The Villages' History of Caring for Children

Hay bales at The Villages by Michael Hooper

By Michael Hooper, a volunteer on the board of directors.

The origin of The Villages dates back to the 1964. Dr. Karl Menninger founded the Villages after a judge told him there was a shortage of places where juvenile delinquents could stay.

He partnered with E. Kent Hayes, who had begun his career as the superintendent of the Boys Training School in Nebraska before moving south to Topeka. He would later serve as The Villages’ first executive director between 1967 and 1973.

Dr. Karl formed a nonprofit organization with a board of directors and trustees. He brought onto the board many of his friends in business, banking, medicine, academia, people who cared about helping troubled or abandoned children.

The first home opened in 1970, more homes were built in the early 1970s, for a total of five on 300 acres of land donated by W. Clement Stone. Dr. Karl believed children benefited from living close to nature. He believed kids should live in a family-style home, not an institution. People would refer children to the Villages and the state would cover the expense, although there was always shortages of money, so Dr. Karl was fundraising all the time.

The children went to school at Washburn Rural. 

Dr. Karl formed alliances with people in Lawrence Kansas, including Virginia Weaver and Hortense Oldfather, wife of local actor and KU theater professor Charley Oldfather. Hortense known as Tinsie, was on the board at the Villages for many years. The Oldfather father family donated land south of Lawrence, where two homes were constructed and began to house kids there.

The Villages hired an extensive staff to spread the word on the value of Dr. Karl's model helping troubled children.  The organization took its group home house parent model to other organizations around the country. Several homes were created in Indiana at one time, but are no longer part of the Villages. The house parent model included a full-time set of house parents who lived in the home with their own children, and who worked to care for the kids, took them to school, and basically were their parents. 

This model worked successfully for many years until about 10 years ago, during the Sam Brownback administration. The Villages started having really serious problems with this model. Many of the kids were extremely difficult, volatile, and even violent and dangerous. Worse yet, The Villages couldn't find anyone who wanted to be house parents.

Former executive director Sylvia Crawford was extremely good at management with limited resources, but still found herself short of staff. One time she and her husband actually moved into a house to become house parents because the previous house parents left, and we couldn't find replacements. One of the more aggressive children we had destroyed property causing over $6000 in damage. We did not have the psychiatric and clinical workers available to deal with such a difficult kids. Something had to change.

Sylvia found an opportunity to take care of immigrant children, unaccompanied children, from the border. These are children who left their homes and sought asylum in the United States. The Villages leadership applied for a grant to take care of unaccompanied children. We won that grant and began taking care of these immigrant children refugees seeking political asylum in 2017.

This caused our organization to grow. We used to have around a $3 million budget now our budget is closer to $7 million. We have about 100 employees. Currently we have about 35 unaccompanied minors living in Topeka. We plan to open the Lawrence homes to immigrant foster care children who will live with us a little longer than our typical kids. The federal foster care program for immigrant children will start around May 1 in Lawrence.

Most of our children are from Central America. As you may know, there is a lot of gangs and crime and political upheaval in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.

Our immigrant children are typically well behaved. They appreciate at the Villages. We take them to doctors and dentists to take care of their health. We have teachers on staff who teach them English, mathematics, science, geography. Our staff works to reunite the children with their parents, relative, or qualified sponsor. Candidates for placement are examined thoroughly and vetted to make sure the children will not end up in some kind of abusive situation.

Most the 400 acres owned by The Villages has never been plowed, it’s full of natural tall grass prairie. And there are two old Native American Indian burial sites on the land.

Rosemary Menninger, daughter of Dr. Karl Menninger, has been a volunteer board member for many years. She has been a tireless advocate for the children and the land.

About five years ago, we found ourselves running out of room, particularly in our administrative center, which was a split-level house. We were conducting school in the homes. We formed a building committee, with Judette Padilla, executive director, and started working with architects and consultants to come up with a plan. Ultimately Architect One was chosen as architect and KBS Construction as the builder.

The project would not have been possible without the generous help of multiple donors, including the Sunderland Foundation and many friends of The Villages, plus The Villages' endowment. The entire construction project cost around $7.2 million.