SIDNEY — During a recent vacation to his hometown, Memphis, Tennessee, Douglas Leslie, of Sidney, noticed some children and didn’t like what he saw.
“Some were carrying guns. Their language was off the scale,” he said of the boys, 8 to 10. “It really bothered me. It came to me that these kids need help.”
A deacon in the Mount Vernon Baptist Church here, he came home and talked to boys, one on one. He studied the Bible.
“I asked, ‘Who’s going to help?’ And the Lord said, ‘What’s wrong with you?’” Leslie said.
The result is a program Leslie has started in Sidney’s Humphrey Park. Every Tuesday and Thursday at 10 a.m. for eight weeks, he will meet with boys 8 to 14. Training Boys to Become Men offers a group discussion to kids about respect, manners and choices. The project began June 16 and five boys have participated so far. He’d like to get as many as 20 involved. Parents are welcome to attend, too.
There is no charge for the program. Those who participate get weekly rewards, like restaurant coupons, and at the end of the course, Leslie will give a 20-question test. The boy who gets the most answers right on the test will win a new bicycle.
“It occurred to me that boys are not being trained,” Leslie said of why he started the program. “Their influences were not from home. They were from the street. Their disrespect, their dress, their language. I felt I have to do something.”
When some girls found out about his project, they asked who would train them. So Leslie recruited Louise Humphrey, who is retired from the city manager’s office and a member of the same church, to run a similar program for girls on Wednesday mornings at 10 a.m.
Leslie knows all about raising boys. He is a single father to a 12-year-old and a 15-year-old.
“I tell them, you have a choice. There are consequences of choices. Let your actions speak for you. I teach them to stand on their belief and don’t be influenced by others. I teach them to say, ‘Yes, sir,’ and ‘No, sir.’ These are morals that were put in me by my parents,” he said.
During a recent session, Leslie talked to the children in the program about their own identities, who they are as individuals. He cautioned them about making choices out of peer pressure.
“Be the bigger man. Know when to walk away,” he told them. “In order to get respect, you must respect.”
Leslie thinks that the current fashion among boys to wear their pants low on the hips borders on indecent exposure.
“It should be against the law,” he said. He told the children to wear belts. By the end of the program, he will have T-shirts for them. The shirts will say, “Don’t hinder me. I’m in training.”
“They need to know that somebody cares, that somebody loves them,” he said.
Leslie is paying for the prizes, the bicycle and other program expenses, himself. He is a disabled veteran who credits Pastor David Wynn with teaching him to care for others.
Boys who want to take part in the program can show up at the park any Tuesday or Thursday morning. Parental consent is not needed. Girls can join beginning Wednesday. Parents who want more information can call Leslie at 638-7375.
