Campus upgrade broadens role of Sonoma Valley’s Hanna Boys Center

New sports fields line the front of the Hanna Boys Center, the Sonoma Valley residential treatment center for at-risk boys that is now in its seventh decade.

Last month, the center wrapped up a five-year, $15 million fundraising campaign that has enabled a wholesale makeover for the site, including a new state-of-the art auditorium and an admissions and alumni center, along with the neatly groomed ballfields.

“It’s humbling,” Executive Director Brian Farragher said about the donations from numerous community members that made the campaign a success. “We couldn’t do this without them.”

The upgrade has received high praise from center residents.

When he first came to live at the Arnold Drive center in 2011, Joshua Madison said there were no ballfields, just patches of overgrown grass. Madison, now 18, left after a year but returned this past winter to find that he and the rest of the boys no longer needed to use the fields at neighboring schools. They now had some of the best fields in the valley.

“I’m proud that I’m at a school that has such good fields,” said Madison, who previously lived in Richmond and decided to apply to Hanna after troubles at school.

Farragher said many of the boys come from poor communities with crumbling school infrastructure. He said the new facilities at Hanna Boys Center reflect the respect and investments the nonprofit operation and community have made in the kids.

Top donors include longtime supporter and regents board member Caroline Price, former Agilent Technologies CEO William Sullivan, Allegiant Air CEO Maurice Gallagher, and Marcia and Gary Nelson, the founder and retired chairman of the Nelson Family of Companies, a staffing and recruiting firm. Nelson is also an investor in Sonoma Media Investments, which owns The Press Democrat.

The new facilities, including the auditorium and sports fields, are increasingly being used by outside groups, a bond that officials said would help the center broaden its presence and connection with the community beyond its campus.

The evolution comes at the same time that the 170-acre center is experiencing many of the demographic changes affecting the state. Half of its 110  enrolled teens are now Latino, Farragher said, an increasing share that is fueled by Sonoma County’s changing population, where a quarter of the residents are Latino.

“It’s been a slow, steady increase,” said Farragher, a former administrator at Andrus Children’s Center in White Plains, N.Y.

Nearly 40  percent of the boys come from Sonoma County households, Farragher said.

A little more than a third of the boys at the center are white, while 12  percent are black and 3  percent are Asian, Farragher said.

It’s a challenge to find Spanish-speaking case workers, who are coveted in a state where Latinos comprise nearly 39  percent of the population. Farragher said two of his case workers - or a quarter of those on staff - speak Spanish.

Farragher was hired last year after Hanna’s longtime executive director, Rev. John Crews, resigned following an allegation of sexual misconduct with a boy in the 1970s, before the Catholic priest arrived at the facility. Farragher is the fourth person to take charge since the program first started in a cottage in Menlo Park in 1945 and then moved four years later to Sonoma Valley.

For decades, it has served as a haven for troubled youth from throughout the Bay Area, teaching them how to become self-reliant and resilient.

It houses 108 boys and serves 300  other children during its summer camps. The center operates with an annual budget of $11.5  million and more than 100  employees.

The new admissions building houses the Legacy Center, where letters and pictures of kids who have been through the program are on display. The building also houses the offices of two employees dedicated to following up with the alumni.

While three-quarters of the students who graduated in the past decade found success, such as enrolling into college or obtaining stable housing and employment, Farragher said some of them still need support navigating adulthood.

The center hopes to open satellite offices in the future to make it easier to serve former students and families of existing ones, Farragher said.

Since his arrival, he said they’ve also focused more on addressing the impacts child neglect, domestic violence and substance abuse within the families have on the boys’ development.

“We talk here about changing the fundamental question from what’s wrong with you to what’s happened to you,” he said. “These are kids who have been injured. Our job is to help them recover.”

He said staff is doing more work on trauma intervention and how to help children recover from adversity. They’re also working with local practitioners and schools, spreading the word about the importance of recognizing the effects that “toxic stressors,” such as domestic violence and child neglect, have on brain development and behavior, Farragher said.

“Our long-term plan is to become more involved in the community and help kids beyond our walls,” he said.

The new facilities are helping with outreach. Members of the Transcendence Theatre Company recently were practicing in the center’s new auditorium - the same stage where Axel Chavez has played the piano for his classmates.

He picked up the instrument after moving to the facility more than a year ago. Chavez said he liked living there more than at home in Glen Ellen, where he struggled in school, often fought with his brother and got caught with a knife.

“It’s a really fun place here. They keep us busy,” said Chavez, who’s also learning to raise animals after enrolling into the center’s agricultural program.

“Just seeing how a bunch of boys changed by coming here, I thought maybe they could change me,” Chavez said. “Even though we’re not family, I feel like they’re all my brothers. It’s my Hanna family.”

You can reach Staff Writer Eloísa Ruano González at 521-5458 or eloisa.gonzalez@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @eloisanews.