The first time I met Donnie Read, a stocky robust man in his mid-thirties, it was to talk about animals. We sat over breakfast and discussed how animals could assist in therapy with delinquent kids and the significance of the human/animal bond. Read told me a story about a dog of his that had been bitten by a snake and died in his arms as he was racing to the vet in his truck. His eyes teared-up.

It's not often you find a grown man with that kind of feeling for an animal, or one who's man enough to let other people see it.

But Donnie Read's got a special kind of feeling for animals and for kids. He's been around both for most of his life. As an adult, he's been around kids as a coach, a teacher and a principle of Bristol Middle School.

But, during the time Read was around kids, the kids he was around started to change.

"Towards the end of 1995," he says "we got a student - the first since I was principle - who had been in a juvenile program. The next year, we got three other kids that had come from juvenile programs. I got into a conversation with my friends on a fishing trip about how the country was changing and how we were starting to get students moving in who had records, and had been in juvenile facilities."

"I started doing some research on different types of programs that were available." "I just wanted to know where these kids were coming from."

"Around December of 1996, "we had one of our kids sent off to a juvenile program. It renewed my interest.

"I looked at some of the articles I'd read and research I'd gathered and decided that Wilderness Camps were among the most successful programs out there. I thought - there's not a better place than the 560,000 acre Appalachia National Forest. I figured, out there, there's pine trees and solitude and if you take a young man out there and get him away from his surroundings, put him in an environment in which you can get him back to the basics, it could be a life changing experience."

Read looked at books like "The Worth of a Boy" and "The Wilderness Road," written about one of the earliest wilderness camps.

He "took out a yellow legal pad and started writing."

Read, as he himself admits, was the ideas man, but he didn't have (in his own words) "the business sense to put it together." So, he went to his brother, Benji, a business manager, and they sat down with the legal pad. As Donnie anxiously waited, his brother poured over the pages. Finally, Benji Read looked up. "I think we can make this work." He said.

So, in September of 1998, three years from the time Donnie Read started to mull over the idea, Liberty Wilderness Crossroads Camp (LWCC) opened. The camp is located on 78 acres in the middle of the Apalachicola National Forest on the sight of a former hunting preserve. It has a lodge which can house 18 campers, and has a staff of 30. The camp sports a 50-foot Alpine Climbing Tower, a saw mill, a dorm and an office building.

The Board of Directors includes some of Liberty County's most involved citizens, and they - along with the Read brothers - brought together an Action Team to develop specific areas such as security, clinical services, continuous care and vocational education.

Dr. Wayne Smith, a local educator, developed a "school-to-work model" which is fundamental to the camp's approach. "It was a concept" says Read "that we had been talking about but couldn't put down on paper." Smith put the ideas on paper and developed the model which focused on the individual, and took into consideration his vocational interests, academics skills, technical abilities, and possibilities for community service.

The Liberty Wilderness Crossroads Camp staff has involved local government, mentors, churches, and civic organizations.

"What you wind up doing" says Read "is developing the whole person."