Shrinking Brotherhood : Waiting List for Companions to Fatherless Boys Keeps Growing

RESEDA — The look Al and Abram Holts sometimes give their mother, Vanessa, sums up the problem. It’s a look that says more clearly than words that she just doesn’t understand their problems “because she’s a girl.”

“We discuss these things,” said Holts, a single mother of five: three daughters, plus Al, 12, and Abram, 10. But at times she wonders what advice to give them. “I don’t think like a man. I don’t know how a man would think.”

For the Holts brothers--like countless other boys--life without their dad has been tough. Since their parents divorced a year ago and their father ended up in prison, the boys have acted up in school and, their mother said, they hunger for male companionship.

But as Father’s Day approaches, scores of such boys are waiting to be matched with Big Brothers who can fill the void left by absent dads. Since March, Catholic Big Brothers of Los Angeles has had more boys like the Holtses on waiting lists than they have volunteers who can take boys to ballgames and help them through tough times.

That probably marks a first for the 70-year-old organization, said Karen-Alicia Robertson, director of volunteer recruitment.

“Unfortunately, it’s an ongoing trend,” Robertson said. As of the end of May, the group had only 231 boys matched with Big Brothers--and 249 on the waiting list. Fifty of the boys on the waiting list live in the San Fernando Valley.

It could be a year or more before the Holtses are matched with Big Brothers the way Christopher and Kevin Sanchez of Woodland Hills were matched more than a year ago.

In the meantime, Vanessa Holts worries about her sons. She tries to fill the void by taking them to Magic Mountain or out fishing, but it is just not the same.

“They see themselves surrounded by women,” she said.

The boys have found some outlets. They have an impressive basketball and baseball card collection. Al has a telescope, and Abram, after discovering Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong, wants to learn to play the trumpet. Abram also has an interest in art.

But their mother worries, especially with Al about to become a teen-ager.

“If I don’t get someone to help him, he’s going to get in trouble,” she said. “He knows it. He even said so.”

Christopher, 10, and his 7-year-old brother, Kevin, are among the lucky ones who have been assigned Big Brothers, Peter Doyle and Mike Parente, who have become part of the Sanchez family.

Doyle’s first trip with Christopher was to Dodger Stadium, after Doyle had been told Christopher was a quiet, shy kid.

“Ten minutes into the ride, he started talking,” Doyle said. But it still took about five or six months to build trust. A trip Doyle took to Europe was the turning point: He sent Christopher post cards from every city he visited. When Doyle returned, Christopher showed off a map on which he had been keeping track of his Big Brother’s travels.

“You do get to see the changes in them, even though they do not verbalize it,” said Doyle, who lives in Thousand Oaks.

Christopher has a keen memory, Doyle said, and that makes it even more important to keep promises to Little Brothers. They have built their relationship in Saturday outings to movies, playing pool and by learning a new word together every day.

“Peter’s always there for me whenever I’m sad or lonely,” Christopher wrote in an essay when everyone in his class was asked to bring in a person special in their lives. “Peter is like a second father to me. We do things together like my father and I did. Peter is really cool!”

Doyle and Parente, who is matched to Kevin, show up for as many Little League games and school plays as they can.

“I’ve learned to discipline myself to do it,” said Parente. “Once I get there, I’m glad I did it.”

And, even though he is not Kevin’s father, Parente said he cheers “as long and hard as any other parent. . . . I would say, this is the best thing you could do--short of having your own children--to make a difference in this life.”