respected him even more. 

The real turning point in my feelings of trust for Jerry came when I went back to Pittsburgh. Somehow I was afraid I’d never see him again. He’d gotten me to the camp and had helped me learn about God—so his job was over and he’d move on to someone else. That didn’t happen. Jerry stayed with me and continued to be my friend. The unconditional love didn’t disappear, and neither did he. (The trip to the Colorado camp became an annual event, too—many years later I was still going out there each summer, taking kids from the streets of New York to experience what I had as a teen.) 

Something started to change within me. I was realizing that no matter how tough I thought I was, no matter how screwed up I felt my life had been, I wanted to be connected. It was the basic driving force for me, and—I understand now—for every single human being on the planet. A few years ago, I was deeply moved while watching the Tom Hanks film Castaway. Here’s this guy all alone on a deserted island for years and he winds up establishing a personal, one-on-one relationship with a volleyball! The ball had “Wilson” written on it, so that’s what the Hanks character called it. This was the best he could do, the only friend he had. He just had to be connected. 

I firmly believe that I’m alive today because of a caring adult. Jerry, Bob, and the other Young Life counselors didn’t think my friends and I were worthless. They believed we had a future, something we could give. They didn’t offer us an “answer” or a “program”—they offered themselves; they offered the time, love, and energy it takes to form a relationship with another human being. And there’s no human being harder to relate to than an alienated teenager. Jerry walked with me through “the valley of the shadow of adolescence,” and, as I’ve learned dozens of times since, that’s no easy walk. Without someone to believe in them, a teenager gets angry, and they start to take it out on other people and themselves. 

Programs don’t change kids—relationships do. This principle is the cornerstone for everything you’ll ever do for children in your communities. They’ll probably put it on my tombstone because I’ve said it so often, in so many ways. But in this increasingly high-tech “virtual” century, I believe you can’t say it too often: it all starts with relationships. A good program creates an environment in which healthy relationships can occur.

***

For more inspiration, join an Awakin Call with Bill MIlliken this weekend! More details and RSVP here.