One Boy at Campagna Academy Saved My Life
Tags: career, motivation, challenge, machinelearning
Published: 2023-02-16 22:19:06

On Tuesday, I found out some unsettling news that would strike me to the core. It was a tidbit of information, yes. Still, it was critical and downright heartbreaking, especially given that I was once a troubled youth at this facility, Campagna Academy in Schererville, Indiana, and to hear about their longtime reputation of Catholic gospel and healing youth for over 75 years and counting, is now turning corporate.

![Image description, Campagna Academy's Hope Center was built in 2007, PHOTO/Northwest Indiana Times Newspaper](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/y701ik226jsk76unvxjb.jpg)

And this will now make Campagna's storied triumph and history ever more tainted than ever before.
In January, according to the Northwest Indiana Times out of Lake County, Ind., the newspaper reported that a company, Gibault Children's Services out of Terre Haute, Ind., will now be taking over the site's mental health services, therapy, and staff licensing. Campagna Academy, the company, is now verging into darker waters with a company out of Terre Haute due to budget cuts made by the state on facilities like Campagna not to stay open.

But it only gets worse as Elena Dwyre, CEO of Campagna Academy, is stepping down after 11 years as their chair and lead organizer. This will leave Campagna in a dire mess compared to how it got started. 

The big question for me, past alumni 2017 of the academy, who had dealt with a major suicide attempt, bipolar disorder, running away, overdosing on pain pills, running a muck, and clinical depression, is when are our children going to get the right mental health care they need? 

Now with this company, Campagna might not ever be the same loving, nurturing place of yesteryear, founded by Fr. Michael Campagna 75 years ago to originally help orphans misplaced and with no home. By 2001, when the facility was called Campagna Academy, the site worked more with agencies such as the Lake County Juvenile Justice Department and the Department of Child Service, have used the facility in recent years for troubled, at risk youth who might have criminal or addiction issues in their lives, and as I told my mom before writing this piece, Campagna gets partial funding from the Catholic Diocese of Lake County and Chicago, Ill. and partial funding from government programs such as the Department of Child Services/Department of Homeland Secruity/ the state of Indiana.  

With this company from Terre Haute, that owns another mental health facility, Harsha out of Vigo County, owning a historic institution under this much stress and underfunding, this academy, which I took true pride of going to for six months in 2017, might tragically not exist before it is too late to not save the facility because the state doesn't care about mental health, especially for troubled youth not just across Indiana but also Wisconsin, Illinois, and even northern Michigan.

Shutting down the facility, will be a historic failure to how the government views troubled youth like you and me. In otherwords, would be an absolute tragedy for the troubled youth that need support, and extra guidance, along with more medication checks as this would negatively effect parents, law enforcement, & adolescents because jail would be overpopulated.

Our mental health services and non profits will be exinct from Indiana in this already depleating market of resources for both kids and adults across the United States. 

As a lost boy who needed to reflect on his life at the hard age of 15, I would run away from home, overdose on pills, and with a near criminal resume to almost boot me into the juvenile detention system, I felt like my life, at the age of 15 was falling apart right in front of my eyes, with little to no support system to help me out. 

My family was focused on my grandmother having Alzhiemers and my sister was diagnosed with autism around this time. My mom had issues in her relationship between her and our "father" and things were just a mess up to that point.

The amount of mental health trips counted Overdoes talied up to three, runaway attempts 5, and suicides 6. The sixth and final suicide I broke a partial ligament in my back and broke my sternum in the process. 

The recovery, rehabilitation, and just over therapy services that was provided to me through Centerstone out of Bloomington, and through the amazing work of Bloomington High School South took five long years for me to recover from 2017-2020, but I will say that in that recovery time Campagna Academy nutured me into the man I am today because of the outreach between service and faith, and what I learned about not just being a man, but being a functioning person I took to heart during my stay at the facility the boys I met and they stories they shared on Unit One East. 

When the staff slid their cards into the nob of the door, I knew that there was going to be a huge change in my life that week.

The 12 young boys between the ages of 12-17 years old were violent, reckless, but also loveable through the brightest times and most of all, they were boys recovering just like me, so the bondage between man and recovery made me feel more united and it felt as if we carried the blood from one soldier to the other.

In otherwords, I met a group of boys that were willing to recover and battle back whether we were going to prison or back home, even a group home. We battled through the unit together.

I met some great young men, men that were healing just like me, so you learn how to battle together, but also learn a common bond between what we should do and what we like. I played the card game of Pokemon for the first time in my life while I was on the unit. I made fun out of the kids, but did whatever I needed to do to fit in on the unit, whether that meant acting "perfect (they called me Mr. Perfect on the unit and even made fun out of me from time to time, that was my nickname because I faked my behavior)", and yeah, I was manipulative and very controlling... fifteen year old me that many people viewed at during my time at Bloomington South, but I did whatever it took to both fit in with staff and fit in with kids. 

That was an important life lesson for my adult life as well. When I was at IU, I learned this lesson very well because I didn't fit in with my peers but was able to study the room, and try to fit in with what my mom calls the "corporate dads and the corporate people." That was a challenge for my family, but I was able to master being like a sales person at times. 

It's called fitting in with the journalism majors out there.  

The young men I met in this facility were broken, but also gave me pride to continue fighting for my journey to learn about myself, and learn how to manage this new condition, bipolar disorder that I have through today. 

Our unit was about the size of a two bedroom apartment with beds more comfortable than the other facility I went to at the time, Bloomington Meadows Hospital, and our rooms were full of hard walls and hard beds, and the room smelt like a YMCA men's lockerroom, but we needed to see how much discomfort our parents went through at the time. More my mom and sister, because as they needed a break to take care of my grandmother, they hoped that I could somehow get better. Reframing their mindset from seeing me in a gurney heading to the hospital. 

When I arrived to Campagna on the night of April 14, 2017, just two days before the Easter Sunday holiday, the first boy I met had almost combed brown hair with braces. He was short and brazen with a hard exterior, and as my memories are fading away from being in the facility, I remembered meeting him on the first night, and then eating a partial amount of dinner. Lasagna with green beans and a small strawberry cake. Then the boys were working on chores, I was told by my staff on unit one east to read a seven page pamphlit about the rules, history, and regulations of what makes being a Campagna student, a Campagna soldier by the time the facility's end came into play. 

The weather was a drizzly, wet spring night in April during the heart of tornado season down south from me, and as the chores, food, and things were kept up on the unit, the boys introduced themselves to me. One staff member said in a stern voice, "If you [meaning me] want to pass phase one (which is the first of four phases given to Campagna residents to learn the ropes and work up due to good behavior and ethical strength building to prove your worth) you have to memorize everybody's name by the end of the night." 

I failed at this task memorizing only seven out of 12 clients, but then I was able to learn the names of the people in a month. Then, to wrap up our night, the boys gave me a test as they gave me a Playstation 4 controller, and the game of choice the boys stuck into the PS4 console was Madden NFL 16. This was a test to prove my worth on the unit as the boys began to know me more.

With seconds left in this simulated football game between the Pittsburgh Steelers (me) and the Cleveland Browns (a boy named Jason) came down to the wire, I would set up a game winning drive and yet Ben Rothelisberger, the then quarterback of Steelers, played smoothly in this game, but once I threw a quick slant to Antonio Brown for a touchdown with four seconds in the simulated game, the kid who I met when I walked into the unit, said to me, "He's my favorite kid in the whole wide world. You really made me proud."

Later I grew on these kids and the valiadations came in like roses. By the dozens. From love, they despised me the first time I ever lied and got my only, yes, only hour on the unit after lying to staff and telling them to let me have an extra Poptart, even though, yes, I had two extra Poptarts. 

I grew on the staff and my minor licks of bad behavior like lying and healing, made me public enemy number one on the unit from April-June. The first boy I fell in love with as a roommate was a brown boy like me named Cameron. He would gossip, sleep, and talk to me about well... anything. Before he left the unit that July, he taught me how the play Pokemon but most importantly, he was the greatest influencers I have had on the unit. 

He barely flipped out, and before he got discharged, I saw a confident boy become more scared of the fragment of what the real world would look like. He was my age but he had dreams of getting and job and being married. He taught me how to crunch numbers in paying your bills and even crunching numbers for taxes. He was my financial expert and the best roommate I have ever had. 

This article is dedicated to him. When he left in July, my security felt gone for a little bit on that unit, but as the end neared for me, I understood one thing about him that still continues to carry me on through life after being discharged. 

That is to not be scared of the next opportunity, and not worry about what is ahead.

One night I thought about my purpose on Earth, and he told me to think of myself as an "Oreo cookie" or a "goat." He told me, "An Oreo has the cream in the middle and the goat is the greatest of all time. Like Tom Brady or Stephen Curry. You need to be softer about life, but also be the goat in your life. Be the greatest of all time in anything you do."

It has championed me through my remaining college years because he was telling me that life will get harder, and you will face more obstacles than you would being in a 12 man pod full of teenagers. He had seen life, and even wanted to get married after working full time again. He was 16 but had the heart of a 27 year old man. When he left I left a piece of my heart on the unit.

When I left, the impact I made for those kids were apparent at 12:30 pm on October 20, 2017, exactly 40 years on my grandparents' wedding day in 1977, and these boys, young and old, gave me hug after hug. After I said goodbye to everyone, scared as a frightened cat, I will never forget everyone and I mean everyone smiling at me. It wasn't a fake smile like "Yay! He's gone!" No... these boys knew that I would do anything to get out of the facility, and I would prove to them that I would make the correct decisions in life. From staff to student, the image of everyone smiling at me in a "Thank you for making us believe," moment felt like a sports movie where the football coach was coaching his last game, and no matter how hard emotionally he would be, he proved a point to the players. If you get out of your ways, you will do anything. That image is still fresh in my mind every time I think my life gets hard, I think of being a goat. The Greatest of All Time.

My college years have given me grief, but also hope as I have lived with my family taking IVY Tech courses in an effort to be "the goat" of winning, the goat of coming back and graduating. 

The boys at Campagna influenced me, in an realistic view of the world, to get away from prison, jail, or death. Take strides and be the goat in your life like how Cameron taught me to do years ago.

You may have bills stacking up, you have failed again and again, and your lights are turned off by the electrical company, but if you have a goal, a job, a task, what will you be the greatest in. Once you find that greatness, run with it and then when time goes on and the internship is over, be the Goat of your company's position and begin to work up the ranks, start your own business, or make a dream a reality.

This is why I thank Cameron who saved my life on this unit, and told me a lesson I carry throughout my life.