Another class of Greene County students has graduated. They’ve received congratulations, gifts, and words of advice. I have my own piece of advice for them: Strive to have at least 1 percent of the positive impact Mr Jim North has had on young people.
Mr North is marking the end of the school year by “retiring” from his very active role in the Webb House. Since the inception in 1997 of the Webb House – a “hang-out” for middle schoolers on Friday nights and high schoolers on Sunday nights – Mr North has been there.
It’s not that Mr North didn’t see enough of young people. He taught seventh grade English for decades.
Other teachers spend Friday nights “recovering” from a week of young teens. Not Mr North. He, along with other dedicated volunteers, created a welcoming, supervised space available to all students. They kept at it until the original building, an actual house donated to the United Methodist Church by Catherine Webb, became too small and not structurally sound enough for the number of kids who showed up.
That could have been an easy time to close down the Webb House, but Mr North didn’t see it that way. When a handful of high schoolers who had been inaugural Webb House attendees suggested building a new Webb House, he and other church and community volunteers empowered them by including them on a committee to make a new Webb House a reality.
Funds were raised, the old house was razed, and a new Webb House opened in 2003. Fundraising continued to finish the basement, and that was accomplished in 2006.
An entry in The Heritage of Greene County Iowa 2011 notes “the primary mission of the Webb House is to provide a safe, supervised facility in which youth may participate in recreational and character-building activities.”
Mr North has been a constant all those years. He isn’t just there tolerating noise and the high level of activity young teens are known for. He mines the young people, looking for those who have undiscovered leadership skills or talent, and he elevates them to positions they don’t have elsewhere. He builds character, not only in teens who come from “solid” home situations, but in those who don’t.
Many other teachers see summer vacation as a time to recoup from the school year away from teens other than their own. Not Mr North. He has a lawn mowing business, not just to make some extra money, and not so the noise of the mower can drown out the rest of the world, but so he can provide young teens a supervised work experience.
All summer he has three or four lawnmowers in the back of his pickup truck, and he and his team mow. The boys he recruits for mowing aren’t the first ones most people would pick. They’re boys whose summer would be better with a bit more structure, a bit more male, and a bit more money.
I’m not a “numbers person”, but estimating three-fourths of the students in each class have gone to the Webb House on a Friday night – say 75 to make figuring easier – and figuring 29 classes (1997 to 2026), that’s 2,175 Greene County students who have had richer lives because of how Mr North chose to spend his “free” time.
That number doesn’t include all the teens who are there when the middle school uses the building for special events.
Mr North hasn’t done any of this because he wants acknowledgment or thanks. It’s just the person he is. Still, I must say, “Thank you.”
If each of us had 1 percent of the impact on young people that Mr North has had, we’d have no worries for the future.
Friday, June 5, is Mr North’s “commencement” from Webb House. No mortar board, no diploma, but he’s beginning – commencing – a new phase of his Friday night life. At age 79, he’s entitled.
Jim, I wish you all the best.
