Benton Courier
July 26, 2009
Shelli Russell


If your teenage son has a friend who is driving age, but walks or rides a bike everywhere, you might think he's either health-conscious or financially frugal. Both are kind of weird for a teenager, but since when did parents understand kid motives?

If that friend wore torn jeans, you might wonder, “Are the eighties coming back?”

If he ate supper at your house all the time, but stayed thin, you might wonder where the kid puts it. If that same boy stays overnight often and never brings a toothbrush or extra clothes, your response might be to shrug it off as typical teenage boy slothitude.

You notice his hair hangs in his eyes, but kids do tend to let it grow. Boys will be boys. Right? They’re just in a phase and will get over it.

Even if all these things are how a boy operates, it wouldn’t necessarily tip you off that he could be homeless. There’s no reason for you to think that the nights he isn’t at your house, he’s getting supper and sleep at another of his friends’ houses.

In the seven-plus years my family has lived in Benton, my son has befriended a few strays. If they were stray cats or dogs, we might do the supper and sleep routine with them and be done. As it turns out, stray humans need considerably more in their life. In the past three years, we’ve helped several teens to get supper and sleep. Sometimes, they’re homeless along with their parents. Sometimes they’re on their own. All times, it is amazing how productive they become when there is love and security in their lives.

It didn’t occur to me that my family was following a pattern of finding lives about to break, and applying the duct tape to their various needs. One day, Yvonne Dougherty, Director of the Saline County Adult Education Center, logged on to MySaline.com, to vent about the frequently brushes with homeless youth. She told of a 17-year-old boy who was abandoned by his mom. Dougherty said, “He was living in the woods and eating what he could catch.” She then wrote about a girl whose mom is in prison and her dad is a meth-addict. The girl was lucky to have a car, but she sleeps in it and sells herself to live. She has many more stories.

Readers on MySaline.com were appalled to hear of the neglect right here in our county. It’s difficult to know what to do to help. Call the authorities? How long would a kid sit in the system before they simply came of age and were put out again? In part two of this subject, I’m going to tell you about something that is happening in Saline County as a result of the day Yvonne told us about these kids.