Why Is Central So Different? Fathers!

By Woody Jenkins

 I grew up right off Winbourne Avenue near Istrouma High School and have lived my entire adult life in North Baton Rouge.  

For 28 years, I had the privilege of representing the people of North Baton Rouge, including all of 70805, in the Louisiana House of Representatives.  Over the years, I’ve kept contact with Istrouma High School, where I graduated. I’m proud to say I was one of those who played a role in helping to bring back the school from the brink of being permanently closed and bulldozed. After being closed for three years, Istrouma underwent $30 million in improvements and reopened in the fall of 2017.  Although the exterior of the school hasn’t changed a great deal, the inside is beautiful. Very well done!

Of course, a beautiful school is a step in the right direction but it is not enough in itself to change the future of a community.  Much more is involved!

From the 1940’s to the 1970’s, North Baton Rouge was a happy, prosperous, peaceful community filled with working families. Our dads were plant workers, construction workers, policemen, firemen and small business owners.

Almost everyone had a dad. Single-parent households were virtually unknown, and so was divorce.

In 1959, when I was in the sixth grade at Fairfields Elementary School, our teacher, Mr. Virgil Gautreaux, asked us how many of us had a parent who was divorced.

Some of the students didn’t know what divorce was, and Mr. Gautreaux had to explain it. After everyone understood the question, only one child said he had a parent who was divorced — one child in a class of 30 students!

At Istrouma High School, my Class of 1965 graduated 535. I was president of the student body and knew the vast majority of my classmates. Yet, I knew only one person who was without a dad at home.

Surely there were others.

I recently asked my classmate  Carol Crutchfield Thomas if she knew of anyone without a dad in our class. She knew of none.  She said, “Virtually everybody had a dad because there was no divorce in those days.” I asked Jennine McCarthy Rowell who knows everything about our class.  She knew of none of our classmates without a dad.

I called another friend, Don Scharwath, who was president of the Senior Class at Istrouma High in 1966.  In his class, he can remember only one person who didn’t have a dad at home.  The members of the Class of 1965 and of 1966 were born in the 1940’s.

According to U.S. government statistics, by 1960, births to unmarried mothers had climbed to 2 percent among whites nationwide.

Perhaps that’s why there was almost no real poverty in North Baton Rouge!  Perhaps that’s why there was very little crime!

A dad was working and paying the bills.  A dad was there to make sure his boys toed the line and did what was right.  Misbehavior was not tolerated, much less crime. 

Since the 1970’s, North Baton Rouge has changed dramatically. Most of the buildings are still there but it is a completely different world. 

The area is very poor.  Household income is $24,000 a year.

Murder and crime are rampant.

Louisiana has the second highest murder rate in the country, and East Baton Rouge Parish has the second highest murder rate in Louisiana.  Many of the murders occur in North Baton Rouge. 

Life there can be short and brutal.

Today North Baton Rouge is almost all black.  On the surface, it is easy to assume that what happened to North Baton Rouge is about race.  But that is far from true.

In 1960, 24 percent of black children in America were born to single mothers. At that time, 76 percent of black children had a father in the home — working and providing love, guidance and discipline for the children.

Yet, by 2016, the numbers were reversed. 77.3 percent of black children were born to single mothers.  Fathers had disappeared.

Increasingly, this problem is not confined to blacks. Nationwide today 28 percent of white children are born to single mothers. That’s up from 2 percent in 1960.

Poverty and crime are inextricably related to the lack of fathers in the home. Regardless of race, on the average, homes with fathers do much better in every way than homes without fathers.

Men and Marriage by George Gilder was published in the 1980’s as an analysis of the economic consequences of social policies.  He accurately predicted so much of what has happened in the inner cities of America.  

Writing in Commentary magazine, Terry Teachout described Gilder’s view of marriage this way: “Gilder sees marriage as an institution which civilizes men by making them fathers. Monogamy and the nuclear family take control of male aggression and prevent a society from adopting the ‘unmarried male pattern’ of behavior.”

He said, “Men and societies that abandon these institutions do so, Gilder warns, at their peril.”  Young women must realize that by allowing men to father their children outside the commitment of marriage that they are confining themselves to poverty, weakening the nuclear family, and unleashing the ominous forces of male aggression. The results, Gilder believes, have been all too predictable: low marriage rates, rising illegitimacy among the poor, and violent crime.

Mothers are very strong in North Baton Rouge. They carry the weight of their families on their shoulders, mostly without the support of a father.  They are overwhelmed with the responsibilities of providing the necessities of life.  They are trying to be the mom and dad for the children, and that is nearly impossible.

As Roger Clegg of the Center for Equal Opportunity said, “Rather than encourage people to wait until they are married before having children — which is perceived by the Left as too religious and patriarchal — it’s much easier to talk about ‘institutionalized racism’ and 

‘white privilege’ and ‘mass incarceration and ‘implicit bias’ and 1619 Project , isn’t it?”

Yes, that is much easier.

In truth, what is missing in North Baton Rouge is strong fathers, or at least not enough of them.

Here in Central, Central High head football Coach David Simoneaux understands that fatherhood is essential to the success of any community. In January, he launched the Faith and Fathers initiative.  It’s designed to bring the fathers of his players together, along with other fathers in the community to become a greater force for young men in Central.  

“This has been on my heart for some time as a way to invest in these young men,’ Coach Simoneaux said. “This is a way to extend our reach. The key is leadership in the home.  By bringing men together and learning from the Word of God, iron sharpens iron.  One man will sharpen another.”

The meetings, which are held at 5:30 a.m., are drawing 60 to 70 fathers together.  The men have coffee, fellowship, and hear an outstanding speaker.  So far, they have heard from Coach Simoneaux, former Central coach and All-GSU Conference safety David LeSage, former LSU All-American Tyler Lafauci, and former LSU All-SEC linebacker Darry Beckwith.

The team members themselves have regular afternoon lectures to prepare them for their roles as husbands and fathers. Topics have included 

•Three Lies of False Masculinity

•Enthusiasm

•Life by Design or by Default

•The Lion and the Lamb

•Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs

•How to Treat a Woman

Players are also reminded of Romans 12:2 and study how to separate themselves and elevate their lives.

Everywhere one goes in Central, you see fathers involved with their children.

In the vast majority of homes in Central, mothers are not alone to face the financial necessities and difficulties of life.  Fathers are there too, physically present and providing financial support, daily help with running the household, love, attention, and discipline which children so desperately need.  

For teenage boys, who have so much potential for good and bad, fathers are often the deciding factor that keeps young men on a path to success and a positive future instead of the path to death and destruction.

In reality, there are many differences between the inner city and the City of Central, but none are more obvious than the presence of fathers here and the absence of fathers in the inner city.

Coach Simoneaux is right: 

Faith and Fathers do make the difference!

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