Community | By Indiana Jordan
There was no dinner on the table that first night.
It was 1966, in a small house in Orlando, and John W. "Jack" Lynd sat down with two boys and nothing to feed them. So the three of them prayed. The meal came. Six decades later, the people who run Edgewood Children's Ranch still tell that story, because it was never really about the food. It was about someone deciding that two boys were worth showing up for.
A Judge and a Man With the Same Idea
The vision started on a bench. Orange County Juvenile Court Judge D. Arthur Yergey kept seeing boys come before him whose behavior had a cause he could not sentence away. He wanted something other than detention for them. A place instead of a punishment.
Jack Lynd had spent years working with troubled children and had arrived at the same conclusion from the other direction. What these young people needed was a home and a school, safe enough that healing could begin. The two visions met, and Edgewood Children's Ranch was born.
What Sixty Years Builds
The Ranch that grew from that small house now serves dozens of children each year through a residential cottage program, Edgewood Ranch Academy, counseling, family care, life skills training, and spiritual mentoring.
The structure matters, but the substance is simpler than any list of services. A child arrives at Edgewood and finds house parents who already know his name. A bed made up and waiting. A classroom small enough that falling behind is not permanent.
The Ones Who Came Through
Thousands of children have called this place home. They are grown now, teachers and pastors, business owners and service members, parents raising children of their own with a steadiness someone once gave them.
Sixty years of that belongs to the house parents who took the overnight shift, the teachers who stayed late with one struggling reader, the board members and churches and volunteers who kept coming back, and the donors who gave without ever meeting the child on the other end.
Still Building
The Ranch is not treating sixty as a finish line. The years ahead hold expanded services for children and families, investment in safer and more modern facilities, deeper partnerships with churches and local businesses, and the same work of preparing each young person for a life they can stand on themselves.
Edgewood is marking the anniversary with a 60th Anniversary Gala and is reconnecting with former residents, gathering stories from every decade. There are ongoing ways to volunteer, mentor, sponsor, give, and partner.
For sixty years, Edgewood Children's Ranch has been more than a place to live. It has been a place where children discover they were made on purpose, and for one.
"As we look to the future, our commitment is simple: to help even more children and families find hope in Christ through love, education, and Biblical values. In the years ahead, we will continue strengthening the ministry God has entrusted to us, building meaningful partnerships throughout our community, and ensuring Edgewood Children's Ranch remains a place where lives are transformed for generations to come."
Jeff Fitzgerald, Executive Director
