Father Flanagan's Boys' Home

Father Flanagan died far from Overlook Farm. Born on July 13, 1886, in County Roscommon, Ireland, and ordained in Innsbruck, Austria, in 1912, he went to Japan and Korea in 1947 at Douglas MacArthur's invitation to advise on the care of children under the occupation. In 1948 he traveled to occupied Austria and Germany to review conditions there, and on May 15 he died of a heart attack in Berlin, aged sixty-one. He is buried in the Dowd Memorial Chapel at Boys Town. In 2026 Pope Leo XIV declared him Venerable.

What the plaque says

Father Flanagan's Boys' Home (The Original "Boys Town") Boys Town was founded as a home and school for homeless, abandoned, neglected or otherwise under- privileged boys, regardless of color or creed, by Father Edward J. Flanagan (1886-1948) on December 10, 1917. The first Father Flanagan's Boys' Home at 25th and Dodge Streets in Omaha, Nebraska, sheltered five boys -- three from the Juvenile Court and two homeless newsboys. On October 17, 1921, Father Flanagan bought Over- look Farm outside Omaha, nucleus of today's Boys Town campus. From here thousands of Boys Town residents have gone on to become productive citizens in all walks of life. The philosophy of Boys Town is summarized in Father Flanagan's words: "Our young people are our greatest wealth. Give them a chance and they will give a good account of themselves. No boy wants to be bad. There is only bad environment, bad training, bad example, bad thinking." Boys Town Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Malcolm X Birthsite — 8.7 mi
  The North Omaha lot where Malcolm Little was born in May 1925 and his family was driven out by the Klan, saved by Rowena Moore and now planned as a cultural center.
• Joslyn Art Museum — 9.4 mi
  Omaha's free art museum, a 1931 Art Deco memorial with two modern pavilions, and the keeper of Karl Bodmer's watercolors from the upper Missouri in 1833 and 1834.
• Winter Quarters and the Mormon Pioneer Cemetery — 9.8 mi
  The Latter-day Saint camp of 1846 to 1848 on Omaha land in what is now Florence, where hundreds died the first winter, and the cemetery and trail center beside it.
• The Durham Museum (Omaha Union Station) — 10 mi
  Omaha's 1931 Union Station, Gilbert Stanley Underwood's Art Deco depot for the Union Pacific, closed to trains in 1971 and kept as a city museum with its waiting room intact.

More markers nearby

• Lincoln Highway at Elkhorn — 4.3 mi
• Kobs Pioneer Cemetery — 5.8 mi
• Ak-Sar-Ben Field and the U.S. Air Mail — 5.9 mi
• Omaha — 6.1 mi