CYANMAGENTAYELLOWBLACK

D3Herald-Banner Saturday, MarcH 31, 2012

THE FUTUREH e r a l D i n g

c o M M u n i t y & e d u c a t i o n

CaSa director hoping to help more local children in the futureBy Brad Kellar

Herald-Banner Staff

For almost 10 years, Celeste Prather-Young has been com-ing to the aid of the county’s smallest victims.

Prather-Young is the execu-tive director of Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) of Hunt County, and helped found the agency.

“In January 2002, I went to the Texas CASA and told them we needed one of these in Hunt County,” she said.

CASA volunteers are appointed by judges in district courts who are hearing cases regarding allegations of child abuse and neglect. The appoin-tees are assigned to meet and visit with the children and to act on their behalf when it comes time for the cases to go to court.

The Hunt County chapter was officially launched in October 2002.

“Ten years ago we only had 54 kids in care,” Prather-Young said. “Back then it was just

me.”The agency worked out of a

spare room of Lane Real Estate in Greenville. These days, Hunt County CASA has a group of offices on the first floor of the Hunt County Courthouse, because the need for its servic-es has also grown exponential-

ly.“We have more than 1,000

kids now and I have two full timers and one part timer on staff,” Prather-Young said.

She has seen a lot during her decade and has lasted longer than most at her job.

“I am close to tenure,”

Prather-Young said. “There’s only a couple of people who have been here longer than me in the state, and I used to be the new guy.”

Prather-Young was named the 2010 Executive Director of the Year by Texas CASA.

One of the achievements of which she is the proudest is CASA’s Adoption Advocacy Program, which seeks to place children in new homes.

“We have had nearly 200 kids adopted since May 2007,” Prather-Young said. “We had 61 kids adopted last year.”

CASA for Hunt County also has a good working relation-ship with Child Protective Services.

As for what she hopes to accomplish in the future, Prather-Young wants to contin-ue to find more volunteers to assist the children needing help.

“Of the kids in our foster care, 87 percent of them are seen by a volunteer,” Prather-Young said. “I’d like to see 100 percent. That’s the whole prem-

ise of this program.”Prather-Young has been

active in bringing new recruits into CASA for Hunt County, but is also wanting to bring in more male volunteers with whom the boys served by the agency can identify.

“We have a special need for more African American men,” she explained.

Prather-Young said CASA for Hunt County is launching a series of community meetings during the spring, starting April 13 in Celeste.

“To tell what CASA is, what we do,” she said. Meetings are also planned in Quinlan, Caddo Mills, Lone Oak, Wolfe City and Commerce.

Rather than having potential volunteers drive to Greenville to receive their indoctrination, Prather-Young is willing to go the extra miles to find volun-teers.

“I’ll go there and do the train-ing,” she said.

Those who may want more information can contact the CASA office at 903-450-4410.

Brad Kellar / Herald-Banner

celeste Prather-young serves as caSa for Hunt county executive director and helped found the local agency, which aids abused and neglected children, 10 years ago.

PrOFile On

Randy daw

PrOFile On

Celeste PRatheR-young

By Carol FergusonHerald-Banner Staff

Randy Daw has been a full-time minister of Johnson Street Church of Christ for almost 15 years, but he thinks it is also important to become involved in community activities beyond the church.

“No matter how little you think you have to offer, offer it. It will change you. You’ll never have a sense of being alive until your life is bigger than surviv-al,” he said.

In 1993 Daw became a charter member of Daybreak Rotary Club, pointing out that the Rotary motto is “Service Above Self.”

“That says it all,” he explained. “I want to put Christianity in practice outside the world of the church.”

He is a strong pro-life sup-porter and will be organizing next year’s Life Chain demon-stration in Greenville in which supporters line south Wesley Street holding up signs in sup-port of the unborn.

“I had participated in the pro-life movement episodically, but now I want to do more,” he said.

The movement has a very personal meaning for the Daw family. “When my wife, Debbie, was six or seven weeks preg-nant with our second son, she got rubella, and the doctor sug-gested she have an abortion. (Early in a pregnancy, the rubella virus can cause eye defects, heart defects and men-tal retardation in unborn babies.)

“We said an abortion was out of the question.”

The couple felt that this was their child, and they would love it and raise it regardless, he explained.

As it turned out, Jeremy was born a perfectly healthy baby, and went on to graduate from Harvard Law School. Had they followed the medical advice, their son would have been killed before birth, he said. “That turned the corner for me.”

Daw has also become active in the musical life of the com-munity. He serves on the boards of directors of both the Greenville Entertainment Series and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra Series in Greenville which help pick pro-grams and conduct member-ship drives for the local concert

series.“I still play my trumpet, too,”

he said grinning. “I used to make my living in college as a studio musician doing off-Broadway shows and Summer Musicals.” As recently as last summer, he played for a “Fiddler on the Roof” produc-tion in Greenville Municipal Auditorium, and he has been giving private music lessons to some of the children at Boles Home.

In 2011 he finished writing an opera on the life of Jesus, titled “The Touch of the Master.” Parts of it have already been performed, “some here, some there,” he said, and he is now in the process of getting together a demo tape of the entire opera.

In another extension of his musical interests, he has become music editor for a new song book which will include biblical psalms set to music.

“It’s an international, interde-nominational project,” he explained. “About 60 scholars are participating, and I’m the music editor of volume one. There will be three volumes and 100 to 125 newly written songs.”

He had heard about the proj-ect, and said he marched into

the editor’s office in Austin and offered his services. “It’s a way to leave something behind that will possibly last,” he said.

Over the years Daw has made several mission trips to Mexico and Guyana and seven trips to St. Petersburg, Moscow and Kiev..

“I picked up Spanish on the streets while I was living in McAllen,” he said. “No one would call me fluent, but I am conversant.

“When the Iron Curtain came down, I felt led to go there. I had started studying the Russian language, and so when the call came to go in 1991 I was ready. I was in Red Square, next door to the Kremlin, when the dissolution of the Soviet Union was announced.

“The Russians were over-

whelmingly receptive,” he said. “We put a little ad in the paper and rented a hall, and people came in droves to listen. We established one or two church-es each time, and trained local Russians who would remain there.

“These trips made the pres-ence of God more real to me. You were not in control of what was happening there — plans all fell apart and that was nor-mal. So you say to God, ‘Show me what you want me to do.’ You experience that you’re a tool in God’s hands. It’s no less miraculous here in this country, just easier to see God at work over there.”

Daw, who was born in Port Arthur, was initially interested in a career in math, science or engineering until his high

school years, he said. “A youth minister in Midland, where I graduated from high school, was so effective and made such a difference, I wanted to be like that.” An uncle whom he admired had also been a minis-ter, and this was a positive influence.

He attended Abilene Christian University, graduated at the age of 20 with a B.A. in New Testament, and then went on to West Texas State to study music.

“I was the band director in Happy, Texas, ‘the town without a frown,’” he added with a laugh. He started his ministry as a campus minister in Canyon, and then became a full-time minister at a McAllen church. Five years later, he came to Greenville.

Individual churches in the Church of Christ denomination make their own decisions about hiring preachers, and when one of the elders at the Johnson Street church visited relatives in McAllen and heard Daw preach, he recommended him to the Greenville church.

Daw served eight and one-half years here and then went to a Tyler church for almost 13 years before returning to Greenville and the Johnson Street church in 2006.

“Our hearts had never left Greenville,” he said. “Whenever they needed a min-ister here for funerals or gospel meetings I came back, and when they reached the place where they needed a new min-ister here, it didn’t take long for us to decide to come back. This was home. The people here in Greenville fit the profile of a good person — hard working, honest to a fault, serving, giv-ing, being faithful, keeping their promises. I found the kind of people here I wanted my chil-dren to grow up seeing. “

Daw and his wife, whom he met at Abilene Christian University and married in 1975, have four sons. Jesse is a trans-plant nurse in Fort Worth, Jeremy works for a law firm in Oakland, Calif., Jonathan is a post doctoral fellow at the University of Colorado, and Phillip is an engineer for Texas Instruments in Richardson.

“We have no grandchildren, but we have a bunch of kids in the church whose grandparents don’t live around here, and so they call me ‘Grandpa,’ he said. “It’s a match made in heaven.”

courteSy PHoto

a strong pro-life supporter, randy daw joins others preparing to take part in last year’s life chain demonstration along Wesley Street.

We aSK:

What does the future of your faith hold?“The character of the church is changing. Fewer chil-

dren are being raised to believe according to what their parents and grandparents believed. But the younger peo-ple who are coming to the faith are taking it more seri-ously, and they tend to embrace the faith wholehearted-ly. I’m not trying to be a prophet, but I would say there are fewer who inherit the faith but more who are choos-ing it.”

Minister reaches from church to community

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