By Steve Sears
If just one of Kenneth Renwick’s prayers could be answered, it would be to see his “brothers” again. John Barone, Robert Bethea, James Boyce, John Crastello, Bob Damiani, John Kent, and Richard King are their names. He has searched for them with no luck.
All seven men, when teenagers, developed a bond with Renwick at the Kearny Boystown facility, located at 499 Belgrove Drive, which cared for and bettered the lives of troubled youth.
“We had very close relationships – all colors and creeds. It taught me how to get along with anybody, regardless of skin color, religion, or nationality,” Renwick said.
A Turbulent Childhood
Renwick, raised in Maple Shade of Burlington County, was at Boystown for two years and six months, entering at age 15 in 1980 and exiting when he was 18.
“I had a brother and two sisters, and we were a completely dysfunctional family. My father is a functioning alcoholic. My mother could not control him. He was just off the chain, and he believed in the old-fashioned rod theory. I was the oldest, and I was supposed to be setting an example,” he said of his turbulent childhood.
There was a problem, however. Renwick was dyslexic, had major learning disabilities, and perceptual impairment. In school, he was put in special classes immediately, and when the child study team sent him to Temple University in Philadelphia to their child study team, the latter’s in-depth analysis and IQ testing uncovered what they thought was minimal brain damage. “Which is not true,” Renwick said. Later on, they also discovered he suffered from bipolar disorder. Many times, the diagnosis led Renwick to escape from his home, sometimes in the winter even finding sleep in a snowbank.
“I mean, I would leave the house for three weeks because I just couldn’t get along with my father,” Renwick said.
The road to Boystown
And then came that evening in 1979. Renwick’s life would almost end tragically, until Boystown helped him towards a 180-degree turn.
“Me and a friend of mine, we decided that we were going to ‘borrow’ his mother’s car – and we were14! And while we were at it, we decided that we should get into the liquor cabinet and make a drink,” Renwick said.
It went downhill from there. The car, with Renwick as a passenger, was on Route 73 in Cherry Hill, moving at a speed of 110 miles per hour, running police cars off the road, and it eventually flipped three times. Both boys lived, but it was not a pretty sight. Renwick recalled that he went through the windshield twice.
“I went through the driver’s side windshield, hung on the hood, and then got thrown back in. I then went out the driver’s side window, hung on for dear life, and then went back in. And apparently, when we flipped over, the ‘WALK\DON’T WALK’ light went through the roof and took off the back of my scalp. The doctor said if it had hit me directly, it would have exploded my head, because it took the back seats and wrapped them around the top of the light and shot them 75 yards down the road,” he said.
Renwick’s father told a juvenile court judge that his son was uncontrollable. The judge sent the teen north to Hudson County and Boystown.
Arriving in Kearny, N.J.
First located in Denville in the 1870s, the facility was eventually moved to Kearny and became the Hudson County Catholic Protectory. The name was changed to Boystown in 1953. After his appearance in juvenile court, Renwick and his parents left their Burlington County home one morning at 4:30 a.m. and arrived at Boystown a little more than two hours later. Msgr. Robert P. Egan was in charge and had been director for 26 years.
“He built that place,” Renwick said of Msgr. Egan. “Brick by brick, literally. When he got there, it was all dilapidated buildings, and it was really back in the stone ages.”
During Msgr. Egan’s tenure, a new combined auditorium and gymnasium, dining room, and dormitory were added by 1970.
Boystown closed in 1984. It is now the home of the Archdiocese of Newark’s Saint Paul II Youth Retreat Center.
Renwick’s recollections of Boystown are fond ones.
“The first meal I had there was ham and eggs, toast, and juice, and you could go back and get seconds – and it was well done. It was cooked on a grill,” he said. “Mr. Terry was one of the cooks. He was a character. He would always pop the extra food on your plate while saying, ‘You guys are growing boys!’”
During Renwick’s first year at Boystown, he was not permitted to leave the grounds.
“They had people watching you. If you went out on the grounds and you came back, you had to go and check in with the counselor that was on duty, and usually that was either Mr. Bowman at night or Mr. Grant during the day,” he recalled.
All of the male employees on-site and in charge, according to Renwick, were Vietnam veterans. They had experienced significant life lessons and imparted the same.
“As far as learning how to live life on life’s terms, they gave me a big heads up on that, because I did not have a clue,” Renwick said. “Boystown taught me how to assess my surroundings and to avoid danger, and to realize what is dangerous. They took the time to explain my crime, and they took the time to explain everything to me about the risks that I took and the thoughts that I made before actually taking the risks. We actually had to go to counseling for 45 minutes to an hour.”
In addition to the counseling, sports – football, baseball, boxing, and more – and academics were also a part of life at Boystown. According to a June 6, 1982 New York Times article, alumnus Joseph Grant said that the priest always gave a party at an ice cream parlor for each boy’s birthday. And he saw to it that the boys had money for class rings -they attended Kearny High School -and for prom dates.
“We played games against other institutions in the state of New Jersey,” Renwick said. “And, by the way, we were never defeated in football or any sport. In baseball, they actually brought in a farm team to try and humble us, and we ended up beating them.”
Renwick and others were daily bused and took classes at the then-called Hudson County Area Vocational-Technical School. In his first year there, he took Commercial Foods I and II, and in year two Commercial Foods III and IV. He never became a professional chef, but he often scored high in the upper ranks on the Boystown point system.
“With that point system,” he said, “you could either go home once a month or for a two-day weekend. They were trying to again re-acclimate you to your environment. They did not want to remove you from your current environment too long, but they did not want to make it impossible for you to break back into your old environment.”
‘It turned my life around’
His years at Boystown turned Renwick’s life around. After apprenticing for four years at an appliance store, he took those skills and opened his own shop, Kenny Lee’s Appliances, Inc., which he started in a Brevard County, Fla. storage unit. He expanded to a new location on Route A1A in Cape Canaveral with nine employees, including some who were disabled, and on the side also had his own junk yard in Rockledge, Fla.
“I succeeded against all odds,” Renwick said. “I got hurt and that retired me early, but I got to experience the American dream. I am satisfied with what I achieved. When I retired, I had an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau and had just one answered complaint over 25 years!”
Boystown was a huge part of that success, he said.
“They [the counselors] were rigid, and looking back, I realize that the adults who ran the facility learned what they knew by the regimen provided by the military, and that was what they tried to impart to us – a team mentality. They were trying to teach us how to be a good team member. They did not focus on individual success; they tried to make you be a team player.”
In 1980, Msgr. Egan was replaced by Father Neil Mahoney, while Msgr. Egan went on to serve as a priest at St. Catherine’s Church in Glen Rock.
The townspeople of Kearny were credited for welcoming the boys of Boystown.
In the 1982 New York Times article, he reflected on his time at Boystown. “Everyone helped us, and every day seemed like a new miracle,” Msgr. Egan said in the article.
And when asked if he would hear voices from the past if he visited the former Boystown Kearny location, Renwick, now 60, said, “I probably would. There are so many memories. It was such a learning period in my life. It was very structured. The years I spent at Boystown were a major turning point in my life, the good and the bad! There were a lot of life lessons learned in three years – a lot!”
Editor’s note: According to Bishopaccountablity.org, Msgr. Egan was named publicly in November 2021 by Attorney Jeff Anderson as an accused in a lawsuit filed under the NJ Victims’ Rights Bill. Egan died Aug. 14, 1998.