Omaha lures adventure center

It was really dark, for real! So cold you could see your breath.

Spiders in the bed, ohmygosh. Flies THREE times the size of Omaha flies. And lake rocks sharp as knives.

Hear Riley Griffy describe the dangers he faced during seven days of canoeing, hiking, camping, rock climbing and other adventures in the Minnesota Boundary Waters, and watch a 17-year-old transported from a milieu of poverty, violence and failure to another world.

One where success is measured by wits, attitude, sweat and sheer will. One where the trials of nature are rewarded with beauty and discovery. One where the threat of becoming another victim of gun violence — like his older brother was last summer — is 600-plus miles away.

That's what a group of Omahans envisioned for a new effort aimed at reaching youths such as Riley, who is charming, plucky and bright but already has had run-ins with the law and lives in a neighborhood long known for gangs and violence.

The NorthStar Foundation is announcing today that it will help bring to Omaha an extension of a well-established outdoor education program called Outward Bound to a site near 50th Street and Ames Avenue.

Initial plans call for building a high ropes course similar to those in Ashland and Gretna. Such structures use helmets, harnesses, ropes or wires, timber and other equipment to run participants through drills that, while challenging, are safe. The purpose is to build teamwork, trust and self-esteem.

Outward Bound Centers in urban areas are a newer model aimed at higher-risk populations that wouldn't easily have access to far-away, expensive wilderness programs. Omaha would mark the ninth city where Outward Bound has planted a center.

The program, which focuses on character development, leadership and service, is trying to expand its reach and deliver its program closer to home, said its chief executive and president, John Read.

He said the power of discovery can't be underestimated, adding that his first Outward Bound wilderness experience at age 40 was a “top five” moment of his life.

Studies of Outward Bound have linked the program's challenge, mastery of new skills and achievement of success with positive outcomes for participants, according to Marcia McKenzie, an Outward Bound instructor and then-doctoral candidate who published a report on the organization in the Journal of Experiential Education in 2003.

Most teachers surveyed for a 2007 report commissioned by Outward Bound observed a boost in students' self-confidence, and most saw increases in students' independence, self-reliance, compassion, problem-solving skills and ability to work as a team. Some respondents said it was difficult to determine how long the changes would last.

The NorthStar Foundation was instrumental in bringing the Outward Bound Center to Omaha.

The foundation was created in 2007 by Omahan Scott Hazelrigg, an Outward Bound alumnus (1990), Westside Community Schools board member and former executive director of the Strategic Air and Space Museum in Ashland. The foundation aims to address critical needs in education and employment among young men in north Omaha through before- and after-school programs.

The foundation's initial contributions came from Omahans, including Richard Holland and Susie Buffett, both of whom are on the board. Also on the board is former U.S. Sen. Bob Kerrey.

The Outward Bound ropes course is to be the foundation's first tangible product, though its use won't be limited to males or to northeast Omaha.

The ropes course, Hazelrigg said, can serve as a symbol of achievement for area children while also “drawing people who never have a reason to go” to northeast Omaha.

The ropes course is to be built on the southeast corner of the Omaha Home for Boys Campus, where NorthStar Foundation has leased 14 acres.

The course would be the first structure, and Hazelrigg said he expects it to go up by May or June in time for Benson High School staff and incoming freshmen to use it. The school is among seven partnerships NorthStar has lined up for use of the ropes course.

Hazelrigg said he hopes to tap Omaha's 180 or so Outward Bound alumni for other opportunities, including the kind of wilderness experience that Riley Griffy and six other Omaha teens had in August.

Hand-picked by Impact One, a north Omaha-based nonprofit aimed at reducing gun violence, the seven teens, adult chaperone and driver packed into an SUV and drove 10 hours to northern Minnesota. For all, the locale was as foreign as it gets.

For most of his 17 years, Riley's world has been north Omaha: mostly the street where he lived and more recently the alternative school he attended. Riley had fished in Carter Lake and caught snakes in his backyard.

But landing in a remote corner of Minnesota on an August night darker than anything he'd experienced before was frightening. He was given a headlamp and slept in a bunk before a weeklong hike-canoe trip in which they carried backpacks as big as themselves, dug holes for toilets and had to leave behind the comforts of home — electronics, cell phones, snack food.

They had to team up to paddle and to lug their canoes across land. They had to study maps, gather firewood, set up and take down tents and, as Riley quips, “L.N.T.” That's Outward Bound-speak for “leave no trace” of their presence.

They had guides who showed them how to tie knots and survive in the woods while also teaching life lessons, like how to manage anger.

And Riley was angry.

His brother Max, just 16 months older, was shot and killed at a south Omaha pizza restaurant on July 4. Riley mouthed off to police five days later and was charged with disorderly conduct, his second criminal charge of the year. He will be sentenced in January for an April charge, felony possession of a firearm.

His mother, Rochelle Holland, fretted about the way her younger son bottled up his anger.

She said her older son's death in some ways aged Riley.

“It put the gray in him,” she said. “He's hanging halfway between being a man and still trying to be a teenager.”

Then Riley, who with his short, wiry frame looks younger than he is, caught a break. Adults at Impact One liked his charisma and, conscious of Riley's loss, wanted to help. Hazelrigg of NorthStar took Riley under his wing. They have regular lunches.

When Riley came home from Minnesota, he tacked his Outward Bound pin and certificate to his bedroom wall (his mother later moved it to the living room).

What had changed?

“I learned how not to get so mad at some things,” he said recently.

His mother and school dean reported seeing no drastic change.

“One little success built on one little success,” said Ken DeFrank, dean of students at Blackburn Alternative High School. “Very rarely do you do one thing for a child and all of a sudden they turn it around.”

But he and Riley's mother saw the right kind of little successes.

Said DeFrank: “It kept hope alive for him.”

Outward Bound, Holland said, caused her to see “my Riley come back.”

“(It) came around right at the perfect time, right especially when he needed to get away,” she said. “I'm truly grateful. He was angry. And he came back all right.”

Contact the writer:

444-1136, erin.grace@owh.com

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