Officer, activist partner to push youth effort
In the wake of George Floyd’s death last May, LaDon Johnson gathered more than 100 people in downtown Conroe to protest the killing of the onetime Houston resident.
After Johnson reached out to the Conroe Police Department to ensure a peaceful demonstration, Lt. Brent Stowe was dispatched for crowd control.
On the hot pavement that Sunday afternoon, the two men from seemingly contrasting walks of life — a Black activist and a white officer — started a conversation and realized they shared the same goal.
“We both have a heart for young kids and the youth and growing our community,” Stowe said.
Johnson, 37, and Stowe, 44, are now partnering their nonprofits to try to build a youth campus at the former site of the historic Conroe Normal & Industrial College. Originally built in 1903 to provide Black students with vocational schooling, the site remains unused.
“Bringing both worlds together and working in one building, and doing community things under one roof — it’s gonna be amazing,” Johnson said of the ambitious plans he and Stowe have for the 20-plus acres of property on 10th Street.
Before blueprints can be
drafted, Johnson and Stowe need to raise funds — they declined to estimate how much — for the project. They have courted allies in their mission to build and open what they have dubbed the Conroe Youth Development Center.
“For now it’s all about the fundraising and getting this project kicked off because we can’t even move, we can’t even shovel one scoop of dirt until we realize that we can” raise funds, Stowe said.
Cultivating citizenship
Located about a mile east of downtown Conroe off Texas 105, the proposed multi-facility campus would have at its heart the Calhoun-Edwards Administration Building.
The 10,000-square-foot white Greek Revival structure with green shutters framing its boarded windows would undergo renovations. This building was opened before the early 1970s, recalled Montgomery County NAACP No. 6304 President Carl White. It has been unoccupied since the mid-1990s and is the last remaining building on the property.
In honor of the original school’s founder, the administration building would be renamed the Dr. Jimmie Johnson Educational Facility.
LaDon Johnson’s 501(c) (3) nonprofit, Good Brothers
& Sisters of Montgomery County, whose efforts have included a 5K run and cleaning yards for elderly homeowners, would be based there.
The nonprofit’s flagship Awakening Program would serve at-risk youth. Already fully staffed, the program would invite parents to engage in the students’ education and teach money management on site.
Johnson said the facility’s purpose would be to cultivate a better sense of citizenship for youth who may be facing a potentially negative home environment.
“We’re gonna get back to the root of things, teaching these kids (to) get off these phones, teaching them how to really survive and live for themselves and come together for the community,” Johnson said.
Students would have access to a kitchen to learn cooking skills, a tutorials workspace, a computer room and a small library, along with a community garden.
Coaches and fathers
Stowe had been looking to build a football field for his nonprofit organization, Northside Lions.
He started coaching his son’s tackle football team after he and his wife began home schooling their son in junior high.
“Just Christian men giving back to the community,” Stowe said of the organization’s volunteer coaches.
His son now graduated, Stowe has stayed on as athletic director. The site on 10th Street fits just right for a football field, he realized.
Northside Lions and Good Brothers & Sisters are also eyeing a campus gym, to bear the name of the late Alton Gene Mathis.
A Black Montgomery County sheriff’s deputy, Mathis lived a couple of blocks from the site. Mathis coached baseball for Johnson and other boys, driving them in his blue truck to practice.
“He was a guy in the community who was a father figure to us,” Johnson said.
Voiced interest
The site’s landowner, Dale Wiebe, said he has
had preliminary discussions with Stowe about the proposed campus. Wiebe, 56, is a longtime real estate businessman who took ownership in 2014.
He said through the years people have voiced interest in the property for varying purposes, but they have lacked the necessary resources.
Helping with the project is Tommy Carden, E.E. Reed Construction’s superintendent in the building of the Home Deport distribution center off Texas 105. He met Stowe while Conroe PD was closing a railroad intersection for the construction crew.
“You have two guys from two different areas and they came together for the same cause, which is needed”
in the community, said Carden, a New Caney native.
Conroe Mayor Jody Czajkoski said he is excited about the prospects for the multi-facility campus.
“We’ve got to be working together these days. The division has caused a lot of pain and suffering in our country,” Czajkoski said.
‘The right thing to do’
Long neglected, the historically Black Conroe Community Cemetery is next to the property where the Normal & Industrial College once stood. In November, Stowe read about the burial grounds being formally dedicated and in the process of preservation.
This spurred Stowe to
call Johnson about taking control over the property next door.
“I knew that I had to bring in LaDon,” Stowe said, “because it was just the right thing to do.”
Their conversation continues as the two remain in constant contact since they met in downtown Conroe eight months ago.
“We believe that there’s so much that can come from this repairing the broken trust between the community and the police,” Stowe said of the partnership between himself and Johnson.
A 20-year police veteran, Stowe regularly sports a sweatshirt he got from Johnson’s Mighty Muscle business that bears the image of a Black man.
Johnson views it as a statement by Stowe. The Conroe Police Department is 4 percent Black, according to department figures from early July.
“We sort of bridge a gap in the community,” Johnson said of the roles he and Stowe are playing.