I Remember Father Flanagan

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.