Mel Blount Raises Discipline Argument At His Youth Home

TAYLORSTOWN, Pa. - When he misbehaved as a boy in the Georgia onion fields, his father gave him an old-fashioned whipping. When he was a young football player, his coaches pressed him through grueling, two-a-day practices.

Life has not been just a fistful of Super Bowl rings for Mel Blount.

But from all this tough love, this Hall of Fame cornerback for the Pittsburgh Steelers devised a philosophy: "All kids are born good. It's the way kids are being raised - that's the problem."

And that credo is being put to the test at the Mel Blount Youth Home, on a farm 40 miles southwest of Pittsburgh.

Here, troubled inner-city youths awake at 5:30 a.m. to shovel manure, care for the animals and exercise. Here, a wrong move may be greeted with a poke in the chest, a grab of the shirt collar or a crack on the rear.

"You have to have kids knowing that there is a price you pay," said Blount, still muscular and intimidating 11 years after leaving the National Football League. "I mean, when will they finally draw the line? When they kill someone and end up in the new jails we are building?"

But the methods of the man the boys call "Mr. Mel" are controversial.

Children and Youth Services of Allegheny County pulled some children out after hearing of Blount's use of corporal punishment. Last spring, a family court judge told Blount he couldn't even say hello to the boys in the wake of a complaint about Blount grabbing a youngster's collar.

Sick of battling the agencies, Blount stopped taking court referrals or public money. It is now a private home, relying on donations.

"I call it a tragedy," said Pittsburgh Councilman Duane Darkins, a church minister whose council district covers the neighborhoods from where many of the children at the Blount home came. "I think it is disgraceful."

Others are unsympathetic. Georgene Siroky, a Legal Aid attorney who sued to restrict Blount's actions, said they were "illegal. It's that simple."

Blount, though, thinks they are neither illegal nor unnecessary.

"I've always been around kids and liked kids. When I got into pro football, I started realizing the effect we had on kids and the great opportunities that we had to make an impact," he said.

"They (children) wanted to take pictures with me. They wanted to talk to me. They just wanted to be around me. There would be so many kids out there that the Lord started showing me that there should be something I could do with these kids or for these kids other than just signing autographs."

He started the first Blount home while still a Steeler, on the Vidalia farm where he grew up. It is run by his brother Clint.

In the late 1980s, he announced plans to build the second home on a spread in this rural outpost. Some of the locals worried about property values and, because Blount is black, the Ku Klux Klan held a rally and cross-burning in protest.

But he persevered. The home accepted its first child in 1990, and was given clearance to accept youths aged 7 to 13.

Blount has room for several dozen children in the three log cabins that dot the sloping hillsides above his white farmhouse. A creek slithers alongside the horse fence at the front of the 240-acre farm.

Blount lives at the home and spends much of his time raising funds for its work. He eats with the boys, helps out around the barn as they do, exercises with them and goes to church with them.

The boys - all from troubled homes - clean stables, exercise, go to school, eat square meals, study and hit the sack by 9 p.m. For youths whose parents permitted them to roam the streets at all hours, it can be an adjustment.

When they rebel, Blount said, he gives them a crack on the rear as a last resort, though he has been warned repeatedly about it by referral agencies.

"He doesn't bail out quickly. Blount will stick with a kid," said David Hudson of the Georgia Department of Children and Youth Services.

But Blount's rod makes many youth advocates and experts cringe.

"Children who are brought up in an environment of violence or strong corporal punishment grow up with the idea the way to solve problems is to use force against others," said Joy Byers of the National Committee for the Prevention of Child Abuse.

And it doesn't work, researchers said.

"A big problem with corporal punishment is that it has short-term immediate benefits - the kids stop acting up for a day. But later, they continue to engage in bad behavior. Frequently they become more devious so they can avoid the punishment," said Steve Lepore, a social psychologist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

Blount maintains youth home operators should be granted the liberties of parents. He explains his views in his new book, "The Cross Burns Brightly."

"The reason a lot of programs are not making progress is because they are not helping the kids, they are warehousing them," Blount said. "It's almost like baby-sitting. You have them there and you just let them run wild and collect the money.

"What people don't realize is you can't buy me with 30 pieces of silver. I don't need their money and if I needed it, I wouldn't take it in that context anyway."