Chris Bohjalian's Blog - Posts Tagged "spectrum"
A friendship born of dueling monsters
Here’s the scene: A conference room in what once was a private home in Burlington, Vermont. The year is 2003. A recently retired direct marketing advertising executive is on one side of the table, a 13-year-old boy on another. They’ve never met and it’s just the two of them. They have to sit there for one hour that afternoon. To break the ice and help pass the time, the boy has brought a deck of Yu-Gi-Oh! dueling monsters trading cards for them play.
“It was torture,” the executive, Bob Hallowell, recalls now with a laugh. The 13-year-old, David Faske, is now 25. He doesn’t disagree. But he is quick to add, “We were two people thrown together in a room for an hour who didn’t know each other. And Bob put a lot of effort into what I liked and what interested me.”
I had breakfast with the two of them earlier this month. Despite a five-decade age difference, the two of them have been fast friends now for 12 years. And it is a friendship that began that afternoon in 2003. Bob had agreed to be a volunteer mentor for Spectrum Youth and Family Services, and David’s mother was looking for a male role model for her teenage son. (David’s parents had divorced when David was a boy.) Bob would mentor David for nine years, often meeting with him weekly, until the younger man turned 22 and was no longer eligible for the Spectrum Mentoring Program. Now the two meet simply as friends.
And both view that friendship as life-changing.
Bob did all the things a mentor might be expected to: He took David fishing. The pair played miniature golf and hit baseballs at the batting cage. They watched dozens of movies together. But he also did the things that made a demonstrable difference in David’s life. Sometimes those things were tangible, such as tracking down David’s birth certificate in Oklahoma for him and teaching him to parallel-park. But sometimes they were intangible – and especially meaningful.
“Bob always gave me lots of good advice,” David told me. “I felt like I was being bullied in high school and so I wasn’t a very good student. Sometimes I wasn’t a very good kid. But Bob was always there for me.”
Perhaps the most important thing Bob did was get David enrolled in the Northlands Job Corps Center in Vergennes. Today David is a crew chief with Green Mountain Flagging. He doesn’t merely support himself, he cares for his younger sister and her two children who live with him. When he graduated from the Job Corps at 19, he had symbols for “Honor,” “Loyalty,” and “Respect” tattooed onto his forearm, and everyday he tries to live up to those words.
Mark Redmond, executive director at Spectrum, says there are nearly 60 adults in the group’s mentoring program, each of them attached to a teenager who could use another grownup in his or her life. He thinks there are a number of reasons why the program can be such a game-changer for an adolescent: “Mentoring gives a young person a positive role model, a person who cares about them and opens up their world to new possibilities. A mentor helps improve [a teen’s] self-esteem.”
From Bob’s perspective, mentoring has always been a two-way street. He believes he’s gotten an enormous amount from his friendship with David.
“Everyone thinks they don’t have time to be a mentor,” he says, “but everyone can find an hour a week. Everyone fears they won’t be good enough or they’ll let the kid down. But all you really need to do is show up. David taught me that. Consistently showing up makes a difference. And now? David’s success makes me feel very, very good.”
Even if, alas, Bob still doesn’t completely understand how to play Yu-Gi-Oh!
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on November 30, 2014. Chris’s most recent novels are “The Light in the Ruins” and “Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands.”)
“It was torture,” the executive, Bob Hallowell, recalls now with a laugh. The 13-year-old, David Faske, is now 25. He doesn’t disagree. But he is quick to add, “We were two people thrown together in a room for an hour who didn’t know each other. And Bob put a lot of effort into what I liked and what interested me.”
I had breakfast with the two of them earlier this month. Despite a five-decade age difference, the two of them have been fast friends now for 12 years. And it is a friendship that began that afternoon in 2003. Bob had agreed to be a volunteer mentor for Spectrum Youth and Family Services, and David’s mother was looking for a male role model for her teenage son. (David’s parents had divorced when David was a boy.) Bob would mentor David for nine years, often meeting with him weekly, until the younger man turned 22 and was no longer eligible for the Spectrum Mentoring Program. Now the two meet simply as friends.
And both view that friendship as life-changing.
Bob did all the things a mentor might be expected to: He took David fishing. The pair played miniature golf and hit baseballs at the batting cage. They watched dozens of movies together. But he also did the things that made a demonstrable difference in David’s life. Sometimes those things were tangible, such as tracking down David’s birth certificate in Oklahoma for him and teaching him to parallel-park. But sometimes they were intangible – and especially meaningful.
“Bob always gave me lots of good advice,” David told me. “I felt like I was being bullied in high school and so I wasn’t a very good student. Sometimes I wasn’t a very good kid. But Bob was always there for me.”
Perhaps the most important thing Bob did was get David enrolled in the Northlands Job Corps Center in Vergennes. Today David is a crew chief with Green Mountain Flagging. He doesn’t merely support himself, he cares for his younger sister and her two children who live with him. When he graduated from the Job Corps at 19, he had symbols for “Honor,” “Loyalty,” and “Respect” tattooed onto his forearm, and everyday he tries to live up to those words.
Mark Redmond, executive director at Spectrum, says there are nearly 60 adults in the group’s mentoring program, each of them attached to a teenager who could use another grownup in his or her life. He thinks there are a number of reasons why the program can be such a game-changer for an adolescent: “Mentoring gives a young person a positive role model, a person who cares about them and opens up their world to new possibilities. A mentor helps improve [a teen’s] self-esteem.”
From Bob’s perspective, mentoring has always been a two-way street. He believes he’s gotten an enormous amount from his friendship with David.
“Everyone thinks they don’t have time to be a mentor,” he says, “but everyone can find an hour a week. Everyone fears they won’t be good enough or they’ll let the kid down. But all you really need to do is show up. David taught me that. Consistently showing up makes a difference. And now? David’s success makes me feel very, very good.”
Even if, alas, Bob still doesn’t completely understand how to play Yu-Gi-Oh!
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on November 30, 2014. Chris’s most recent novels are “The Light in the Ruins” and “Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands.”)
Time to lose a little sleep over our homeless teens
Mark Redmond had been trying – and failing – to get some sleep since ten-thirty at night. He was on the front lawn of the Unitarian Church at the north end of Burlington, Vermont’s Church Street, curled up in his sleeping bag against the March cold, a flattened cardboard carton between him and the snow. It was nearing three in the morning and he was just drifting off, when he was jolted awake by a long, loud crash. A half minute later there was another. Soon after that, there was a third. The noise was nearing.
“I looked up,” Redmond recalled, “and it was some poor guy pushing his shopping cart down Pearl Street and going from pail to pail to find empties. I was hearing the sound of the cans and bottles as they rattled into the cart.”
Redmond’s point? “It’s not just the cold that makes it hard to get a decent night’s sleep if you’re outside. It’s the noise. It’s the lights. And you are just so vulnerable.”
Redmond himself is not homeless. He is the Executive Director of Spectrum Youth and Family Services. But later this month, on the night of March 26, once again he will be hunkered down in his sleeping bag, outside on the north end of Church Street. And he won’t be alone. There will be somewhere around 100 Vermont business and community leaders sleeping outside – or, to use the parlance of the street, “sleeping rough” – all of them getting a small taste of what it is like to be homeless. Among them? Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger. They will also be raising money for Spectrum, taking pledges in much the same way that others raise money for Special Olympics in the Penguin Plunge.
This March marks the fourth time that Spectrum has held its Sleep Out in Burlington. In addition, between March 26 and March 29, there will be groups of students sleeping rough across Vermont, also raising money for Spectrum and getting an inkling of how hard it is to be homeless. Last year, the Sleep Out raised $200,000.
Spectrum’s mission is to help teens in trouble. Last year it helped 1,200 kids in a variety of programs: counseling, mentoring, health care and drug treatment, among them. The organization is known for its overnight shelter and drop-in center on Pearl Street, but homelessness is only one problem it tries to combat. “I view most of our programs as prevention,” Redmond said. So why the Sleep Out? “Because,” Redmond explained, “It really is awful to be homeless. To endure it for even one night is an experience.”
Indeed. Mary Lee, an associate vice president in Human Resources at Champlain College, was among the participants of the Sleep Out the very first year. Afterward she wrote Redmond an email and observed, “I kept imagining what it might be like for a 15 year old to be all alone with those sounds and cold night after night. At any point, I knew that I had an option and that in just a few hours I would have hot coffee, food, my car, a shower, the day off, the weekend playing with my family, etc. Easy for me. Not easy for that 15 year old. Life twists in ways that we often cannot understand. Homelessness could touch anyone.”
I’ve often written about kids who Spectrum has helped over the years. I always find myself moved and impressed, which is why I keep coming back to their stories. The Sleep Out is a chance to glimpse their world – and to see why as grownups we have to care.
* * *
Want to be a part? Visit www.spectrumvt.org for details on how to join the Sleep Out or sponsor someone who is sleeping rough. Are you a student or teacher around the state and want information on how to hold a Sleep Out in your school or community? Email Mark Redmond directly at MRedmond@SpectrumVT.org .
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on March 8, 2015. “Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands,” Chris’s most recent novel, is about a homeless teen. It arrives in paperback in May.)
“I looked up,” Redmond recalled, “and it was some poor guy pushing his shopping cart down Pearl Street and going from pail to pail to find empties. I was hearing the sound of the cans and bottles as they rattled into the cart.”
Redmond’s point? “It’s not just the cold that makes it hard to get a decent night’s sleep if you’re outside. It’s the noise. It’s the lights. And you are just so vulnerable.”
Redmond himself is not homeless. He is the Executive Director of Spectrum Youth and Family Services. But later this month, on the night of March 26, once again he will be hunkered down in his sleeping bag, outside on the north end of Church Street. And he won’t be alone. There will be somewhere around 100 Vermont business and community leaders sleeping outside – or, to use the parlance of the street, “sleeping rough” – all of them getting a small taste of what it is like to be homeless. Among them? Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger. They will also be raising money for Spectrum, taking pledges in much the same way that others raise money for Special Olympics in the Penguin Plunge.
This March marks the fourth time that Spectrum has held its Sleep Out in Burlington. In addition, between March 26 and March 29, there will be groups of students sleeping rough across Vermont, also raising money for Spectrum and getting an inkling of how hard it is to be homeless. Last year, the Sleep Out raised $200,000.
Spectrum’s mission is to help teens in trouble. Last year it helped 1,200 kids in a variety of programs: counseling, mentoring, health care and drug treatment, among them. The organization is known for its overnight shelter and drop-in center on Pearl Street, but homelessness is only one problem it tries to combat. “I view most of our programs as prevention,” Redmond said. So why the Sleep Out? “Because,” Redmond explained, “It really is awful to be homeless. To endure it for even one night is an experience.”
Indeed. Mary Lee, an associate vice president in Human Resources at Champlain College, was among the participants of the Sleep Out the very first year. Afterward she wrote Redmond an email and observed, “I kept imagining what it might be like for a 15 year old to be all alone with those sounds and cold night after night. At any point, I knew that I had an option and that in just a few hours I would have hot coffee, food, my car, a shower, the day off, the weekend playing with my family, etc. Easy for me. Not easy for that 15 year old. Life twists in ways that we often cannot understand. Homelessness could touch anyone.”
I’ve often written about kids who Spectrum has helped over the years. I always find myself moved and impressed, which is why I keep coming back to their stories. The Sleep Out is a chance to glimpse their world – and to see why as grownups we have to care.
* * *
Want to be a part? Visit www.spectrumvt.org for details on how to join the Sleep Out or sponsor someone who is sleeping rough. Are you a student or teacher around the state and want information on how to hold a Sleep Out in your school or community? Email Mark Redmond directly at MRedmond@SpectrumVT.org .
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on March 8, 2015. “Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands,” Chris’s most recent novel, is about a homeless teen. It arrives in paperback in May.)
