Dear Friends and Family,
I STARTED AT LONG ISLAND YOUTH MENTORING twenty three years ago. At the time, it was called Long Island Youth Guidance. I was thirty; Kay (my wife) says jokingly that she was twenty. My children – Christine, Lynn, and Mark – were five, three and six months respectively. Now a couple of decades later, Christine has given birth to a beautiful boy, Jason Bennard, and I am a grandpa. As I write, Jason is screaming. It seems that mama is changing him and he is not happy.
I love this new beginning; however, this celebration cries out a warning within me. Today, as Jason is born, 38% of all babies are born into homes without a father and this figure has climbed every year in the past fifty except one. Nowadays we worry endlessly about all sorts of numbers and statistics: Gas prices, inflation, deflation, unemployment, gross domestic product, etc. None of these recently scary statistics holds a candle on my fright scale compared to 38% of American children being born into homes without fathers. There is no single statistic that currently paints a gloomier picture about the future of our land. Kids without the support of two parents are 300% more likely to drop out of High School. We pass well-intentioned legislation such as “No child left behind,” but when the Dad leaves, the children are always left behind, and this loss shows up in poor academic performance and in poor behavior. As a matter of fact, 85% of all the two million plus people who are in jail right now grew up in homes without a dad. J. Edgar Hoover is quoted as saying, ‘I have never met a man in jail who ever went fishing with his dad.’ The connection to Fatherlessness and most of our social ills is unmistaken. Today I heard a radio announcer state that the greatest threat to our nation is not al-Qaida, but rather the economic crisis. I beg to differ. The slow moving cancer of Fatherlessness trumps them all as the greatest risk to our Republic. The emotional, moral and economic back bone of this nation is dependent on it’s children, and we are bequeathing to our future generations a land filled with the incarcerated fathers, overwhelmed mothers and
lost children.
YOU CAN HELP CHANGE THIS PICTURE!
Give of your time and your financial blessings, and watch what God can do with it to change lives and change this picture.
Jason is now making the cooing sound of a well fed, dry, and rested boy. I see the fatigue in my daughter. Taking care of the vulnerable requires continuous focus, prayer and action. If not, the results can be disastrous.
Bless you!
John
Please do not hesitate to call my cell; 516-381-1600
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