LESSONS OF FRIENDSHIP
62 | May• 2019
young man with a big idea and no
money. Meuschke enlisted friends,
and Tom soon had a board of
advisors and a down payment on
his dream: a place in the country
for boys to grow up, like a family.
What he needed next was someone
to hammer it all together. And here
I came with those shingles.
OVER THE NEXTsix summers, helped
by the boys, Tom’s growing legion of
volunteers wired, plumbed, papered,
plastered, painted. Thanks to minis-
ters and police officers, schools and
hospitals, Tom’s boys soon num-
bered 16. There were boys alone in
the world through no fault of their
own, but there were also boys who,
because of repeated arrests for theft,
vandalism, drug abuse, assault or
arson, had been taken from parents.
Others had suffered the gamut of
mistreatment, from vicious beatings
to sexual abuse and abandonment.
No one was turned away, not even
Mark, a chubby 11 year old Tom had
found lost and reeling from glue
sniffing.
No one was ever made to leave,
either. Not even jug-eared Johnny
Kates, 13, who ran away from the
farm twice in stolen cars.
When he wasn’t welcoming more
boys, Tom was raising money to
care for them – hounding potential
donors, addressing clubs, churches,
schools. “Either these are nobody’s
children or they’re everybody’s,”
he’d say. “What if you and your wife
were killed in an accident, as Andy’s
parents were? What if nobody was left
to care for your children?”
Once he had them thinking, he ap-
plied the clincher. “Come out to the
farm and see for yourself what yourdollars, food packages and old clothes
can do.” If they came, they were his for
life.
He kept up a steady stream of ‘Dear
Stranger’ letters.
At first we were lucky if these ap-
peals didn’t cost more in postage
than they brought in. But Tom had
a knack for building support, and
by 1970 most of these strangers
had a name, and money started to
come in. That was the year I gave
up teaching to work full time for
the farm.No one was ever made to leave, not
even Johnny Kates, 13, who ran away
from the farm twice in stolen cars