|
|
|||||||||||||
|
25 years, and 850 children later |
|
|
from the February 2002 Newsletter |
Read other Newsletter articles |
|
Editor’s note: This year,
Hill Country Youth Ranch celebrates its 25th anniversary.
Throughout the year, Each issue of The Corral published in the year 2002 will feature photos, stories and memories of events, facility construction, employees, friends, and, of course, the children who have called the Ranch home over the last quarter of a century. Please join us as we celebrate this historical time in the development of our ministry. We invite you to call and share your own memories of the Ranch and those items that you would like to see remembered in the newsletter. In this, the first installment of our “anniversary edition”, we revisit the beginnings of the ranch through excerpts of an article written for the first issue of our newsletter in January of 1978, and a new article for this February issue. |
|
|
Still
growing, one child at a time . . . and the children began to arrive. First, there was Gladys, another blue-eyed blond-haired moppet who herself needed a home. She came to live here in the fall of 1977. The dream had taken shape and the Ranch was now a home. Joyce came next, and then Irma . . . To date, 800 children have called HCYR home, boys and girls from all across Texas, all needing a safe haven, a “shelter from the storm”. The Ingram campus has grown to become a 265-acre village, housing 75 children at the current time. In 1997, after a gift of 7000 acres, the Big Springs Ranch for Children near Leakey, Texas opened as a sister-campus to HCYR, offering care and shelter for a new group of children; 16 live there today. The story of the Hill Country Youth Ranch is truly amazing, a dream brought to fruition by the tenacity and faith of one young man who found a loving and responsive community to share his mission — to care for children in need, these “forgotten ones”. Through a combination of hard work, perseverance and many friends, “the angels” showed Gary Priour that his dream was one worth realizing. As written by Gaylord Nelson, “The ultimate test of a man’s conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard.” The commitment was made and the Ranch continues to grow, “next year and the next until there are no more children who must face life homelessly.” |
“Gary’s Dream”
|
