FORT PIERCE FOLKS
BY SUE-ELLEN SANDERS
PHOTO BY ED DRONDOSKI
When you watch Jerome Todd patiently nurture
70
his teenage charges, it’s difficult to believe he
once was an Army drill sergeant. Although
his wrestling team may agree Todd can bark
orders when he needs to, his dedication to changing kids’
lives at the Boys & Girls Club’s Teen Infinity Center
shines through that tough exterior. It’s what headed the
former computer repair tech in a life-changing direction
of his own.
Following his Army service, Todd attended technical
school and began a career in computer repair. But after he
moved to St. Lucie County, he found his calling at his parttime
job helping troubled youth at the Children’s Home
Society Wavecrest Shelter.
From there, Todd helped to start up a residential boot
camp program for juvenile delinquents, but was frustrated
that the young adults he worked with had already hit the
system. “When they left our program, they’d go back to
the street because it was the only way of life they knew,”
Todd says. “Eight of those young men died violent deaths.
I realized we had to get to the kids before they hit the system
and help redirect them. So I began working at the Boys
& Girls Club during the summers.”
That first summer, Todd gave one teen a ride to the clubhouse
every day. A talented musician, the youth gave Todd
a CD of his music, songs he’d written about how somebody
changed his life. “At 19, he’d left the gang and was
building a new life, when he was gunned down in a case
of mistaken identity,” Todd said. “I swore I wasn’t going to
lose any more kids to street violence.”
When a full-time position opened at the Boys & Girls
Club Infinity Teen Center, Todd jumped in as program
director in 2005 and was promoted to director of the teen
unit the following year. He and his staff work with teens
who live in the neighborhood surrounding the clubhouse,
located at 23rd Street and Avenue I, as well as more than
60 club members ages 13-18, offering programs and activities
that redirect and retrain at-risk kids.
Programs give the teens the tools they need to succeed,
but it’s the extracurricular activities that keep them off
the streets. Like the Wrestling Club where Todd, a former
college wrestler, trains kids in a sport that can deepen
their connection to school and may provide scholarship
money. The club practices after school in the Fort Pierce
Central Wrestling Room where Todd also helps coach the
school team.
Or the Infinity Teen Center Drum Line, a group of teens
who had never played instruments before, who’ve succeeded
at a level that makes them one of the most highly
requested teen performance groups in town. Academically,
the Club offers extra tutoring in between drum practice,
wrestling practice or basketball.
The results are astounding. Almost half of the 66 ITC
Club members are on A or B Honor Roll at their high
school and many more are college bound. In fact, Todd
takes juniors on a tour of colleges and technical schools
throughout the Southeast each year as part of his Goals for
Graduation program. Colleges offer their dorms for lodging,
but Todd is trying to raise the $5,000 to $8,000 cost
through grants and private funding.
Many of the teens Jerome Todd sees during the week
receive free school breakfast and lunch, and their families
struggle to put food on the table over the weekend. Todd
began a “backpack program,” sending enough food home
for more than 70 club and neighborhood kids, to get them
through the weekend. He began the program on his own
and now receives some food from the Treasure Coast
Food Bank.
Todd’s latest project is a staff and student written and
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