MARKING A MILESTONE
CAPTAIN Youth and Family Services celebrates 40 years
A wellknown southern Saratoga County nonprofit that was established at a kitchen table in a Clifton Park home celebrated its 40th anniversary last week with warm hugs, knowing nods and tears of joy.
Officials, volunteers and teens, past and present, who presently have, or once had, an association with CAPTAIN Youth and Family Services joined with its original founders at the Fairways of Halfmoon on Oct. 12 to celebrate the organization’s many years of success.
From its tentative beginning with a handful of motivated parents intent on creating some weekend entertainment for young teens, CAPTAIN now has more than 100 volunteers, annual revenue approaching $2 million, and multiple programs throughout Saratoga County.
Ask three people with deep ties to CAPTAIN how the organization began and there will be three answers. That may be the secret to its success, its focus from the beginning was wide in scope, its leadership has always been open to new ideas, and leadership through the years has had a hand on the pulse of the community since the very beginning.
All those associated with the organization’s beginnings agree that the kitchen table belonged to Judy Hines. She and her husband now live in Bloomington, Indiana and they still have the table.
“I’m in a state of awe,” Hines said at the celebration. “When I went up on the Internet to see their website I was amazed at what they are doing and have done. I congratulate these people for the programs and the expanse of the programs they’ve developed, to persevere, and pick up on all the needs.”
She recalled early discussions at her table and in her living room that focused on filling a need to give middle school-aged teens something to do on Friday nights.
“All we knew is we had to do something,” she said. “There was nothing to do here. We created a drop-in center at one of the middle schools for Friday nights. It was (recorded) music, pizza, and conversation. What we did by that was, we proved there was a need, and many times that’s the biggest hurdle.”
Donna Rudzinski was one of those seated at Hines’s table at the beginning. She, too, attended the 40th celebration.
“There was a lot of need,” she said. “We weren’t being serviced by Albany and we weren’t being serviced by Saratoga.
There were some programs that were being offered by the Clifton Park Community Council though. It was a forum for people. But I am really surprised to see CAPTAIN’s expansion. To have all the people involved says a lot about the community.”
Bill Long was another who was there at the beginning. Long was a psychologist with the Saratoga Mental Health Center who was living in Clifton Park. The Center provided student advocate programs in the Saratoga, Ballston Spa and Shenendehowa school districts. He brought a mental health perspective to the group.
“I came here from California and out there we had a model left from the JFK
years of community mental health models that emphasized coalescing a community’s own resources, educational, religious, and medical, around teens and families. People from different walks of life came together to advocate for them. CAPTAIN is a community advocacy program, one that the town of Clifton Park has given strong support over the years.”
Lake noted that the biggest single thing that gave CAPTAIN its strong base was the fact that right from the start all the groups involved, the parents, the schools, the mental health people, wanted the kids themselves involved.
Though CAPTAIN now offers a wide variety of programs it is best known for its work with teens and young adults. On Thursday night two women gave brief, but vivid, accounts
of how CAPTAIN’s programs and its volunteers helped them change the course of their lives.
Katie Houlihan was a divorced single mom and $30,000 in debt when she attended a “Getting
Ahead” program from CAPTAIN.
“After hearing one person’s story at that class I came to the conclusion I could change my life and that I would do it permanently,” she told the audience.
“My life is totally different from one year ago. The biggest thing I got from CAPTAIN was knowing I had a team behind me.”
Hollyanne Buntich is a wife, mother of a nineyear-old, and a business professional in the Capital Region. She described her childhood in southern Saratoga County as one filled with physical, mental, and emotional abuse before discovering CAPTAIN.
“I was the child who fell through the cracks”, she said.
Buntich shared her story publically for the first time with the CAPTAIN family, “because without CAPTAIN there’s a very good chance I wouldn’t be here at all,” she said at the celebration.
After attempting suicide at 16 she refused to go home upon being released
from the hospital. Her doctors were aware of CAPTAIN and got her admitted to the youth shelter. During the next year Buntich made three stays there.
“I didn’t know what to expect there, but now as an adult, as I read back through the diaries I kept, I’m amazed at the relief I felt in those walls and the safety that I had in that house,” she told a stilled audience. “I was not scared. I wouldn’t jump at every sound. I was not afraid of what would happen to me next. CAPTAIN’s Youth Shelter was more than just a safe place to stay. It was a place with an amazing staff. CAPTAIN got me out of the pain and abuse of my home long enough for me to remember who I was, long enough for me to remember why I wanted to live, and long enough for me to gather the strength to go on.”