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Optimist Boys’ Home Changes With Times

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Times Staff Writer

“I want to AWOL so bad, but I gotta maintain and do my little time here,” said 16-year-old Ruben, eyes trained on the barracks-style buildings he calls home.

It was a bleak, drizzling day at the Optimist Boys’ Home in Highland Park, and Ruben had ditched his auto mechanics class because he was bored, he said. So he lounged against the stairwell and talked to a visitor about the home. Tattoos marked his thin arms. A gold crucifix dangled from a chain around his neck.

“It’s a good place. Better than being in the Hall,” Ruben said, referring to Los Angeles County Juvenile Hall for young offenders, which all the boys dislike. “They try and help you here, but it’s up to you.”

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Since 1906, the boys’ home on Figueroa Street has offered bed and board, schooling and counseling to more than 6,500 youths, first as an orphanage. Then, beginning with its purchase by the nonprofit Optimist organization in the late 1920s, it became a privately run home subsidized by state and county funds.

This year, which marks the home’s 80th birthday, the orphanage’s founders would be hard put to recognize it or the surrounding community. Demographics in both have changed radically since Scottish immigrants Jacob and Julia Strickland moved to Highland Park and founded their genteel establishment for homeless boys.

Residents in those early days were mainly white and mostly orphans. Photos show earnest-looking youths, the kind who might have clustered around Spencer Tracy in the movie “Boys Town.” Highland Park was mostly an Anglo community then, with big, lovely houses and a fancy commercial district.

Today, most youths at the home are black or Latino. A number are gang members. Many are scarred emotionally by neglect and abuse, and an increasing number suffer severe depression and exhibit suicidal tendencies, said Howard Nariman, the home’s executive director for 18 years.

Highland Park, too, has changed. More than half of its residents are Latino, and, although the community remains close-knit, many of the once-stately homes need paint or repairs. Fast food and discount outlets, many run by Latino and Asian immigrants, have long since replaced the fashionable shops. And, although Anglo yuppies are slowly moving in to fix up older homes, Latino gangs still rumble on side streets.

Through it all, the home has stayed on good terms with the community, say civic leaders and nearby residents.

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“We think of them as very good neighbors,” said Lorraine Wilson, who has lived across the street for 33 years.

The Optimist home, or ranch, as administrators call it, sits on five acres without locked fences or guards. It includes dormitories, a high school, a cafeteria, a gym, a chapel and business offices. The high school is run by Los Angeles County but owned by the Optimists.

Vegetables, Chickens

Private homes surround the ranch on three sides. Annandale Elementary School lies across the street on Figueroa. On a green hill at the back of the property, boys tend vegetables and chickens.

About 60 staff members, from dorm counselors to social workers, help supervise up to 84 boys during the day, Nariman said. At night, five counselors watch over the youths as they sleep.

Most of the boys are there because of convictions for assault, burglary or auto theft, or for such lesser violations as truancy or running away from home. Some of the boys, ages 13 to 18, have drug problems; others are victims of neglect and abuse.

Court orders send most of the youths here. Good behavior and the passage of time get them out. Judges can send the boys to the California Youth Authority for punishment, to special camps, home to their parents or to group homes like the Optimist.

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Waiting List

County probation workers and officials from the county Department of Children’s Services pick the specific site, based on what is deemed most appropriate for each youth. At the Optimist home, sentences range from two months to two years, and usually five to 10 youths are waiting to be admitted.

The home, however, will not accept hard-core juvenile offenders, Nariman said. If youths prove incorrigible, they are sent back to the county. “We get new kids in each week, some from Juvenile Hall, and, if they’re wild, they upset the harmony,” he said.

But not all residents have broken the law. Administrators recall how a Southeast Asian refugee arrived on their doorstep several years ago, asking to live at the home because his stepfather beat him. The home became his legal guardian. About 25% of the residents come from Northeast and East Los Angeles, the rest from around the state. Many work at odd jobs at the home for pocket money and earn weekend passes home for good behavior. Boys cannot leave without permission.

County and state agencies who work with the Optimist home give it high marks.

“Their track record is very positive. They’ve been pioneers in several different fields,” said Jane Martin, director of central and regional placement for the county Probation Department.

A review of state licensing records turned up several infractions over a five-year period that have since been corrected. In one instance, the home did not run required fingerprint checks for new employees. In another, employees hired as social workers lacked master’s degrees and were not fully accredited to perform their jobs.

Several former staff members, who didn’t want to be identified, praised Nariman but railed against other top administrators who, they contended, seemed more concerned with containing than helping the boys. Nariman blamed such criticism on “sour grapes.”

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He does have occasional problems attracting qualified staff members, Nariman said, because the home pays much less than state or county organizations. Starting pay for child-care counselors, the lowest-paying job that involves working daily with residents, is $13,200 a year. A bachelor’s degree is required.

As a result, the annual turnover rate is 60% in these jobs, Nariman said. Several staff members have also been dismissed because of personal drug and alcohol problems, he said.

“We have had some problems, but we do our best,” said Nariman. “Fortunately, the staff has not been getting kids involved in drug problems.”

Besides the Highland Park home, the Optimists run six group homes of five boys each in Mission Hills, Eagle Rock, Carson, Devore and Anaheim, plus a girls’ home in Altadena. Nariman also supervises these and runs a day-counseling program for 31 delinquent boys and five girls who attend the county-staffed Optimist High School on campus but live at home.

Teaching, which is done by county employees, is a challenge. Eighty-five percent of the students lag five to six grades behind their age groups in reading and math skills, Nariman said. Students’ ability to concentrate is poor, and classroom tension can run high, said John Young, a history and social sciences teacher.

“They’re testing all the time. Sometimes I feel like a daddy. . . . Don’t do this; don’t do that. They’re not used to discipline,” Young said.

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In an effort to get his classes interested in history last year, Young brought in survivors of the Hiroshima atom bomb and the Holocaust to recount their experiences.

Young said he wanted to help the boys understand that they weren’t the only ones who had suffered in life. His approach has apparently earned him the respect of many boys.

“Young is cool; I like him,” said 15-year-old Tony of San Fernando, who echoed the sentiments of many classmates. The other teachers? “They don’t communicate with you,” he said.

Work on Self-Image

Vickie Fetzer, who is an academic program specialist for the Los Angeles County School District and does psychiatric counseling for students, said teachers spend a lot of time building up a student’s self-image. “It’s hard dealing with a population that feels so negative about itself,” she said. “I think it’s something you’re born with.”

Teachers and administrators are alarmed by the increasing number of severely emotionally disturbed youths that pass through the home.

“The abused kids are by far the most difficult to deal with, particularly the sexually and physically abused children. They are defiant and suffer severe depression,” said Robert Mason, assistant principal.

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A boyish-looking man who serves alternately as father, confessor or counselor, Mason connects with the kids by hitting the right note of toughness and warmth.

As he walks through the campus, boys shout, “Hey, Mason,” and cluster around him.

“They’re very hard critics,” Mason tells a visitor, stopping for a quick pep talk with a sulking youth. “But, when you give them that attention, they do get motivated.”

The boys both praise and criticize the school.

“The staff is cool. They try to help you get through,” said 16-year-old Chris. But Bernard, also 16, said the school is infested with mice. He killed 10 of them in his dorm one night, he said.

Nariman acknowledged that he wages a constant battle against rodents but said he fumigates regularly. “You get that in any institutional setting,” he said.

The home receives reimbursement from state and county agencies for 75% of its $3.25-million annual operating expenses, Nariman said. Optimist clubs and other philanthropic groups underwrite the balance.

According to Nariman, 65% of those who complete their time at the home have no further encounters with the law. By contrast, 50% of those who complete terms with the California Youth Authority, which generally houses more difficult cases, stay out of further trouble for one year.

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Many enroll in vocational programs at other schools while at the Optimist Home, and one youth is attending college, Nariman said. Successful graduates include policemen, educators and psychologists. J. Robert Hayes, a former assemblyman from the 39th district, was a resident. So was an architect who returned years later to build the home a dormitory.

Raymond Kulhavy, who spent time at the home in the early 1950s, recalled it as “a period of stability and growth in a most confused adolescence. . . . There was room to be me, while still demanding that I learn to deal with society,” he wrote to Nariman recently.

Today, Kulhavy is an acting dean at Arizona State University and part of an alumni group of about 100 that helps raise money to defray costs.

Nariman said, “Sometimes, they’ll come back and say, ‘It was a good place for me. I enjoyed it, but I never told you.’ ”

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