Fostering a love for troubled teens

Now that the 610 kids are finally out of the house, Chester and Clara Shattuck have put their home on the market. After 42 years of correcting school work and working with corrections officers, of fixing broken windows and trying to mend broken hearts, of helping with homework and giving lessons in home maintenance, the Shattucks are ready to move.

But the senior couple is not necessarily ready to move on.

"I'm going to grieve not having kids in this house," said Clara, who has had foster kids -- usually seven at a time, most of them troubled teens -- living in her Columbia Heights home on and off since 1960.

"Fall is the hardest time not to have the kids," said Clara, 78. "I love to shop."

She and Chester, 81, would shop for kids who put their fists through the Shattucks' walls and doors, for kids who had snorted, smoked or ingested every substance imaginable, for kids who had stolen or had been pictured on missing persons posters.

"I could see the good in them, all of them," Clara said.

"Even the Satan worshipper, or the kid who sniffed turpentine, or the kids who forced us to put an alarm in our pantry."

The Shattucks, who have worked with Anoka County Social Services for most of five decades, began taking in teen girls, usually one at a time, when they were a young married couple with two young daughters of their own.

"We saw a notice and this just appealed to us," Clara said.

When the first of their two sons was born, they dropped their license as a foster home to devote their time and energy to their own family.

But as their kids grew older, Chester, an office manager, and Clara, a stay-at-home mom, decided not only to renew their license to be foster parents, but to take on troubled teenage boys.

Rules to live by

But they were going to do it on their terms.

"There's a sureness about them, a certainty that they're doing it the right way -- and it works," said Pam Larson, a foster-care social worker with Anoka County Social Services.

The Shattucks didn't let their own daughters date until they were 16 and talked to all of their own kids constantly about life choices. What worked for their kids was good enough for the kids they'd take in.

"They set pretty high standards," Larson said. "T-shirts or videos that might seem offensive are not allowed in their house. When it comes to meals, they offer only healthy choices. They ask that the kids they take in go to church with them."

And if Clara always seems to know what's appropriate, Chester incorporates that sense with a knack for teaching life skills.

"When one of the boys became angry and put his fist through the wall, I could have patched it in 20 minutes," Chester said. "Instead, I put in the backing, then sanded, then plastered, and sanded . . . maybe four times before painting. It took a couple of days and I made the young man sit there the entire time and had him watch me.

"He wasn't very comfortable with that, but that's too bad. He was going to be with me every second of the way. And he was going to learn."

Instead of becoming angry with some of the kids who damaged their property, Clara would usually just hug them. Many of the kids had been abused -- physically and verbally -- since they were toddlers, she said. Some were children of alcoholics or abusers of other drugs. Some suffered from mental illness. About three-fourths of them were on "heavy medication," Clara said.

Troubled pasts

Nearly all of the kids the Shattucks have taken were teenagers. Some came right out of drug rehabilitation treatment. Some had been in prison. One had, just weeks before, been on a missing persons list.

Some of the kids stayed in the Shattucks' home for 15 minutes, others for 4 1/2 years, Chester said.

"For some, we're the only mom and dad they say they know," Chester said.

Chester can trace his own family roots back to New England and says his family arrived in America a dozen generations ago, 20 years after the Mayflower. He views the kids he and Clara have taken in as extended family.

The Shattucks got involved with state and local foster care groups and Clara has served as chairwoman of the Anoka County Foster Care Development Board. She has also served as an officer of the Minnesota Foster Care Association.

"They know a lot and they're not an easy mark," Larson said. "They're very wise, but caring in spite of the different things that have been done to them and their home."

Clara was once kicked by a young man, who "sent me flying," she said. When one of the boys kicked in a door, rather than scream at him, Chester said he prayed for his family -- and then made the kid pay for a new door.

"One of the boys was 14 and stayed with us for seven months and said he'd never lived anywhere for that long," Clara said. "All I wanted to do was hug him."

The Shattucks are guarded when they talk about kids they've taken in, never revealing names, current occupations or anything that might identify boys who are now adults. It's as much out of respect for the individuals as it is about complying with data privacy issues, they said.

The objective was always to get the kids back to their own homes, if that seemed possible and reasonable, Chester said.

"Some parents didn't want them to call me Mom," Clara said. "I said, 'I have no intention of taking your child away from you.'"

Instead, she and Chester were trying to give something.

"We recently heard from a young man who kicked our door in," Chester said. "He's 29 now, and lives in California. He said he still has anger issues."

Said Clara: "He said that after all these years, he's finally beginning to understand what we were trying to teach him. He said he's now beginning to understand why we did the things we did."

Paul Levy • 612-673-4419