LONG BEACH : Construction Starts on Long Beach Boys Town
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More than 50 years after Father Edward J. Flanagan came to Hollywood to promote the idea of a Southern California Boys Town, construction began Thursday on a smaller-scale, Long Beach version of the famous home for wayward youth.
However, the facility will not bring to mind the 1938 movie “Boys Town” starring Spencer Tracy, about a great sprawling camp of orphaned boys in Omaha, Neb.
The Long Beach Boys Town will be a single house with 16 beds and out-patient psychological treatment for families in crisis, said Father Val J. Peter, executive director of the organization.
When it is completed in April or May, the home will provide temporary or permanent homes for teen-agers in trouble--including girls, Peter said. Since Boys Town opened in 1917, the organization has become co-ed and branched into eight states. Another facility is planned for Trabuco Canyon in Orange County.
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