Mooseheart: A special kind of family
Mooseheart: A special kind of family
| CAPTION: Daily Mining Gazette/Char Francis Above, the Mooseheart boys dine on pasties and pizza at the Range Sno-Mobile Club. |
By LAYLA ASLANI, DMG Writer
SOUTH RANGE — Eight city boys were let loose by the Copper Country Moose in the Keweenaw Tuesday and Wednesday.
The boys, ages 14 to 17, are from the residential childcare facility Mooseheart, which is located 38 miles west of Chicago and is supported by Moose lodges throughout the country. They came to visit Copper Country Moose Lodge No. 2571 as part of a tour of the seven Upper Peninsula lodges.
On Tuesday, the boys, along with two chaperones, arrived at the Range Sno-Mobile Club, which is where the local Moose lodge conducts their meetings. They spent the rest of the day with Moose members eating lunch, touring the Delaware Mine and swimming at Calumet Water Works before heading back to the club for a pasty and pizza dinner and to set up tents for the night.
Their home, Mooseheart Child City & School, was founded in 1913 and is located on a 1,000 acre campus. Mooseheart takes in children, from infants to teenagers, whose real parents cannot care for them for different reasons — perhaps the parents are financially unstable, struggling with an addiction, or even dead.
One of the visiting boys, Chris Cole, age 14, came to Mooseheart eight years ago from Baltimore, Md., because his home was not a suitable environment to grow up in. Although he lives in Mooseheart year-round, he still remains close with his mother, now a recovering addict.
“She has her life straight now, but then she didn’t. It wasn’t a good place to live at the time,” he said.
Mooseheart does not take children from their families, never to be seen again. Instead, a co-guardianship is formed between Mooseheart and the parents. Cole goes home to Baltimore many times each year to visit his mother; he was there for two weeks at Christmas, one week during spring break, three weeks in June and he is planning another trip for later in the summer.
Growing up away from home may seem weird to some, but for him it is the norm.
“I think it’s just a normal life because I’ve been there for eight years,” he said.
The boys all live in a house together along with three family teachers, one of which, Dean McDiarmid, was on the trip. McDiarmid, along with his wife and another staff member, fulfill the family teacher role by giving the boys family living skills, social skills and showing them how to do everyday things such as balancing a checkbook.
McDiarmid said Mooseheart provides the children with everything they need such as medical insurance, a good education, clothes, glasses, braces and even things they don’t necessarily need.
“They all have MP3 players,” he said. “I don’t even have an MP3 player.”
Furthermore, after the children graduate from the Mooseheart high school they can receive a renewable full scholarship to use at any college or university they please.
Of the trip, McDiarmid said the boys were having fun.
“It’s great,” he said. “These guys have been looking forward to this for months.”
The Moose members enjoyed the visit also.
“Just learning about the kids and their backgrounds and how appreciative they are of Mooseheart has been fun,” said Bob Boyce, the administrator of the Copper Country Moose Lodge. “I’m not that old, but I’m not used to having young kids around. I’ve enjoyed it; we should do it more often.”
Boyce also said that a portion of the dues and funds raised by the local Moose lodge benefits Mooseheart and that Moose lodges are the “financial backbone of Mooseheart.”
The local Moose lodge was founded in 2000 and currently has 44 members. It is a fraternal organization whose activities include charity fundraisers to benefit organizations such as Mooseheart, Big Brothers Big Sisters and Moosehaven, a Moose retirement community in Florida. According to member Roy Jurva, Moose activities are family oriented activities that keep the elderly and children in mind.
For more information on Mooseheart Child City & School, visit their Web site at www.mooseheart.org. For more information on the Copper Country Moose Lodge No. 2571, call 482-6408.
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