Kevin Kelly/Key photo Father John Wandless speaks with Lloyd Cooper, chief operations officer of Urban Ranger Corps, a job-training program the priest established four years ago.

Four years ago, St. Louis pastor Father John Wandless dipped into his own money and launched the Urban Ranger Corps, an eight-week summer project that pays young men aged 14-18 while they learn basic home repair skills.

Now retired but still devoting the bulk of his time to the project, Father Wandless now has visions of expanding and sending Urban Rangers throughout Kansas City, teaching youth the skills that land and hold jobs while revitalizing deteriorating neighborhoods.

“If we don’t work with these kids, who will?” Father Wandless said. “And if we don’t start addressing the issues of poverty in our central cities now, I would hate to be making some of the moral decisions we will be forced to make in the future.”

On April 28, Father Wandless will be one of five recipients of the Kansas City Spirit Award, given annually since 1982 by Gillis, an agency that has served Kansas City’s youth since the 19th century.

His award citation, to be presented at a banquet at the Marriott Downtown Hotel, notes that Father Wandless “combined his love of God and neighbor with his organizational skills and previous experience in business and the military, and merged them into a successful neighborhood-based organization.”

More than 100 youths have gone through the Urban Rangers Corps in its first four years. This summer, another 24 will receive work experience — and for nearly all of them, their first paychecks.

“That’s a big deal for them,” Father Wandless said. “Some of them help their families with it, and I’m sure some of them waste some of it. But last year, one of our adult crew leaders ran into one of our rangers at a bus stop near Ward Parkway Center. He said with his paycheck, he just bought brand-new back-to-school khaki pants.”

It’s a “big deal” because the young men in the neighborhood see no job opportunities for them near their homes, and don’t have transportation to get to jobs outside the neighbhood, even if they could get hired.

“The other side of that coin is, if you have a chance to go to work and earn a paycheck, then you have choices,” Father Wandless said.

That reality struck Father Wandless as he read this line in Stephen L. Carter’s novel “The Emperor of Ocean Park”: “There are plenty of black kids who look out at the world and see a place that has no room for them.”

Father Wandless said he knew that feeling well.

“These kids remind me of me,” he said. “The important thing is, the human person is at least partially defined by how the people around him react to him. When someone appreciates you and what you have done, that builds up self-esteem.”

Growing up in an impoverished neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Pa., the priest said that was his entire world and he knew of no way out — until he and some of his friends suddenly decided to join the U.S. Navy.

Armed with G.I. Bill of Rights college benefits after his hitch and a new sense of the world outside the only one he knew and his potential in it, Father Wandless said he earned his degree, worked for the federal government during the 1960s on “War on Poverty” programs, then later launched his own business, Computer Technology Corp. that served software needs of the health care industry.

He was set for life with a successful business, a beautiful family, and a wife he loved dearly.

In 1991, Jane Wandless died of cancer ending their 30-year marriage, and Father Wandless heard a new call. Inspired by the love and service of priests who stood by him in his grief, Father Wandless entered the seminary at a time when men his age were making their final plans for retirement.

He was ordained in 1997 at age 60, and gave 10 years of active service as a priest, including the inner-city pastorate at St. Louis Parish that he actively sought.

No idealistic kid, Father Wandless nevertheless sought to use the parish to turn the tide of poverty, urban decay and crime all around the church at 60th Street and Swope Parkway C and felt frustrated at every turn by his human limitations.

“One of my visions when I became a priest was the strong, dedicated pastor type, like Father (Edward) Flanagan and Boys’ Town, or some of the German priests who stood up to Hitler. But I soon realized that wasn’t me. I was just a poor, parish priest.”

Rather than change the world, Father Wandless said he set out to change the parish C one youth and one rundown home at a time.

His Urban Rangers Corps is a mix of Boy Scout virtues such as respect of self and others, military-style discipline that includes following orders without question, exercise and close order drills, and Christian spirituality.

Each workday begins at 7 a.m. sharp with a flag-raising and pledge of allegience at the corps’ headquarters on the same block as the parish.

At the end of each day, after eight hours in the broiling Kansas City summer sun, the rangers are assembled again for prayer, Scripture, reflection, and a mandatory journal each has to write about that day’s experience to build up communication skills.

Nonsense is not tolerated. Excuses are not heard.

“Be on time. Dress properly. Speak respectfully,” Father Wandless said, placing the Urban Ranger Corps key lessons in six words.

“If they can ingrain that, then they have an opening into the world of work. And if they can get into the habit of doing that, it will carry them out into the world,” Father Wandless said.

These virtues are not inherent, the priest said. They are learned largely through the experience of getting ahead by getting skills and a job.

“We are changing these kids’ attitudes,” Father Wandless said. “They are not necessarily angels when they leave us, but they are aware of the behaviors you need in the world of work.”

He’s got success stories to tell. Many former rangers went back to high school with new focus, and many are now in college, realizing that work is their ticket to a degree. Some have used Urban Ranger Corps tutoring and career planning to earn apprenticeships in building trades

And even more importantly, by painting, by hammering, by landscaping in their own neighborhood, they are also improving the world that they see.

“One of our rangers took his girlfriend by a house that his crew had painted and said, >I did that,’” Father Wandless said.

And that is what the Urban Ranger Corps is all about.

“It’s not that we want them all to be painters. That’s just the means for them to contribute to the community,” he said.

“But in America, having a job and earning a paycheck is vitally important,” he said. “There is no job that doesn’t have anything to do with your future. To put that on your transcript when you are applying for college, that means something.”

Father Wandless is now seeking private funding, not only to endow the Urban Ranger Corps into the future, but to expand it into new areas.

“We are looking for money to expand into 10 troops that will go into 10 neighborhoods,” he said. “Can you imagine how it would look if we were in 10 neighborhoods?”

Father Wandless said he can imagine.

“There is something exciting and alive about an inner city, urban setting,” Father Wandless said. “If our central city neighborhoods do not become great places again, then Kansas City will never be a great place.”

Information about the Urban Ranger Corps can be found online at www.urbanrangercorps.org, by e-mail at urbanrangerskc”hotmail.com, by telephone at (816) 333-6455, or at the Urban Ranger Corps headquarters at 5908 Swope Parkway, Kansas City, Mo. 64130.

END