IBTTA volunteers restore and upgrade facilities at an Oklahoma boys home during its annual Maintenance & Roadway Operations Workshop.
Oklahoma receives an average of 55 tornado strikes each year. Some are small; others are huge and violent. All inspire fear. “It sounded like a freight train was headed for my house.”
That’s how people often describe the sound they hear just before a tornado strikes. A roaring, trembling shudder that shakes the earth and everything in its path. Something you want to avoid. Something from which you run to seek protection.
The movie version of The Wizard of Oz depicts a terrifying scene in which young Dorothy Gale and her little dog Toto try to escape the path of a tornado by ducking into a storm cellar and, finding it locked, are forced to seek shelter inside a house.
Oklahoma also plays host to a special group of boys whose lives have been turned upside down. Not by a real tornado, but by a tumultuous domestic life in which abuse and neglect take the place of the love and nurturing they need.
Some of these boys have found shelter and refuge at a place called White Fields. It’s a non-profitorganisation that cares for abused and neglected boys in the custody of the state of Oklahoma. Located on 140 acres of farmland about 45 minutes north-west of Oklahoma City, White Fields provides a spectrum of care to boys aged 8-18 whose lives have been shattered.
Frank Alberson, executive director of White Fields describes the institution’s aims: “What we’re trying to do is get our boys healed up and healthy so they can function and survive in the [adopted] family and have a family to support them as they go into their adult years,” he said.
This year, the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association (
“There’s a tradition in IBTTA in which every year we do something to support a service organisation or group in one of the communities where we meet. It’s not just about providing financial support. It’s about being physically engaged in a project where our people can use their hands as well as their minds and hearts. Especially when we have our Maintenance and Roadway Operations Workshop event, that’s when the rakes and shovels and hammers come out.
Our people operate and maintain things for a living,” said Javier Rodriguez, President of IBTTA. “The service project gives our folks a chance to bring their hearts and skills to a place they might never see in their daily lives.”
In addition to building and refurbishing some physical structures at White Fields, the IBTTA volunteers also helped to repair the broken psyches of the boys who live there. Much of the hard physical work took place in the morning and afternoon. But during lunch, in which the volunteers enjoyed an Oklahoma barbecue, they also had time to visit with the boys and staff. They played badminton, flew kites, and told stories and jokes.
“To have our kids see other people … other than just our staff … spend time with them and interact with them and show them that they are worth something; that is a language that all of our boys understand. That speaks volumes,” Alberson said.
A service project like this doesn’t just happen. According to Mark Kalka, director of maintenance for the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority (OTA), it takes months of planning. “You have to get supplies and complete a bunch of small projects ahead of time,” Kalka said. “Weeks before the big day itself, we poured the concrete and built benches for the fire pit. A lot of little things need to come together to make the whole project work.”
Over the course of the day IBTTA volunteers completed six major projects at White Fields:
- Installing benches and a cast concrete fire pit (fabricated off-site by the OTA team), for the boys to enjoy and gather around next to a fishing pond on the property;
- Installing more the 60 new path, roadway and facilities signs made by the Kansas Turnpike Authority’s sign shop;
- Filling a drainage ditch and covering a tinhorn (a corrugated pipe), with dirt and sod in front of one of White Fields’ foster homes so the boys could play without the danger of falling in;
- Painting a cottage where the boys first live when they arrive at the campus;
- Sealing cracked roadways around the facility, striping the parking lots throughout the campus and adding parking bumpers;
- Planting 50 new trees across the complex, including adding topsoil and mulch.
“We were a little worried that we wouldn’t finish all the projects we had planned,” said Kalka. “But we not only finished them, we finished early. All the volunteers had an outstanding work ethic. We couldn’t have asked for a better group.”
Tim Stewart, executive director of the OTA, said, “It’s just awesome to see what’s happening in the community and the industry. We set the bar high. And we did it for an extremely good cause.”
Stewart said the effort wouldn’t have been possible without tremendous “backstage” support from two firms:
Perceptics, TransCore,
Alberson was blown away by the work. “Our kids – our sons – were able to see that it’s not just White Fields that cares about them, its people from across the United States and around the world.”
Throughout The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy keeps trying to find a way to get home to Kansas.
And while she admires the beauty of Oz and the hospitality of its citizens, she longs to be home with her family and friends…the people who know her best and love her the most.
Like Dorothy, the boys at White Fields are finding their way home. Home to the comfort and security of living in a family and being surrounded by people who support and care for them.
With their hands and hearts, IBTTA’s volunteers helped to make home an even nicer place to be.
This was the sixth year in which IBTTA and its members have participated in a day-long service project that coincides with its Maintenance Workshop. Previous service projects included flood clean-up along Tennessee’s Harpeth River and construction of a dock at a children’s camp in Portland, Maine.
IBTTA is planning another service project during the maintenance and roadway operations workshop in Rhode Island in 2016. For more information and to view photos from this year’s service project, visit %$Linker:
