UW Fraternity lends hand to home for troubled teens

On a weekend morning, when most college students try to sleep in, close to 100 fraternity brothers toiled in the rain on behalf of troubled youths.

"We are breaking the fraternity stereotype with its obviously bad connotations," said Sean Burnstead, 20, president of Beta Theta Pi, one of the oldest and largest fraternities at the University of Washington. "We are acting on the values we stand for and becoming better men for it."

Sunday morning, dressed in sweats, rain jackets and gloves, the Beta brothers painted walls, raked leaves and spread bark on trails at Lake City's Ryther Child Center, a nonprofit treatment facility for troubled children. In a few hours, the fraternity finished what Ryther's three-man maintenance crew would need days, even weeks, to do.

"It's nice to do something for someone else," said junior Marcus Flynn, his shirt covered in mud. "In college, you focus on yourself. ... Everyone else usually falls by the wayside."

The brothers also have adopted one of the organization's cottages, which houses teenage boys with chemical-dependency issues. The brothers plan to visit the teens regularly, eventually creating a library and giving away UW blankets as mementos of their bond.

"All of them realize that this could have been them if the circumstances were different," said Burnstead's mother, Janet Burnstead, 54.

As the Beta brothers jammed chips in their mouths and the teens joked around during lunch Sunday, they all looked like growing boys.

"They are only a few years younger than us," said Joseph Hegge, 20, Beta's philanthropy chair. "We are in a very similar living situation. In the fraternity house, we also have rules and chores. ... But they couldn't get how the 100 of us didn't get into fights. ... And we couldn't believe how they've never met anybody who has gone to college before."

One such teen is a 17-year-old former methamphetamine addict from the Kitsap Peninsula. When he first arrived at the cottage, he said, the color in his blue eyes had vanished and his body was "sucked up and devilish." It was the "result of "bad decisions, bad choices, bad people," said the youth, who isn't being identified to protect his privacy.

The aspiring chef added that if it weren't for Ryther, he could easily have been dead. The fraternity visits gave him hope, and now he's about to leave Ryther to help in his sister's restaurant.

"They made me realize I could do something with my life."

Marian Liu: 206-464-3825 or mliu@seattletimes.com