OCTOBER 1982
COVENANT HOUSE UNDER 21
[Unreadble Address]
Hello, my friends,
It was 1:30 in the morning of a warm, starry night when Craig stole out of the large, quite house in suburban Maryland, down the long winding drive running through acres of manicured lawn to the waiting taxi. At the airport the boy discovered there were no early morning flights to New York so he grabbed another cab to the bus terminal in Baltimore, just in time to hop a bus for the Big Apple. Craig arrived in New York City’s mammoth Port Authority Bus Terminal at 6:00 A.M. He was barely 12.
At that hour in the morning even Times Square and 42nd Street are fairly quiet. Not knowing what to do and trying to kill some time, Craig hopped into a cab. “Give me a tour,” he ordered the driver. For the next hour Craig got an early morning ride around Manhattan from the George Washington Bridge to the Battery through Central Park, to the Bowery and Chinatown. The driver finally collected 40 dollars from the sleepy boy and dropped him off at a pay phone near the Empire State Building on 34th Street.
“Can you give me the number of a good hotel where I can stay until I get a job.” Craig inquired rather plaintively of the operator, adding that he was on his own and had no place to go. God had His eye on this kid. The briskly professional voice of the operator changed magically into that of a warm, concerned adult. “Listen, kid. Do exactly what I say. Get another taxi and go to 460 West 41st Street. There’s a place there called UNDER 21 and they’ll be able to help you. Don’t go anywhere else and don’t go with anybody else!”
Craig, suddenly very much alone and scared, did exactly that.
Now most of my kids are street kids. Good kids, but they know things nobody should ever have had to know. Most of my kids have had to survive in ways they’re not exactly proud of. Most of them are very skilled in the theory and practice of survival in their Times Square jungle. So I couldn’t blame them very much for salivating hungrily when this 12-year-old lamb walked in our front door about 9:00 A.M. on Tuesday. I mean, a tiger is a tiger, right? I mean a wolf doesn’t exactly feel affection for the possum that he had for lunch. Gratitude, maybe, but not affection. Maybe someday the lion will lie down with the lamb but until that day arrives my staff at Covenant House keep a special and very protective eye out for the lambs that come to us.
One hundred pairs of eyes lit up at the sight of the expensive matched luggage, the carefully understated designer clothes, the Gucci shoes. A top-of-the-line Sony Walkman radio was plugged into Craig’s head. It took Clarence Coles, our experienced Supervisor on duty, about five seconds to size up the situation. Settle down, Clarence warned an assorted gaggle of wolves, tigers and lions that had immediately encircled their prey, offering instant friendship and an in-depth tour of 42nd Street. (Forty-deuce is a blast, man!)
Don’t let this kid out of your sight for a moment, Clarence warned Pat Atkinson, a member of our Covenant Community from North Dakota, and one of our staff on duty that morning. Be like glue to this kid.
Craig was a really neat kid, about five feet high, with short brown hair and very alive friendly brown eyes. Pat whisked him, all 90 pounds worth, upstairs to the floor where we keep our younger, more vulnerable kids. Craig drew another admiring crowd there. He obligingly opened his matching suitcases and showed them his “extras”: 250 dollars in cash, an AC/DC portable color T.V., a Canon AE-1 camera and a complete wardrobe of designer clothes. Pat sighed, gathered Craig’s things together and locked everything up tight. Let’s talk, he said.
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It turned out that Craig had been planning on running away from his home in Southern Maryland for about 3 weeks. The night he finally left home he scrawled a hurting and thoughtless note (a little kid kind of note) on a page he had ripped from a Mercedes-Benz catalog his Mother had given him to choose the kind of car he would receive when he got his driver’s license. On the torn photograph of a 45,00 dollar car Craig had written: “I hate this car as much as I hate you.”
By now, Pat and Graig were getting along real well. (Pat has a great talent for getting through to kids like Craig.) A few well chosen examples of what happens to 12-year-old unstreetwise kids in Times Square had left Craig silent and shaken. So when Pat suggested that they call his Mother and let her know that Craig was alright, Craig liked the idea a lot. His face lit up momentarily and then fell quickly: “My Mother isn’t home very much,” he said quietly. “You can always talk to the maid, I guess.”
Pat called the boy’s home. The maid didn’t know where his Mother was and volunteered that Craig’s Father was yachting off Malibu. Pat talked to the gardener who wasn’t much help either. They chauffeur referred Pat to the Housekeeper who thought she could locate the Mother. Thirty minutes later, frantic and crying with relief, Craig’s Mother called UNDER ,21. We then began the happy process of getting an equally relieved Craig back home to parents who wanted him back very much and where he wanted to be.
On their way over to the Bus Terminal, Pat and Craig stopped in our main lounge to say goodbye to his host of newfound friends. My by-now-resigned lions and tigers and wolves cast a last wistful look at the color T.V. and the Walkman radio and the 600 dollar camera, and protectively allowed that they were real glad the kid was going to make it home O.K. Pat put Craig on a nonstop bus to Baltimore. He was back home, safe, by 10:00 P.M. --- total elapsed time about 21 hours --- and called Pat right away to let him know that things were O.K. “You’ve got a great place there,” he said. “I guess I was pretty lucky, huh?”
I never really believed in luck very much. I believe in God watching out for little kids, rich or poor, and in kind people --- like that telephone operator --- who took the time to help a kid, and in all of you who care about children and are the real reason why Craig got home alright, unbrutalized, unviolated, unhurt, and with his dignity and his faith in the goodness of people intact.
We don’t get many kids like Craig, of course, which is why I’m telling you his story. Craig is only one of the more than 15,000 kids who will come to our UNDER 21 centers this year. For most of them the story will not have a happy ending.
Rich or poor, good or bad, we try very hard to love each one of them, to keep that promise we make to every kid that walks through our doors --- the promise the prophet Ezekiel talks about in his eighth Chapter: “I bound myself by oath, I made a covenant with you...and you became mine.”
We’re not sentimental about it. Hard noses and soft hearts is what I tell my staff.
These past few months have been very rough for a lot of kids, and it’s been very rough for my staff, also. We really do need your prayers, and your financial support. When you pray for your own kids, and families, pray for me and my kids, too.
We pray for you all the time.
Peace,
