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Fr. Flanagan was
ordained with the Jesuits at Innsbruck, Austria, July 26, 1912.
 1940 at Boys Town
Fr. Flanagan, invested as a Monsignor, November
21, 1937
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Father Flanagan's Story
Part I:
1886 to 1938
Father Edward J. Flanagan, founder of Father Flanagan’s Boys
Home, now Girls and Boys Town, Nebraska, was born on July 13, 1886, in Leabeg, County
Roscommon, near Ballymoe, County Galway, Ireland. He was the eighth in a family
of eleven children. He was very frail at birth; his grandfather held him,
keeping him warm by the fire. His parents were hard-working farmers, intelligent
and very devoted to their religion. Many years later, Father Flanagan wrote of
his home:
“The old-fashioned home with its fireside companionship, its
religious devotion and its closely-knit family ties is my idea of what a home
should be. My father would tell me many stories that were interesting to a
child—stories of adventure, or the struggle of the Irish people for
independence. It was from him I learned the great science of life, of examples
from the lives of saints, scholars and patriots. It was from his life I first
learned the fundamental rule of life of the great Saint Benedict, ‘Pray and
work.’”
As Edward grew older,
his father commissioned him to take complete care of the sheep and cattle.
Edward’s duty was to keep the animals from wandering into the dangerous peat
bogs that bordered their property on two sides. This pastoral work gave him
much time to think, to study, to read and to pray. He noticed his father
saying the rosary as he worked, and he too, began to pray the rosary.
In a letter to Rev. Michael O'Flanagan,
Dublin County, Ireland, April 26, 1942, Father Flanagan wrote: "You also may not know that I
was the little shepherd boy who took care of the cattle and the sheep.
That seemed to be my job as I was the delicate member of the family and good
for nothing else, and with probably a poorer brain than most of the other
members of the family. I was sent away to school to study for the
Priesthood, as I stated above, I wasn't much good for anything else; so my
job as a shepherd boy filled in very nicely in preparation for my life's
work afterward."
He attended his neighborhood elementary school in Drimatemple
and entered Summerhill College, Sligo, Ireland in the Fall of 1900, for his
secondary education. In 1904, Flanagan graduated from Summerhill with honors and
sailed for the United States. He wanted to become a priest. Later, in answer
to the question as to why he wanted to become priest, he responded: “I presume that
what caused me to become a Priest was because I wanted to help people –
spiritually – I wanted to teach people, and it was that desire that took
hold of me and I never had any other desire at any time in my life.”
(Letter to Miss Betty Ann Weis, January 21,
1947)
In the United States, he enrolled in Mount Saint Mary’s
College, Emmitsburg, Maryland, and graduated in June, 1906. He entered Saint
Joseph’s Seminary, Dunwoodie, New York, in September, 1906, and left in the the
spring of 1907 due to poor health. Following a period of recuperation with
his family in Omaha, Nebraska, he left to study at the Gregorian University, Rome,
Italy. Again poor health forced him to abandon his studies. He returned to Omaha
to rebuild his health, and in this period worked as an accountant at the Cudahay
Meat Packing Company.
In the fall of 1909, he was accepted by the Royal Imperial
Leopold Frances University in Innsbruck, Austria. The high altitude was good for
his health, so he was able to continue his studies there, and was ordained with
the Jesuits at Innsbruck in 1912.
When he returned to Omaha in 1912, he was assigned to the
Diocese of Omaha, administered by Bishop Harty, who had also graduated from Sligo in Ireland. The new Father Flanagan celebrated his first solemn High Mass
at Holy Angels Church, Omaha in August, 1912. His first parish assignment was
Saint Patrick’s in O’Neill, after which he was appointed Assistant Pastor to
Saint Patrick’s Parish, Omaha in March, 1913. |
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He helped many to obtain employment. As Father Flanagan listened to the
stories of thousands of men, he heard over and over again, “It’s too late for me
now, Father. If only someone had helped me when I was a boy.” Father said, “From
that work I gradually went into boy work, because I realized that the neglected
boys was what caused men to go bad and become neglected.”
(Letter
to Weis)
Father Flanagan went out into the streets where he found
homeless boys. He took in his first five boys: “My first two boys came from the
juvenile courts, and three others, whom I had been befriending in my own small
way to keep their bodies and souls together, I picked up off the streets. Those
first five boys were the real beginning of Father Flanagan’s Boys Home.”
(Letter to Mrs. Harley J. Earl, July 15, 1939)
“In December, 1917, I borrowed ninety dollars to pay the
first month’s rent on a building in which to house homeless and abandoned
boys, and give them the care, training, and education which I felt that they
needed that they might be able to accept and bear the responsibilities of
citizenship. I opened a home for them on December 12, 1917 in a rented boarding
house on Dodge Street in Omaha.
(West of the
Art Museum and present site of the Physicians Mutual buildings.)
I decided to spend my life in saving boys from becoming
misfits and recruits to the army of crime. I had studied the program of our
courts dealing with delinquents, and as far as I could see the only results were
the constantly growing number of boys sent to the reform schools, and the
additional expense of making reform schools larger. Then, as now, at least
ninety percent of our adult criminals had started their careers as children, and
I felt that there must be something radically wrong with a system which produced
so many criminals. The economic and social loss to society was abhorrent.
I felt that there must be another way—the way of love and
kindness—of training and teaching—of learning to do by doing. I was certain that
erring and neglected boys could be trained by a system other than by bars and
the cat o’nine tails, and developed into worthwhile citizens, and I set out to
do it in a most humble manner. I had no financial backing, not even much sympathy, and
certainly not much interest on the parts of local citizens, for our soldier boys
were over in the trenches of France at the time, and mothers’ hearts were with
them.” (Letter to Mrs. Earl)
By March of 1918, there were so many boys that Father moved
to a larger home, The German American Home.
(Present site of the Catholic Sokol Hall on south 13th Street,
Omaha, NE.)
"As I look back over (my)
life now...I can see the environment in which my character was being
developed, and how grateful to God I should be when I compare that wholesome
environment with the records of thousands of boys here...if I had the
background of some of these boys, I would want to be a Dillinger or a
Capone.." (Letter to Rev. Michael
O'Flanagan, April 26, 1942)
Throughout those years, Father Flanagan was studying to
become a citizen of the United States. In 1919, he became a citizen and in 1921,
he became a member of the Omaha Welfare Board. His Boys’ Home was so crowded by
this time, that he searched for property until he found the present site,
Overlook farm west of Omaha, which he moved his Home to in 1921.
Father Flanagan and his boys had many difficult years in the
building up of Overlook Farm. The boys never complained because they found love
and safety in their new home. With the premier of the motion picture “Boys
Town,” on September 7, 1938, the Home became known internationally. Many people sent
donations to Father Flanagan which he used to build up his Boys Home and help
even more boys. |
Father Flanagan League: 
