There was a morning so cold recently that the earth's frigid temperature climbed through the soles of your shoes and settled in the marrow of your bones. Also, snow: fat, lazy flakes that floated down like confetti.
On that morning in a greenhouse in North Toledo, Rob McCreary worked in purposeful concentration. He took careful measurements of wood posts and cut them to size. The air smelled of fresh-cut lumber.
If you didn't know better, you might think the young man with the handsaw was a carpenter.
But, no. This North Toledoan, barely 18 years old, calls himself an organic gardener.
Greenhouse project
Like gardeners everywhere, he knows winter is a season for dreaming and preparing, for imagining what's to come. His probation officer might say this young man is already his own sturdiest seedling; not so long ago, Rob would have first identified himself as a Blood, a gang member.
Rob McCreary saws planks for work tables. He has gained job skills through the program, which also has sparked his interest in gardening.
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THE BLADE/LISA DUTTON
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"I was down with them, and that's about as much as I can say," he said, uninterested in dwelling in the past.
The handful of adults inside the North Toledo greenhouse that same morning - they mentor Rob and some 20 other kids in a program that's equal parts job-training and community-gardening - they also want kids to look forward, not backward.
Rob took a break from sawing to consider how he liked woodworking, which is much of what the kids do in gardening's off-season. He looked around the greenhouse, which swelled with the music of hammering, sawing, and bantering, and said:
"I like this all right, but this really just makes me more ready for - well, yeah, I can't wait for spring."
Agreed: Kids need responsibility.
They need respect for themselves and others. They need to realize they're part of a larger community, so it helps if they develop empathy.
Charlie Johnson carries in lumber as the teens tackle their work assignments. The program gave paying jobs to 90 young people last year.
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THE BLADE/LISA DUTTON
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Teens must also learn to take care of themselves - from the most basic skills (hold a job, eat right) to setting long-term goals (save for a car, graduate from high school).
These things can be tough to teach. And some neighborhoods might make these things tougher to teach.
But in some of Toledo's arguably toughest neighborhoods, a deceptively simple strategy shows promise.
First, adults gather a bunch of kids in a weedy city lot.
Next, they hand them shovels.
In the last four years, some 225 local teens have worked in a collaborative initiative between CITE (a Lucas County Juvenile Court job-training effort) and Toledo Grows (Toledo Botanical Garden's community garden outreach).
The program began with a serendipitous meeting between two men: Charlie Johnson, a 58-year-old therapist-turned-vocational trainer, and Michael Szuberla, a 39-year-old community garden manager.
"He had a job-training program," Mr. Szuberla said of his compatriot, "and I needed to build raised beds for a garden. Out of the blue, we connected on that and slowly began to do other little projects together. Eventually, we just merged."
Each man brings his distinct perspective. This is how the program ended up with such wide-ranging ambitions, from basic (help kids learn punctuality) to lofty (transform iffy neighborhoods into garden oases).
Last year, the program gave jobs to more than 90 kids. In exchange for $7 an hour, they planted and weeded community gardens, sold produce at the Farmers' Market, and even built and tended an urban chicken coop.
In cold-weather months, the kids keep busy woodworking. So far this winter, they built more chicken coops and such things as their own tool boxes, plant-growing tables, and garden benches for the spring. All this takes place in a 90-by-30-foot greenhouse in North Toledo off Cherry Street - which the kids also built.
Mr. Johnson and Mr. Szuberla have talked with a handful of local restaurants about supplying fresh produce. Plenty of other Big-Idea notions pop up in their conversations: vermiculture, composting, aquaponics, solar opportunities, entrepreneurial herbal cosmetics, even urban goat and turkey raising.
Ask yourself: Is any of this more improbable than yanking a gang-banger off the street to show him the thrill of a fragile seedling?
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Rob didn't like his first day at work last year. It was hot and muggy, and his boss was something else.
"I thought [Mr. Szuberla] was weird. He was walking through the garden, just eating plants and things. Just picking stuff up and putting it in his mouth, just picking something green and eating it!"
At the time, he figured maybe the guy was chewing, you know, shrubbery or something. Now, he said, he knows it was kale. Personally, Rob's a tomato guy.
"In the summertime? When you get thirsty working the garden and there ain't no water? You can get a juicy tomato, it quenches your thirst. It's really nutritious. And it's good!"
Rob speaks in exclamation marks, lifted by his own enthusiasm. Mr. Szuberla likes it when Rob is one of the kids to sell produce at the Farmers' Market. That kid's personality never hurts sales.
"If you can sell somebody a tomato in August, you can sell anything," Mr. Szuberla said in describing Rob, who acknowledges his public-relations skill.
"I get that from the streets," he said in an "aw shucks" tone. "Even in school, I could always talk good to teachers. When I was in Spring [Elementary], I sold, like, 15 boxes of candy, and I was supposed to only sell two or three boxes. We sold them outside of, like, stores, you know? People won't say nothing to you unless you got a smile on your face."
So, how does it happen? How, in a few short years, does a kid go from proudly exceeding a candy-sales quota to gang-banging?
Mr. Johnson couldn't speak for what happened in Rob's earlier life. But of teens he encountered during his years with delinquents, he said: "Many of these kids have such a history of lowered expectations. From teachers, from people in the community, sometimes even their own parents. And they come to accept those lowered expectations as their total potential."
Dan Pompa, administrator of the Lucas County Juvenile Court, said CITE/Toledo Grows works mostly with kids on the edge of serious delinquency. Usually, they're "kids that live in some of the higher-risk neighborhoods," kids who are "in the system enough to have gotten our attention and be placed on probation."
After a recent cost-benefit analysis, Mr. Pompa declared the program "cheap" for its roughly $145,000 total annual cost, cobbled together with money from grants, juvenile court, and other agencies.
"Bottom line for us," he said, "is they're decriminalizing [kids]. For all these years, we had [Mr. Johnson] sitting in rooms, counseling kids, and throwing therapy at them. And I think his effect now is far greater."
This is true, he added, not just for the kids, but also their neighborhoods.
"They're raising chickens and putting in vegetable and flower beds in parts of the city where, frankly, I'm amazed people don't go in there and vandalize it. But they don't, and that's because someone in that neighborhood did [the project], not because somebody in a city truck pulled up and did it."
At a time when the United Way of Greater Toledo is warning agencies everywhere to tighten belts in the face of a $1 million fund-raising shortfall, director Bill Kitson is enthusiastic about the CITE/Toledo Grows collaboration, which last year got about $35,000 from the United Way.
"We keep giving them more money every year because they really, truly deliver outcome. A child's life is really changed because they've gone through this program," he said.
Saying this is no "turnstile program," the United Way chief added: "They don't report to us, '[Kids] came to the program five days last week.' They report to us how lives have changed, how they're doing better in school, how they haven't gotten in trouble again, how they've learned these carpentry skills."
Where juvenile justice and nonprofit officials see a prudent investment, Mr. Szuberla sees something even simpler.
"I find the kids we work with, they're just incredibly nice kids who, on one day or another out of their teenage lives, made a big, dumb mistake. We get the cream of the crop of the juvenile justice system, and we look for kids who are really ready to get on with their lives," he said.
Averaging data from the last four years, Mr. Johnson said 87 percent of the kids who've come through the program had stayed out of trouble three months after finishing the program.
"Successful completion is defined as finding employment through the program, continuing their education, and staying drug-free," he explained.
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Mr. Szuberla needed some work done around his house, so he called contractor Bryan Ellis. They arranged to meet at a Toledo Grows community garden to discuss the work, which is how Mr. Ellis found himself parked off Monroe Street near Jermain Park one day, watching a bunch of kids fumble around.
"I've got this truck, and it's loaded with tools, and I was like, mmmm, they sure could use some help. 'Hey, I could give you guys a hand, if you want.'•"
Soon enough, the contractor and his tools were putting in 20 hours every week, teaching kids how to measure fractions, decide which tool is best for which job, and how to use the tools.
The other week, said Mr. Ellis, they were all in the greenhouse when Rob said to him out of the blue: "We built this, Bryan! We did all of this!"
Awhile back, Mr. Ellis took Rob to his Monclova Township workshop. Making conversation along the way, he explained how the Anthony Wayne Trail was once a canal.
"I didn't know the Trail was anything but solid concrete," said Rob. "And then he showed me the canal [locks at Side Cut Metropark], how it filled up with water and everything? That blew me away. It's like, the history of it all! That stuff was in Toledo? It blew my mind!"
But Mr. Ellis pointed out he's also learned a lot.
"When you're just a typical, white, middle-class man, you might have certain opinions. Let's just say I view these kids a lot differently now. I had no idea of how kids struggle in the inner city. I wish people who complain about 'the youth' would just go out and do something. If there aren't enough 'male role models,' well, go be one."
If the economy picks up enough to cut into Mr. Ellis' volunteer time, he already knows how he'll stay in touch with the kids.
"Oh, I'm gonna hire these guys."
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Rob McCreary has big plans.
Since last year, in the yard of the rented house off Lagrange Street where he lives with his mom, he's been methodically preparing the soil.
Come spring, he's putting in his own organic garden.
Tomatoes, naturally. Lettuce. Brussel sprouts. "And garlic," he added. "I'm going to try something new with that."
Of course, it's all new, really. His mother, 41-year-old Lisa Byrd, can't remember Rob ever doing much in the yard besides cutting grass.
"This chance, with him being around people that have confidence in him, that gave him patience and time to teach him new things, it's helped him grow."
Not until Rob's arrest, she said, did she fully realize his gang involvement.
"When you live in the middle of the north end, it's just - you have two ways out: You go with gangs, or you get a job. I thank God for this program. It has changed his whole little world. He's a different child."
It's hard for Rob to explain why he loves his time in the garden. But if you listen carefully to his halting words, you realize he's describing something Zenlike:
"It's really, really peaceful. And fresh air. It's nice to work outside. You can be out there and, you know, forget you're in a city. It mellows my mind down. And I can work alone without nobody bothering me. And I just like the colors, you know?"
When you get out of lockup and you're still a kid, odds are you go right back to the same neighborhood, which can be hard, right?
"I don't think 'hard' or 'easy' is in the vocabulary," Rob said. "I'm just taking it one step at a time."
He said he doesn't have as many friends as he used to, but he gets a paycheck for work he loves, and that's sure something.
"I'm just trying to get my life together. I'm 18. The childish days are gone. My brother's locked up. My father was locked up. I don't want that for myself."
Instead, he's leaning on the people he once disappointed.
"My sister, she's 20 and she's in college, and she's just lovin' this. Me and my sister, we had a bad relationship because of my past troubles. Now we're real close. And every day I see my mom, she always says, 'Come here and give me a hug. I'm so proud of you.' And it makes me feel better."
Roberta de Boer is a columnist for The Blade.
Contact her at: roberta@theblade.com or 419-724-6086. Permanent Link
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