Home Boys

The three boys--Woodrow ("Our father was a Democrat and named him after President Woodrow Wilson," Jim says), Oscar and Jim--were separated from their remaining sister, Mary, and then from each other. Although Jim occasionally saw his brothers, he never saw Mary; it was only years later that he learned she'd died soon after arriving at the home, exactly when and how he'd never know.

The home allowed parents to visit their children once a month. Jim's mother came regularly--until she got cancer. "They took me to the hospital to say goodbye," he says, looking away as his eyes suddenly tear up. "And that was it."

A few years later Woodrow ran away, riding the rails back east and eventually ending up in Boys Town. There Father Flanagan made such an impression on the young man that he became a monk in the order of St. Benedict. Oscar remained at the home until a rancher took him in as a summer worker and eventually adopted him.

For Jim, life at the home consisted mostly of working and studying, along with plenty of compulsory church attendance: the Seventh Day Adventists on Thursday, the 23rd Avenue Presbyterians every fourth Sunday, and the Denver Bible Institute every Sunday. "Catholic kids got to go to some place away from the home," he recalls.

Jim spent most of his spare time in the home's library, where he read every book once and most of them several times. Adventure books, books of military campaigns in far-away lands. He recalls with fondness one man who'd come to the home on Sundays and choose ten children--"It was luck of the draw...you were standing in the right place when he got there or you wouldn't go," he says--and let them choose a special outing.

But not all of his memories are so pleasant. While some of the matrons, as the women who ran the dormitories were called, genuinely cared for the children, others saw their charges as a means to a paycheck...or worse. "If you got a bad one, God help you," Jim says, recalling one woman who, out of "pure meanness, I guess," regularly beat him with a wire-bristled radiator brush hard enough to draw blood. "If she was in a hurry, she'd just beat my hands. But if she had more time, she'd bend me over the bed and beat the hell out of me from my neck to my knees."

As a teenager, Jim worked summers on farms and ranches. One old rancher nearly starved him. But the next year he went to a farm in Johnstown, where he was treated like a member of the family. At the end of the summer, they asked Jim if he'd like to stay on for the next couple of years and finish high school. "It was the best thing that ever happened to me," he says, then looks quickly at Ann. "At least until I met her."

Jim met Ann after he moved to California in 1940 to work for North American Aviation and make enough money to finish his education at what was then Colorado State Teachers College in Greeley. One day he wandered into a corner market, looking for a mirror he could use to inspect the undersides of aircraft wings. The store didn't carry mirrors, but the pretty daughter of the owners offered him the mirror from a compact she'd just purchased.

"He had golden-brown hair, wavy, and lots of it...and sharp blue eyes," Ann says, looking up into those eyes. Jim retrieves his wallet from a back pocket and pulls out a snapshot of the grocer's daughter. "Here's why I never went back to Colorado," he says.

Together they had a son, "and now two darling granddaughters," Ann says. Jim stayed at North American Aviation for forty years--working on government projects that ranged from World War II fighters to the space shuttle. During that time, he found Woodrow in Massachusetts and Oscar in Northern California. They stayed in touch until the two older boys died.

I and another boy ran away from the Home. We walked and thumbed our way to the State Home camp. We broke into the kitchen and had something to eat. Afterward, we settled in for the night.

The next morning we awoke very cold. We thumbed our way to Torrington, Wyoming, where I had hoped to visit an aunt in Lusk.

We didn't make it. The Sheriff picked us up and I fell asleep in the car. Next thing I knew I was in a jail. I was returned to the Home.

The houseparent, Mrs. W.R. Hood, told me to go upstairs to the dormitory. She followed me. As I leaned over my bed holding the rail she lifted my sleeper gown. With a 1/2-inch thick lacquered board with holes in it, she whipped me good. I cried, begged and promised that I wouldn't run again as Mrs. Hood beat my naked butt. After I healed, I was on the run again.

--Edward "Dizzy" Davis, an on-again, off-again resident of the home from 1935 through 1938.

The Depression ended--but then the war came. Ninety-four boys who'd lived in the home served in World War II. Three of them died.