Fathering, Coaching, Boxing, Emotional Connection — A Veteran's Experience
Another clip from our conversation with Logan Hilgers of Growing Veterans. Plus a gender equity bill on changing diapers.
A big part of our advocacy work involves reaching out to organizations that have overlapping missions with Washington Initiative for Boys and Men and making the case for their cooperation with what we’re up to (for example, advocating for a government commission focused on boys and men’s issues). Sometimes I’m able to interview people from those organizations on recorded Zoom calls, to hear their perspectives and call attention to their important work. I edit those recordings and publish them to our YouTube channel, like a podcast.
It has been a goal of mine for a long time to empower people other than me to do the interviews (I prefer calling them ‘friendly recorded conversations’). Victor Barr is the first person to step into that role — hopefully the first of many. Victor is a lecturer at UW Bothell in their School of Business.
Two months ago he interviewed Logan Hilgers, who at the time was the interim executive director for Growing Veterans. (He’s now their community outreach coordinator.) Growing Veterans has farms in Lynden (north of Bellingham) and on Whidbey Island.
Growing Veterans empowers veterans to cultivate purpose and belonging by growing food, community, and each other. They welcome participation from everyone, whether veteran or not.
Victor and Logan are both veterans of the Army National Guard.
In the first excerpt we published from their conversation, Logan talks about unique things that Growing Veterans is up to. The passion he conveys inspires me a lot.
In this additional short excerpt, Logan touches on themes of fatherhood, coaching, and boxing, and also men’s tenderness and emotional connection with their children.
Staying disciplined, controlled
An excerpt from the video above (Logan Hilgers speaking):
After I finished college I went back to my hometown in Wisconsin. I taught for two years, and I coached in my dad’s boxing gym. In my hometown there’s no Boys and Girls Club. There’s no YMCA. My dad runs a nonprofit boxing gym pretty much out of his own pocket. $20 is all he charges for an annual membership.
We see a lot of kids from the lower socioeconomic class coming in. We see them coming from broken homes, with no direction in life, just trying to find belonging.
In our gym it’s all about community. We call it a community boxing gym, and we talk about discipline and self-control in there. If you want to be a boxer, you have to stay disciplined and you have to stay in control. If you get angry and you get wild in the ring, you’re just gonna defeat yourself.
So we teach those skills for boxing, but then my father and I give life lessons to these young men: Just like in that squared circle where you need to stay disciplined and in control of your emotions, you need to take those skills out into the real world too. We tell them that transitioning those skills to the real world is actually easier than they think because when you face a hard time in the real world, and you need to stay controlled, at least you don’t have someone trying to punch you in the face at the same time.
We’ve had young men who come to that gym who are in trouble at their schools due to violent behavior. Ten out of ten times when they start showing up to our gym, the violent occurrences at school either disappear or they’re much less frequent. So having that outlet is amazing. And it doesn’t have to be boxing — anything that burns that physical energy they have.
Check out Growing Veterans’ new promo video or the complete list of organizations that have endorsed the legislation to create a Washington State Commission on Boys and Men.
More diaper changing stations in men’s bathrooms = gender equity progress
State Representative Victoria Hunt (D-Issaquah) recently sent out an email in which she talked about a bill she’s sponsoring about increasing the availability of baby diaper changing stations. She characterized the bill as a step forward for gender equity:
March was Women’s History Month — a time to honor the trailblazing women who have shaped our communities and continue to fight for a more just and equitable world. Here in Olympia, I’m working to advance gender equity, including through legislation like HB 1562, which ensures that baby diaper changing stations are accessible in public restrooms regardless of gender. This is a small but meaningful step toward making public spaces more inclusive for all families — and I’m delighted to say this bill passed in Senate committee and is hopefully headed to the Senate floor!
As I understand it, this legislation would primarily have the effect of adding baby diaper changing stations to more men’s restrooms. Said one testifier in support of the bill: “My husband has changed diapers in the trunk of our car more times than I can count because he hasn’t had other options.”
Here is one of two videos we made last year highlighting basically the same bill. Marcus Riccelli from Spokane (who’s a supporter of the commission on boys and men bill) makes a fine dad joke.
There are two legislators this year who formally sponsored both the diaper changing stations bill and the commission on boys and men bill: Representatives Davina Duerr (D-Bothell) and Timm Ormsby (D-Spokane).
Other News
Register for this workshop coming up on Thursday: “Father Involvement and the Developmental Benefits for Young Children” — a workshop put on by the King County Best Starts for Kids program on Thursday April 17, 1pm to 4pm.
Watch: “Who speaks for men?: The disappearance of male space” by Dr. Orion Taraban of the PsycHacks YouTube channel
Thank you, Blair. That program helping veterans is very heartening to hear about.
There is a similar program in the UK I heard about a few years ago: Veterans of their Special Forces work one on one with troubled boys from single-mother households and the like. I hope that something like that can take place in the US.