It's Better to Build Boys Than Mend Men

by: Eddie Suttles

Local author S. Truett Cathy is an entrepreneurial legend, Sunday school teacher, philanthropist, iconic business founder and president, and doer of good works. He also invented the chicken sandwich as we know it, having turned the humble family-run restaurant, The Dwarf House in south Atlanta, into the regional Chick-fil-A restaurant chain.

In his book ‘It’s Better to Build Boys Than Mend Men’, the businessman turned author draws on his decades of experience as a business leader, dad, foster granddad, and Sunday school teacher and distills them into a folksy and faithbased code for raising troubled youth.

In this small, inspirational tome, Cathy addresses the need to help boys and young men from dysfunctional, distressed and broken homes that may be on their way down the wrong path of bad life choices. Cathy’s recommendations are liberally and unapologetically sprinkled with scripture and include many of the most oft cited recommendations coming from both professionals and ordinary people.

Cathy emphasizes the need to teach boys and young men the importance of respect as a two-way street, and exhorts adults to be just that— adults—and not just try to be another buddy to the child. Each chapter emphasizes another character to be instilled—trust, generosity, common sense, choosing the right crowd, stability, and the importance of having a good name.

Some readers may find Cathy’s message too simple, or even a little proselytizing. Given his encouragement of instilling in young people a proper respect for authority and an understanding of what it means to be accountable for one’s own actions, some readers might even accuse him of being a little out of step with modern youth. Many a modern youth certainly would.

In his book, ‘It’s Better to Build Boys Than Mend Men’, S. Truett Cathy simply wraps up in the common sense language of a hugely
successful self-made business man, folksy Sunday school teacher, and person of conviction (his restaurants are STILL closed on Sunday), what child psychologists, teachers and social workers have been saying for decades.

In calling for responsible and caring adults to intervene on behalf of young men from broken homes and instill them with a code of ethics to help them become healthy men, Cathy might even be seen as being a bit too much like “Mr. Rogers” in his thinking. Then again, what better compliment could someone ask for?