He is explaining that there are 2.5 miles of such walkways
connecting every building on the 374-acre Gillis W. Long Center campus. They
were built to enable former residents of the facility to move from building
to building with minimal difficulty.
Suddenly, the visitor understands why.
He is explaining that there are 2.5 miles of such walkways
connecting every building on the 374-acre Gillis W. Long Center campus. They
were built to enable former residents of the facility to move from building
to building with minimal difficulty.
Suddenly, the visitor understands why.
“Wait,” he says. “Is this Carville?”
Kirkpatrick nods. “This is Carville.”
In years past, the very name was enough to evoke a range of
images and emotions. After all, for most of the last century, the isolated Carville
facilities housed leprosy patients from around the world.
Now, the Hansens Disease Center has moved to Baton Rouge,
which lies just a turn and twist upriver. Only a few dozen Hansens patients
remain on the Carville campus. They have no other place to go.
Thus, after years of giving care and hope and a future to people
once considered hopeless, Carville essentially is out of the leprosy business
these days.
Now, its mission is focused on another group – but its
focus is also on a similar mission of providing hope and help to persons not
given much of a chance by most.
A member at First Baptist Church of Baton Rouge, Kirkpatrick
guides that mission as head of the Louisiana National Guards Youth Challenge
Program, designed to give troubled young people across the state a chance to
redirect their lives.
Essentially, the challenge program takes high school dropouts
into a five-month resident academy that features classroom training and a heavy
focus on discipline.
Indeed, the young people quickly find themselves in a military-type
setting, all the way from their daily schedule to required uniforms to haircuts.
They are referred to as cadets.
They are expected to obey orders.
They wake at 5:30 a.m., attend classes until mid-afternoon
and participate in physical training and sports after that. After the evening
meal, time is alloted for guest speakers, letter writing, perhaps additional
classes. Taps comes each day at 9 p.m.
The cadets in the program are under 24-hour supervision. “If
it looks tough, thats because it is,” Kirkpatrick acknowledges.
“But its not impossible.”
Instead, it is a chance to change the future for teenagers
headed for more and more trouble otherwise, Kirkpatrick says.
“Our mission is their future,” is the mission statement
of the youth program.
For Kirkpatrick, the statement is personal. One understands
this upon learning how Kirkpatrick came to the program.
He had served as an adjutant general in the military before
leaving the service to open his own law practice in Baton Rouge.
Even as he did so, he remained active in the National Guard.
Because of his legal expertise, as a guardsman, he helped get the Youth Challenge
Program started at Camp Beauregard in Pineville several years ago.
When that program proved successful, state leaders decided
to open a second program on the Carville campus.
They approached Kirkpatrick, who acknowledges he was slowing
down his law practice. He also was only about 18 months from retiring as a guardsman,
after completing the maximum 30 years of service.
Still, Kirkpatrick agreed to help launch the program. The first
class was accepted in 1999. Since then, the Carville program has grown into
the larger of the two Louisiana efforts, graduating two classes of cadets a
year. It will remain the largest even when a third program is started in north
Louisiana.
Meanwhile, Kirkpatrick remains as head of the Carville program,
even though he has retired from active Guard duty, as required.
“I really found something here,” he says. “Its
totally different. …
“This program really changes lives.”
That there are many young lives in Louisiana that need changing
is not in dispute.
More than 22 percent of Louisiana students drop out of high
school, the second-highest dropout rate in the nation.
Many of those youth never will develop basic skills, which
explains why some 340,000 Louisiana adults are illiterate and why more than
10,000 skilled jobs in the state go unfilled because of the lack of an educated
workforce.
It also helps to explain why Louisiana ranks first in the nation
in terms of jobless young people. And in case anyone wonders about the likely
future of many of those young people, 82 percent of prisoners report they were
high school dropouts.
However, Kirkpatrick is working to change those statistics
through the Youth Challenge Program.
The program recruits young people from across the state, seeking
to intervene for those facing troubled futures. Once youth are enrolled, they
face a rigorous academic and discipline program. “But were not a
boot camp,” Kirkpatrick says. “Were a military academy that
operates like one.”
The program holds to a strict no-drug policy and reserves the
right to ask cadets to leave. Those who stay receive training in life coping
skills, job skills, citizenship, leadership, health and hygiene, physical fitness
and community involvement.
They also receive training to take the GED exam – and
84 percent of those who do so pass it, Kirkpatrick points out.
Also, the grade-increase level at Carville is the highest in
the country among the Youth Challenge Programs in 27 states, he says. Some cadets
come in three or more grade levels behind and catch up enough to earn a GED,
he recounts.
It is a worthy achievement – and one that has gained recognition.
Indeed, the overall Louisiana Youth Challenge Program has earned a number of
awards, including recognition as the top program in the nation.
Once a cadet completes the resident program, he or she goes
through a cap-and-gown graduation. Like any other high school class, they receive
yearbooks and have the opportunity to attend a prom.
As many as 275 cadets are in each class at Carville –
and only 40-50 fail to graduate.
Those who do enter a mentoring program for one year, teaming
with a recommended adult from their own community. This year, that mentoring
program also gained national honor, Kirkpatrick reports.
At times, Kirkpatrick hears of the success stories, the graduates
who go on to accomplish more, who join the military or pursue additional education.
“There is a date that will never fade from my memory –
April 24, 2000 – the day I gave my child to you for five months,”
the mother of one graduate wrote to Kirkpatrick. “My husband and I gave
you our child. You are giving us a young man back. … You have been the sun
in the darkest of storms.”
That is the result Kirkpatrick is seeking in the work that
he considers an extension of his Christian faith.
“This is a ministry in that these kids are going to be
in trouble with the law if something is not done,” he explains. “I
know that.
“But we can instill some discipline and direction here.
… And these kids can turn their lives around. …
“That just makes sense to me,” Kirkpatrick concludes.
“It just makes sense to take these kids who were headed down the wrong
road and help get them headed down the right road.”
(For information on the Youth Challenge Program, persons may call 800-226-7543
or visit www.layouthchallenge.org)