|
|
Opening ceremony at Boys State. (Steve Nawojczyk)
|
|
(Steve Nawojczyk
helped set up and ran the city's Mayor's Office on Youth Services from its
inception in 2000. He recently left this directorship to take a job as the
Program Administrator for Community Services at the Arkansas Department of
Human Services. We asked Nawojczyk to share his long connection and experiences
with the annual Arkansas Boys State. The following is his account.)
During the first week of June
for the last 16 years I have loaded up in my car and traveled the 30 miles to
Conway for my yearly rejuvenation.
Back when the gang violence was
at epidemic proportions, I was serving as the Pulaski County coroner and had
developed a national reputation as being one who was knowledgeable in the
dynamics of gangs.
For some reason, the people who
put on the American Legion Boys State each year thought my message would be a
good one for the thousand or so high school juniors from around the state to
hear.
My first year, I was a nervous
wreck. I knew that high school boys are always some of the hardest to reach. I
labored over the content of my talk and finally settled on just being myself.
I would simply tell them of my
“conversion” from being a person who felt the answer to the gang problem was
more jails, tougher laws and meaner cops to a person who understood that in
order to effectively deal with the problem communities must balance suppression
and enforcement with prevention, intervention and treatment programs.
I told them stories of young
mothers who I had to sit with and counsel them over the loss of a child. I told
of how families struggled to get through the life-changing events caused by a
child who made a poor decision.
I encouraged the Boys Staters to
engage in some sort of public service as a career. If they weren’t destined for that, I told
them to stay involved in their community. I challenged them to become “agents
of change” for their generation.
After my first speech to them
those long years ago, I got a five minute standing ovation that brought me to
tears. It seemed to go on forever. The fires of my hope for the next generation
were stoked. And, it gets stoked each year.
 |
|
| The 2008 Boys State attendees fill the hall in Conway. (Steve Nawojczyk) |
|
I always learn more from the
young men at Boys State than I teach them.
I don’t teach really, I just reflect on my nearly 25 years of studying
death. After all, what you do when you study death is done to benefit the
living.
I look forward to many more
years of my trek to UCA and the feeling of hope in my heart that is always
greater on the trip home than it was the trip up.
Next week, a trip to the delta
country would bring me before a completely different set of young men.
The following Tuesday, I was
headed the other direction from North Little Rock. This time I was making my
9th trip to the Tucker Maximum Unit of the Arkansas Department of Corrections
to speak to the 9th class of the U.N.I-TY program. UNITY was started by an
inmate serving life without parole, a prison psychologist and a Correctional
Officer Captain. The acronym stands for You and I Teaching Youth. It is a program that is mostly attended by lifers
and former gang members. They meet for about 15 weeks and work on many problems
inmates deal with on a daily basis.
It is a lot different looking
into the eyes of these broken but hopeful souls than it is into the eyes of the
Boys Staters. One can’t help but wonder if their circumstances had been
different when the inmates were younger if their lives would have taken a
different turn.
When I converse with the men at
the prison, I am also someone instilled with a little hope because they are so
willing to share their lives, which in turn helps me to do my job.
Both audiences make me realize
we are all in this together. Somehow,
whether you are a ward of the state or a future leader of our state or country,
there is a common bond. The need to connect. The need for nurturing caring adults
in the lives of children. To turn a worn out phrase, it truly does, it seems,
take an entire village to raise a child.
Now I’ll wait until it is time
to either go to Boys State or prison again. In the meantime, I’ll continue to share
the messages shared with me.
(Editor’s note: The American Legion Department of Arkansas inducted Steve
Nawojczyk to the Arkansas Boys State Hall of Fame on June 6 for his
contribution to the Boys State and the youth of Arkansas.)
 |
June 17, 2008