Chapter 27

The rest of the trip went smoothly. I got up early Sunday morning, dressing and coming downstairs to the lobby to meet with the five equipment executives, or, in some cases, manufacturer's representatives. Each handed me several product brochures and sales proposals, discussing briefly the supposed advantages their product offered over the competition's.

My Dad must have told them that I had only a limited amount of time, because each one stayed talking to me for under ten minutes. At eight fifteen, I was back up in our room. Emily was still asleep. I woke her up and told her she needed to start getting ready to leave, because we were all planning on stopping off for breakfast in San Juan Capistrano on the way back to San Diego.

We were checked out of the hotel, and on the road, heading south, right at nine o'clock. Gary and Kitty had gone out by themselves, after we returned from eating the night before. It had mostly been a walk, but they did stop off and listen to some music in a lounge, at one of the convention center hotels that were about half a mile south of the Disneyland Hotel.

The big news from their night out was that Gary had met a girl that he was interested in. She was part of a girl's high school basketball team that had come to the area for a tournament. Her name was Lisa Johnson, she was only fifteen, like Gary, and she was already six feet, one inch tall.

While Kitty sat in the lounge, listening to the band, and having a glass or two of wine, Gary and Lisa had sat in the hotel lobby talking basketball.

Both were centers for their teams, and both were second string varsity as freshman. Lisa came from a small town in Minnesota, named Minneota, but she attended school in Maryland, at an all girls prep academy. Her father was a farmer back in Minneota, and her mother was dead.

They had talked together for a couple of hours, and Kitty had waited patiently for Gary to wind up his conversation with Lisa. She had never seen her son interested in any girl before. She had been completely oblivious of Gary's seduction at the hands of Brenda.

For the entire trip down to San Diego, we were forced to listen to Gary waxing poetically about this new infatuation of his. They had exchanged addresses and phone information, and Gary was already hinting that we should take a summer trip to Minnesota for something call 'Box Elder Bug Days'. I think, after hearing Gary describe all the activities, that it might well have been the social highlight of the Minnesota summer.

We were in the air before eleven o'clock, which was really one o'clock in the afternoon in Ridgeline. We stopped once to refuel, and then landed in Bolling, deplaned, and were home before eight at night. Emily asked Kitty if she could have a sleep over at my house, but, she was refused permission for that.

The trip had gone well. My father took the brochures and proposals from me, almost as soon as I came through the door. I guess he must have been running low on exciting reading material. I spent time in the library, telling everyone about the trip, describing all the Webb's, and telling them about Lenore's greeting to both Anne and I, when we had first gotten there.

Mama seemed happy that Anne was settled in California too, and probably for much the same reason that I was. When I told her that Anne had played golf again, she seemed happy for her. She told me that Anne had been an excellent junior, with almost unlimited potential, for about a season and a half, and then just quit playing, about six months before she turned up pregnant.

Monday, I was back in class, and things were back to being hectic again. I presented Jerry with his new sombrero at lunch time, having kept it in the trunk of my car until I got a chance to see him. He seemed touched that I'd brought something back from my trip for him, and asked me questions about both Tijuana and Disneyland.

Jerry had formed a new friendship with another student named Henry Stiles. Henry was not as openly gay as Nigel had been, but he was definitely a homosexual. Being a boy's boarding school, we had more of that than the public schools probably did, and one of the reasons for some of the kids being sent off to boarding school was that their sexual preferences had been embarrassing to their parents back home. I had been meaning to ask Jerry if he'd ever been with a girl. When he'd come home with me, on several weekends, he hadn't shown any interest in girls or dating. In fact, he mostly seemed interested in desserts and getting new magazines. From his selection of reading material, I had concluded that his normal bent was hetero.

While I had been gone, there had been a crisis at one of the group homes that resulted in two of the boys running away. It had started, innocently enough, with an argument among four of the boys about what TV show they were going to watch. It escalated into a pushing and shoving match that finally resulted in a table lamp being broken, and with an end table losing one of its legs. Nothing too serious, and certainly not an unexpected occurrence whenever you have six boys, all roughly the same age, living in such close proximity.

Unfortunately, the house parent father didn't agree with my assessment of the seriousness of the event. His reaction was to send all four boys to their rooms, and to suspend their television privileges for a month. Up to that point, I would have supported him.

Two of the boys, both kids who had been in St. Cecilia's, argued that they shouldn't be punished, because it was the other two who had been wrestling, and had broken the lamp and the table. Their complaints, coupled with the parent's already being upset, escalated, until one of the boys muttered a bad word under his breath. The word was bastard, and the parent reacted by slapping the boy in the face. That was a big no no in any child care situation. All of our people were told they must never strike any of the children as punishment. Not under any circumstances. Even if they were attacked by a child, they were only allowed to use restraining holds against them.

Sandy had been called in only after the two boys had run away from the home that night, Friday night. At first, both house parents omitted any mention of one of the boys having been slapped, but all of the remaining boys told her about it, when she questioned them about where the boys might have been heading. Later, Sandy got the father to admit that he had lost his temper and struck the boy. At that point, everyone knew what had to be done.

Sandy had another couple who were already licensed and approved to be house parents. She moved out the other house parents and moved in the new. The boy's social worker was called, both to notify her that the boy had run away, and to tell her about the incident that had led to the runaway.

Both boys were picked up hitchhiking, about twenty miles from Bolling. They were held until they could be picked up by their case workers and returned to their home County for temporary placement. It was a very big deal, hitting children, and there would be hearings held to determine what, if anything, should be done to prevent a repeat of this happening. We were all upset and concerned. This wasn't something that reflected well on any of us. It might have even put the whole program into jeopardy.

At this point, several children's rights advocates became involved in the process. Among the two legitimate ones, were two private practice attorneys, representing themselves as advocates for the injured or displaced children. There was one point where Sandy started threatening to quit. This was after one of the lawyers began criticising her hiring and training processes. Neither of these so called advocates had any standing with anyone. Sandy had granted them interviews, strictly as a courtesy, believing them when they claimed to represent bona fide children's advocate groups.

No one informed me of anything, not until Monday, in the early evening. By then, the house parents had been fired, the runaways found, and, inside the group home itself, some semblance of calm had been restored. All four of the remaining boys were upset over the loss of their two house parents. The new parents were caring for the physical needs of the children, but they hadn't had time to build up any emotional rapport with them. Part of the problem was that these were older children, hardened by years of shuffling in the institutional and foster care systems. They were upset because they had found a comfortable and nurturing situation, then had the objects of all that nurturing, suddenly pulled, and immediately replaced by two new people.

I drove over to Bolling to spend some time with the boys. By the time I got there, they were already playing the blame game among themselves. If Ritchie and Leroy hadn't broken the lamp, Tom and Darryl would still be living with them, and Robbie and Nadine would still be looking after them. I let them go on for awhile, trying to understand the level of upset they were feeling.

"There are always consequences, boys, always. What started out as a little thing has gotten pretty big already, and it isn't done yet. This week, each of your case workers will be coming here to discuss this with you. They'll want to know whether you want to stay here, or go to live somewhere else. We're all sorry it got to be like that, but, there isn't any sense with you four getting into more fights about who was to blame. Tom and Darryl are all right. They were picked up, and are now back in their home Counties, in temporary foster homes. Mrs. Templeton will be going over to see both boys sometime this week, and then having talks with some of the administrators of the child care system in each County. Once they talk, we'll know more about what's going to happen to the boys. They might be coming back, or they might not be."

Up until that point, I don't think it had occurred to any of the boys that their case workers might decide to pull them from our homes. I didn't want to go into it with them that our licensing might have been put in jeopardy because of the slapping incident. I didn't think it would come to that, but I couldn't be sure yet. I had heard of cases where licenses were pulled because of sexual misconduct, by some of the staff, at one home for mentally handicapped adults. I didn't know if what happened at our home would be considered as serious as that incident, or not.

On Thursday, Sandy called me to tell me she was thinking about quitting and moving back to California. She had spent four hours with those two lawyers, and the previous two days speaking to County child services administrators in each of the runaway boys Counties. I got her calmed down enough to where she promised she wouldn't make any rash decisions while she was so tired and upset.

One problem was that the administrators of one County had decided to pull the other four of their children from our program. Two of these boys were the brothers that one of our house parent couples were petitioning to adopt. Our losing those boys would be a wrenching loss to Henry and Dana Becker, the couple trying to adopt the brothers. I didn't even want to think of the impact this news would have on Jimmy and David Githens, the brothers.

I went to Mama with the problem. It was getting too complex for me to attempt to take care of by myself. She listened to everything, and then she asked me to stop for a minute, so she could get a pen and paper to take some notes.

Friday, while I was in school, Mama burned up the telephone lines, calling every state official and political power broker that she knew. I'm not certain what she told them, but, whatever it was, by the early afternoon, our problems with that one County were essentially over, and Darryl, one of the runaway boys, was being returned to our group home. The following Monday, Tom was returned to us as well. Both boys were happy to be back with us, and we were happy to see them as well.

I had talked to Frank Clooney about some of the threats those two attorneys had made to Sandy Templeton, and he was outraged by them. He wanted to file a complaint with the Kansas state bar association, but, if he did, I didn't hear of anything coming of it.

Four months after the incident, we heard from an attorney for the couple we'd fired, threatening us with legal action for a wrongful termination. Sandy spoke with the attorney, explaining everything that had happened, including him slapping a twelve year old child in front of four witnesses, and we never heard from the attorney again.

In March, my father announced, at dinner, that Ron Jones, Shirley's dad had phoned him. Things were still not going that well at the carpet mill, and his home in Ridgeline still hadn't sold. While not coming right out and asking my father if he had a place open for him, Mr. Jones had spent fifteen minutes asking how the new sales plan was working out.

"I'm nearly certain that he'll be calling me again soon, Kenny. I think he's about ready to give up on that job in South Carolina. I'm sure he's had feelers out for other mill jobs, but I understand the labor and competition situation is pretty standard for that whole industry."