By Thea Jarvis

“Those who trust in the Lord for help will find their strength renewed. They will rise on wings like eagles; they will run and not get weary; they will walk and not grow weak.”

Isaiah 40:31.

The road to Eagle Ranch winds north on the interstate, past the clutter and clamour of the Big Peach, up to Georgia’s hill country. When you see the sign for Chestnut Mountain, you’re almost there. A few turns past the new winery, over Duncan Creek and the Mulberry River, and you’re face to face with a falling-down, red-roofed barn that seems at home being nothing more than a traveler’s beacon in this land of horse pastures and farms.

Beyond the barn, the ranch is well-hidden from the road. Driving the home stretch, WFOX’s radio tower is the only assurance that you’ve got the right place. It reaches up to touch the sky behind the ranch property -- all 180 acres of it -- and folks who live there call it a guardian light.

Off the road, visitors get a taste of the space and scope of the ranch. It is big and rolling and smells of pine trees and earth. When the leaves fall, you can hear them hit the ground. Birdsong fills your ears and a soft wind begins to cover the hard places in your heart.

When Eddie Staub came to Georgia three years ago, Eagle Boys’ Ranch was a dream that had been dancing in his head since he left Auburn University with a master’s degree in Interdepartmental Physiology in 1981. The oldest of three sons born in a stable upper middle-class Birmingham family, Eddie knew he had been given more than his share of love and security.

“It really bothered me that other children didn’t have the kind of chance I did,” Staub recalled, sitting in one of the wood paneled offices that serve as home and administrative headquarters for the Eagle Ranch director. “I saw how fortunate I was.” When you’re six foot-five and single, with a Colgate smile and a pocketful of charm to shield you from the ravages of rejection, you can do one of two things: become a nighttime soap heartthrob or play David to the world’s Goliath. Staub chose the latter.

He arrived on Atlanta’s doorstep with $20 and change and a car packed with the few worldly possessions it was capable of holding. A little over a year later, he and newly formed board of directors turned over $142,000 in cash for the 180 acres just one mile north of Gwinnett County.

“I just begged, knocked on doors. Churches, individuals, business groups gave donations. Seventy people gave us $1,000 a piece. The largest gift was $10,000,” recounted Staub, who admits he was one of the poorest business risks in north Georgia.

Folks like Vince Dooley and Bill Curry jumped on board. Company executives and political leaders lent support. Local Boys Scouts showed up to help make signs. Singer Amy Grant volunteered to do public service announcements. Much of what came in -- and is still coming -- was in the form of personal endorsements as well as outright deliveries of everything from kitchen tables to the ranch station wagon.

Looking back at the succession of minor miracles that surrounded Eagle Ranch from its beginnings, Eddie Staub shrugs his shoulders and smiles without a trace of ego. “The Lord just provided.” Less than a year after closing on the land, Staub moved into the building he still calls home. This spring, the first residence -- Faith Home -- was completed and filled with the joyful noise of growing children and their two house parents, making sense out of their lives that had somehow turned gray.

“We’re interested in boys who need a chance,” said Bruce Burch, Eagle Ranch’s full-time counselor who shares the building with Staub but works with the boys where they’re most comfortable -- walking the woods, fishing the ranch’s 10-acre stocked lake, or just rocking on the porch overlooking the athletic field. “We see a broad range of economic need, but there’s a common need for a loving, secure environment where these boys can pull their lives together.”

Burch, who holds a master’s degree in counseling psychology and at 31 is just a year older than Staub, spent seven years working at the Village of St. Joseph in Atlanta. At Eagle Ranch, his job is to share his expertise with the boys who are abused, neglected, emotionally deprived, orphaned, abandoned or otherwise in need of the security the ranch offers.

Counseling includes one individual and one group session each week for every boy. Twice a month, parents are required to attend counseling sessions with their child. The boys go home on a monthly visits and the ultimate goal is to reunite the child with his family. While at the ranch, they attend school in Hall County.

“What I really enjoy is helping the kids feel better about themselves, watching them become stronger from the inside out and seeing families doing it too,” Burch said. Because many of those who come to Eagle Ranch have known only failure -- at school, at home, in friendships -- he emphasized that “We want to make sure we don’t offer the boys another failure.” Boys who come to Eagle Ranch want to be there. After a

thorough interview with the staff, they get a first hand look at the ranch, are introduced to the rules, and told what would be expected of them during their stay. Parents are present at the interview, but in the end, it is the child himself who makes the decision to live at Eagle Ranch.

How do they make their way to Chestnut Mountain? Burch estimates that the staff receives some 20 calls a week from Departments of Family and Children’s Services, the courts, parents, and young people themselves seeking information about the program. Although calls come in from counties all around Georgia and beyond -- the farthest south was Savannah, the farthest west somewhere in Colorado -- most are from “Atlanta north,” according to Burch.

In a system awash with institutions that make the headlines because of the abuse they mete out to children who can’t seem to make it in the mainstream, professionals and families alike are finding hope and encouragement in the Eagle Ranch approach.

Explaining the low keyed, good-humored sensitivity the staff extends to residents and visitors alike, Bruce Burch breaks into a grin, “It’s fun. Besides, martyrs aren’t attractive people for children to model.” So far, he’s been pleased with the results. “We’ve seen some pretty drastic improvements in some of the kids. When they go home, the parents see it too,” said Burch. “Basically, we’re trying to give the kids the security to reach out and try things that maybe they’d been afraid to try before.” This means living with the rules, with chores, with discipline, as well as with love.

Currently, four young people ranging in age from 10 to 17 are walking in the shadow of the Eagle. Four more are soon expected to fill the halls of Faith Home. Construction has begun on the second residence, planned for completion this year. It will likewise house eight boys.

A three-phase development plan that runs through 1991 calls for two more homes, a gymnasium, a learning center, chapel and tennis courts. Football-baseball fields and a picnic area/pavilion near the lake are recently completed goals. No work begins unless materials have already been paid for or donated.

“We are debt-free,” Eddie Staub confirms. “We feel it’s really important that we don’t run ahead of the Lord.”

Staub has done his homework. He is well organized and efficient and knows when to ask others for help. For the livestock pastures, which the boys tend each day, to the ranch shrubbery, donated by local nurserymen, everything has been fine-tuned and carefully planned. Staub’s preliminary preparation for the Eagle undertaking included visiting Alabama’s five top boys’ homes, asking what they had done right and what they had done wrong. He also served as assistant director of Alabama’s Big Oak Ranch for a year. His instincts told him only the best would do.

“Our God demands excellence. He demands that things be done right,” said Staub. “Mediocrity is not a part of it.”

The search for excellence may be a factor in Staub’s personal makeup, but he lacks the overweening pride that would disrupt the vision. The bottom line, he makes it clear, is following the Lord’s will and making a proper home for some very special children.

“We’re really concerned with developing the whole person, ministering to every part of that little boy,” said Staub. “Our facility and surroundings are devoted to meeting those needs.”

Invoking the passage from Isaiah 40:31, from which Eagle Ranch derives its name, he gives form and substance to the dream he carries in his heart. “By developing these children’s lives in the proper psychological, spiritual, mental, emotional and physical environment, they will soar with the wings of eagles.”

And, according to Eddie Staub, “There’s no bird that soars higher than that.”

Families of boys who come to Eagle Ranch are asked to pay for food and lodging, but no one is ever turned away because of an inability to meet these costs. Sliding-scale payments are arranged when appropriate. For more information about Eagle Ranch, contact Eddie Staub, P.O. box 7200, Chestnut Mountain, GA 30502.