Beau at 12If things go according to plan, sometime today, Andrew Youngs and his brother Jeff will walk onto a Little League field at Franklin Park in Purcellville, VA. They'll head for center field, where Youngs will open a container and scatter the ashes of his son Beau across the field, in memory of the happiest day of Beau's life.
Beau James Youngs, 22, homeless on the streets of Boston, died early on May 1 after being stabbed in front of the Walgreens on Boylston Street in the Back Bay. His alleged killer, Kevin James, also homeless, is scheduled for arraignment this morning in Boston Municipal Court.
His death was the final chapter of a short and mostly sad story that began even before he was born on June 21, 1987 - his alcoholic mother drank heavily throughout her pregnancy with him.
On Saturday, Andrew Youngs sat in his Boston-area apartment and shared his story - partly through his memories and partly through boxes full of photos and documents - the psychological assessments, report cards, even diary entries.
Youngs and his first wife adopted Beau and his younger sister Raina when Beau was six. Both were diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome. Things did not improve. Living with their mother and her boyfriend in a motel in Pocatello, Idaho, they were beaten and sexually abused, then put into foster homes and beaten and abused even more. At age 5, Beau was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and reactive attachment disorder, a rare condition, linked to an absence of parental bonding as an infant, that can lead to a lifetime of severe psychological problems.
"It is just a nightmare diagnosis," Youngs said. "It's probably one of the worst diagnoses you can get for a child."
The Youngs knew what they were getting into - fact sheets from the adoption service detailed the psychological and neurological issues both children had. But Youngs says he was unprepared for more than a decade of hell that ruined two marriages and cost him his job, his house and any chance at a relationship with his adopted children.
Both kids proved unable to accept or show much affection; Beau, who spent his early years with abusive adult men, never really trusted Youngs and was frequently aggressive toward him. He became "a compulsive liar" and, later, a frequent runaway. Youngs recalled how he got him fired from a job:
The family had moved to Arizona and Youngs was selling supercomputers to intelligence agencies when his first wife fled back to the East Coast. Youngs moved back to the East Coast soon after. Beau went to see her, then refused to go back to Youngs's house. When Youngs insisted he return, Beau called the local police department and said Youngs had molested him. Although cleared, Youngs said the investigation cost him his security clearance - and his job selling to the government.
Youngs did recall good times with Beau - who, despite his problems, managed a steady B average in school. Youngs eventually moved back to the East Coast as well, to a large house on a 12-acre parcel across a creek from Robert Duvall - and about 150 miles from where Beau and his mother lived. Beau would visit him there frequently, and they'd go crawfishing and tubing down the Potomac.
"It was great, so much fun," he said. "It was a great life. It was a Huck Finn kind of life. Everything was OK and I think for awhile he'd forget he didn't like me."
"But I could see him changing," he said. "He ran with a different element, more southern Maryland redneck than hanging with the affluent types {he'd grown up with]." Eventually, he stopped visiting, dropped out of marching band and started running away a lot. Youngs lost touch with him.
Youngs moved to Massachusetts to start anew - he bought a house and garden center in Lakeville. But with the economy souring, he lost both in bankruptcy and his second wife due to the stress of dealing with Raina. He moved into the first of two apartments in greater Boston.
What he didn't know was that Beau, too, had drifted north, and was living on the streets of Boston - he preferred panhandling along Boylston Street, in particular in the area across from the Pru. He had occasional run-ins with the law - in 2006, he was arrested in Randolph for stealing a car - and he couldn't keep from lying, telling people he'd served with the military in Iraq and expressing his anger at a friend for stealing $80,000 from him, when neither was true. But he also found a steady girlfriend, a homeless woman named Katie.
About two years ago, Youngs said, Beau - at Katie's urging - got his number and called him. The three of them had dinner at the California Pizza Kitchen in the Transportation Building in Park Square. Beau even dug up a suit somewhere to wear. Youngs brought with him a pile of savings bonds he'd bought in Beau's name long ago.
It was, Youngs said, a pleasant dinner. It was also the last time the two saw each other, although they did talk on the phone briefly, about a week later. Beau had no ID and without one, he couldn't cash the savings bonds. Youngs agreed to send him some money to buy one.
Late on April 30, police found Beau in front of the Walgreens on Boylston Street, with a serious stab wound. EMTs rushed him to Boston Medical Center, where he died 90 minutes later. Youngs got the call two days later - from his parents, who'd been contacted by his first wife after police called her. "I had to identify the body," he said.
Youngs had Beau's body cremated. He left with the remains yesterday for Virginia, for that Little League field. He explains:
When Beau was 14, he played center field on a Little League team that made it to the county finals undefeated. In the ninth inning of the championship game, with his team down by one, with two on and two out, Beau came to the plate. He got the perfect pitch. "He slammed it; he batted in the other two guys," Youngs recalled. "It was the happiest day of his life."
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