NOTE: Enjoy this excerpt from The American Daily Reader, by CatholicVote president Brian Burch and Emily Stimpson Chapman. To order the complete volume, visit the CatholicVote store today!
In 1917, American men headed overseas to fight in World War I. As the migrant laborers who once filled a hostel in Omaha, Nebraska, left to join the fight, homeless drifters filled the hostel instead.
The man who welcomed the new occupants—the hostel’s founder, Father Edward Flanagan—didn’t understand the world of broken homes and broken promises from which the drifters hailed. His own idyllic childhood had been spent in Ireland, with parents and siblings who loved both him and the Church. In 1904, he came to the United States to join his brother, Father Patrick Flanagan, and eventually followed him into the priesthood. By 1913, he was serving in Omaha with his brother, dividing his time between pastoring a parish and working with the poor.
His life changed, however, after his conversations with the drifters. Flanagan decided he wanted to save troubled boys from following in their footsteps and believed he could accomplish that with a little love.
In December 1917, Flanagan received his bishop’s permission to take in five boys who were wards of the court. Soon, he took in more and moved the growing brood into a rundown Victorian mansion in downtown Omaha. When that grew too small, he bought a farm outside the city and started building Boys Town. Rooted in Flanagan’s belief that “There are no bad boys; there is only bad environment, bad training, bad example, bad thinking,” Boys Town strove to give its young men the same experience of love, prayer, and family that Flanagan had in Ireland.
It succeeded. And by the time Spencer Tracy and Hollywood arrived in 1938 to make a movie about Boys Town, Father Flanagan’s “City of Little Men” had become a national marvel.
Flanagan died on May 15, 1948, while helping the United States assess the problem of war orphans overseas. But his work continues in Boys Town programs in 10 states and Washington, D.C. The cause for Father Flanagan’s sainthood opened in 2012.
