Strider Wolf could use some help

“It’s not known what Justin Roy used to punch a hole in Strider’s stomach in December 2011.”
from "The life and times of Strider Wolf,"
Boston Globe, Sarah Schweitzer

The man who was supposed to be looking out for this kid, who should’ve been on his side,  beat him and beat him until he was almost dead. It’s the kind of stupid, futile rage that just makes you despair. Mom doing nothing about it. It took four days of surgery for Strider-- a two-year old kid getting operated on again and again.  But he made it. And his brother Gallagher, just 11 months old was abused too. Hurt by the people who are supposed to love them.

So their grandparents took them in. They were  already barely making ends meet, but the kids needed family who cared, and there they were. For four years they’ve raised these two hurting kids as best they can. Money is super tight and as of right now they’re living in a house found on Craigslist -- a battered and bruised rectory next to a shuttered church.  The third floor bedroom, they suspect from the smell of it, had been a marijuana-growing lab. 

Of all the stuff you could do this holiday, what would feel better than helping this family get into a home. Strider is a great kid and you can tell he and his brother Gallagher could grow up to be great people. But man do they need our help right now.  And we can actually make it happen for them. Just by giving a small donation - to get warm clothes for New England winters, supplies for school and maybe even something to give them a Christmas that every kid deserves. Whatever amount feels right for you - it’ll make such a difference for them and, I bet, it’ll make a difference for you too :)

Funds will go directly to the Strider Wolf and Gallagher Irrevocable Trust, care of its Trustee, Sara A. Wells, Esq., of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP in Boston, Massachusetts. The trust will ensure that funds are used for food, shelter, education, extra-curricular activities, camp, and other purposes that will benefit and enrich the lives of Strider and Gallagher.

The Boston Globe covered this story with real care and love here . Read it! Thank you Boston Globe, Sarah Schweitzer and Jessica Rinaldi, for continuing to give a voice to people who could so easily be forgotten, like Strider and Gallagher. 

Here are some excerpts from their story:

They were parked in a corner of the Walmart parking lot, the four of them, a cat and three dogs, crammed into their 24-foot camper. Clothes and pots and toys clotted the floor of the galley kitchen that doubled as a hallway between the bedroom and a table that doubled as a sleeping bunk. This was Strider’s fourth spring with Larry and Lanette Grant. He’d been just 2 years old on the frigid night when his mother’s boyfriend locked him in a shed and pummeled him. News of his brutal beating filled television screens and newspaper pages. Doctors weren’t sure he’d make it.

He was flown to Maine Medical Center in Portland where he underwent three surgeries in four days to repair his torn intestine and other damage that doctors later would testify they typically saw in high speed, head-on car crashes. Strider lay for 23 days in a hospital bed webbed in tubing and bandages and monitors. Police arrested Roy. They questioned Strider’s mother. Each pointed a finger of blame at the other. On Jan. 11, 2012, doctors released Strider from the hospital and, with his stomach fitted with a feeding tube, he arrived at the Grants’ home, aching from losses he couldn’t yet comprehend.

There was resilience in this boy. He marched off to kindergarten with a dimple in his stomach where his feeding tube had been. Testing showed he had a nimble mind. He made a best friend. He came home talking about rockets and anteaters and prisms. He roamed the woods, finding sticks that could be a sword or a steed and casting himself a Christopher Robin of western Maine. He was stronger and faster and nimbler in the woods, the boy beneath the mountain of hurt. 

The power was still off, and Larry had hocked the generator for a loan. Now a pawnbroker charged them $62 a month to hold the generator as collateral. It was like that with their money. The $1,827 they took in each month, from Larry’s disability, welfare, and child support from Michael, somehow drained from their Norway Savings Bank account before bills could be paid. Strider was in his room. It was as it had been. The bookshelf hung crookedly. The Ninja Turtle kite sagged from a few points of attachment to the ceiling. The firefighter boots. The sign on the door that read Captain Strider. He played Legos, clicking pieces together, building an orderly world.

For weeks at a stretch, Strider would be moody and keep to himself. And then, equally without warning, he would share his pain, often with his therapist. Playing with blocks or drawing pictures on the floor in her office, he would express confusion and fright and a sense of perilous solitude. “[Bad Mommy] swooped me outside the house with a broom and said ‘go live somewhere else,’ ” he told the therapist during a session last December. “I traveled so far.” Unburdened, he returned for a time to happier ways. His therapist warned Larry and Lanette that memories would seize him again. When they did, she said, he would need them most.

In mid-August, they found a house on Craigslist in an old mill town, Lisbon, about half an hour away. They paid a visit to assure the owner that they were decent people. He decided the house could be theirs. Rent was $800 for the old three-story rectory next to a shuttered church. It had traveled a hard path from its churchly days. Scars gashed brown paneling, ancient paint peeled from door-frames, brown streaks of glue gobbed where wallpaper had hung. The third floor bedroom, they suspected from the smell of it, had been a marijuana-growing lab. “It’s a home,” Lanette said.