Dear Friends,
I was visited today by a fascinating individual who graduated from DeLaSalle in 1980.
He wanted me to know that he had a specific purpose in coming to DeLaSalle today, on September 18, 2009, just as he had a specific purpose in coming to DeLaSalle thirty years ago in 1979.
Willie Marshall's story is not only very interesting, but it is illuminative of the challenges many of our students and graduates have to face to truly find success in their lives.
When Willie entered DeLaSalle, he told me today, we were still located in our "founding" location at 1600 Paseo. The school operated on a half-day basis, with students attending either a morning or afternoon session. He did not want to come to DeLaSalle, he told me, as he recently had dropped out of school altogether. He said he thought he "knew it all" and did not need school. But he liked the half-day schedule. And his mother had threatened to kick him out of the house if he did not attend school and find a job. So the half-day format was perfect for him to address his mother's ultimatum.
He had lost his father in a tragic development shortly before this and was subsequently involved in some heavy drinking and experimental drug usage. He said his cousin reached out to him and told him that DeLaSalle would take any student that needed its services, even if "you got kicked out of every other school".
When he entered DeLaSalle, he was behind academically. He said that he had previously been identified as a "slow student". He was embarrassed that he had been scheduled to graduate before he left the public school system and now realized how little he really knew.
But he found himself engaged by the teachers at DeLaSalle, who took the time to help him think through the academic concepts he struggled to master. He had not expected this, he confided to me, and even acknowledged being opposed to learning when he first entered DeLaSalle due to his prior learning difficulties.
Then he told me something I have heard repeatedly, in one form or another, over my own, almost thirty, years at DeLaSalle.
He said he learned more in the one year he attended DeLaSalle than in the three prior years that he had attended public high school.
Isn't that remarkable! It is surely a testimony to the very deliberate and purposeful approach our teachers take at DeLaSalle, in reaching out to help young people overcome repeated school embarrassment and frustration.
But there was more to his story, and to the reason he had come to DeLaSalle this day.
He added that in spite of his accomplishment in finally graduating, that he had still struggled with addiction at this point in his life. It would take him nine more years to finally hit "rock bottom", as he put it, and to put his life in complete order.
He wanted me to know, and he wants to make sure our students also know, that earning a high school diploma was essential to getting his life turned around. Having a diploma from DeLaSalle, and having mechanical and artistic skills, allowed him to work at a series of jobs for these next nine years of his life, while he struggled with his drinking.
He finally got to the point that he entered a drug and alcohol treatment center to try to overcome his addiction. Again, he was skeptical and disbelieving that the program would be able to help him.
One day, though, he had a "spiritual" awakening. He found himself deeply troubled by all of the problems he had caused for his family and asked God to forgive him. At that point, he said, he experienced God's mercy and forgiveness and an inner calm that had eluded him for most of his life. He knew without a doubt that he could end his addiction if he changed his behavior. And since that moment twenty years ago, he has been "cleaned out". Five years later, he stopped smoking cigarettes; he began working at Cargill Oil Seed, where he has worked the last fifteen years as a processing technician, running machines for the local oil-seed production plant.
His story did not end there, though.
Last year, he said, he heard DeLaSalle Development Associate, Paula Guinn, speak at a United Way rally sponsored by Cargill. He noted that when he heard Paula begin to describe DeLaSalle's unique educational model and philosophy to the large audience, he had to speak up.
He indicated that it was not his habit to bring attention to himself, especially in the presence of the many Cargill "big shots" attending the rally. But he was proud of what DeLaSalle had done for him; so he gave "his testimony".
Afterwards, he was pleasantly surprised by the very positive response of his associates at Cargill. Many of them told him how inspired they were by his story. He promised then and there that he would come to DeLaSalle to tell his story to the individuals who really needed to hear him, the students now attending DeLaSalle who might think they knew it all and might be tempted to lose hope and drop out of DeLaSalle.
Today, he fulfilled that promise. He spoke to the students in the DeLaSalle Student Press, who seemed to him to be "suspicious" at first, but saw that he really meant what he said. He invited them outside to the parking lot to see what can happen to someone who earns a diploma and deals with their life difficulties. He proudly posed with them by his car, offering to be back again to tell his story to more DeLaSalle students.
Willie is 49 years old and a real DeLaSalle success story.

I'm proud of what DeLaSalle has done in Kansas City over the past 38 years, and proud of all of the men and women, like Willie, whose lives have been changed at DeLaSalle.
I hope you feel the pride in Willie's life and in the everyday work we do here at DeLaSalle. It's because of you that we can do this work, and help to transform lives and our community.
Thank you, friends of DeLaSalle, and many blessings to Willie. I believe that we will be hearing more from him in the future!
Jim

Willie Marshall and DeLaSalle students from the Student Press.

Dear Friends,
Were any of you wondering why I was not in the picture of the Pope, Mother Teresa and Monsignor George Tracy that I posted in my last entry?
You may have thought to yourself, "Why is Jim Dougherty not in that picture? He's Catholic, isn't he?"
Well, as one of our local society magazines delicately phrases it when someone is left out of a picture (often for good reason!) : they were "out of camera range".
I love that phraseology.
So let me say for the record, I was "out of camera range" for that very beautiful picture of my old friend, George.
I was 5,220 miles "out of camera range" (which is the actual distance from Kansas City to Rome).
But the next picture you will see on this blog will be of me and another very important and impressive person.
Stay tuned!
Jim

Dear Friends:
I would like to share something really exciting with you.
In meetings this past week with two successful businessmen, these individuals renewed their significant financial support to DeLaSalle, but they also offered something more.
They each told me separately that they would like to be more involved in helping our students on a personal level. They told me about a scholarship program that helps high school graduates from rural areas with their college tuition and book costs. When I told them that many of our students also want to go to college but needed jobs first, they agreed to help us with job placement and technical training for our graduates in addition to helping with eventual college costs. I was amazed and thrilled to hear this!
But I was even more touched because of another, seemingly unconnected event from this past week: the death of an old friend.
As I had reflected later on what this old friend had done for me at a vulnerable time in my life, I saw that there now might be a deeper meaning in what I wanted to do. Here’s why.
You see, my friend, Monsignor George Tracy, helped me with several important steps in my life after I first came to Kansas City from Delaware about 36 years ago.
We were each discerning a call to priesthood.
I was 21 years old, and fresh out of college. George was 38 and a hopeless academic.
Upon his arrival in Kansas City, George went to work at Rockhurst College as a professor of philosophy and theology. I went to work in the local jail as a correctional officer.
I had a burning desire to change the world, and I had determined that prison was the best place to begin my campaign for transformation. But instead of transforming the world, I found my own life being transformed, to a significant extent through my friendship with George.
Besides teaching, George was finalizing his doctoral dissertation. But he still found time to become my friend, as well as my mentor and personal advocate. He saw in me something that I could not see at the time. He recognized my need for academic challenge, and advised me to enter graduate school as soon as possible to refine my thinking and to pursue the study of criminal justice.
On his own, he visited the campus of a prestigious eastern university that had just established a graduate program in criminal justice. He had just “happened to be in the area”, as he told me later! Upon his hearty recommendation, the acting chair of the department suddenly called me to offer me a graduate fellowship for the following school term that would underwrite nearly all of the costs of my study.
In an even more auspicious act, George recognized that I was likely not being called to priesthood and celibacy, but that my true calling was to be married. He introduced me to my future wife just three months before I left Kansas City in 1974 for graduate school.
George then served as best man at my wedding, and eight years (and four Dougherty children) later, Karol and I reciprocated by attending Father Tracy’s ordination in Washington in 1984. By then, I was the executive director at DeLaSalle, struggling to keep the doors open due to the severe economic crisis in the country at that time. It was the last time I ever saw George, but I kept up with him through reading of his great accomplishments (see the picture at the top of this page of him with some of his “other” friends!). He truly lived a blessed life.
In just the way that George personally helped me, I’d like to join with the businessmen who offered their help this week to similarly help our students. I would like to introduce them soon to a new mentoring group for our male students that started this past spring at DeLaSalle. It is being led by Everett Curry, a retired government official who also wants to be personally involved in helping our students. In fact, Everett has already organized a group of twenty-five like-minded men who have met with our male students several times last spring, and who are ready to start their work with us again this fall.
If these two groups of men can work with our students to motivate them to stay in school and to provide them with a viable job upon graduation, then I know we will have more graduates and more of our young people going on to college. Now that’s exciting, isn’t it?
Just like George went “out of his way” to “open doors” for me, I would like to “open doors” for our own students.
One way this could work would be that these successful men (and later women) would now return the success they have earned by helping our students. These friends (or mentors) would get to know one or two of our students about to graduate, and help them find a job or gain admission to a job training program (or even college) after they graduate. In return, the students will have to commit to changing their life and attitudes even more than they have already done. They would have to begin preparing for a career and college right away instead of waiting until they graduate. If we can find sixty volunteers for the sixty graduates we anticipate having in May 2010, we could accelerate the development of our students far more than we have ever been able to do before. And not only would we be able to simply graduate sixty (or more) students this school year, we could build a new and positive culture of opportunity for young people for life long success!
What do you think? Would you be willing to join me and others in this exciting development?
All it takes is someone who will believe in a young person, and then to “open a door” or two! Monsignor Tracy did this for me, and now I’d like that for our students.
This will be the most exciting thing I have done in my thirty year career at DeLaSalle, and I hope you will join me! I guarantee you that someone will remember you as I now remember George: a cherished friend at a critical point in my life, who transformed me in ways I never expected.
Jim