CALLICOON – Peter “Frenchy” LaFleur has spent a lifetime helping young adults succeed.

In the 1980s, just a few years after the Delaware Valley Job Corps Center in Callicoon opened, LaFleur joined the staff as an instructor.

As the rec life director he remembers taking kids fishing on the nearby Delaware River and many basketball games he organized for his students against local town teams.

But what really stands out during his 40-year career with the federally-funded program is the difference Job Corps made in so many of his students’ lives.

“The program serves young socio-economically disadvantaged youth,” he explained. “You have to meet poverty guidelines to enroll. These are people who don’t have the resources for college or trade school.”

LaFleur said Job Corps offers these young adults “an opportunity to make something of their lives and become productive citizens.”

Just recently he and his wife, Terri, who was also once an instructor at Job Corps, heard from two of their former students.

“One of my wife’s students told us that she now has a Master’s in Social Work, bought a new home in Northern New Jersey and if it wasn’t for Job Corps it wouldn’t have happened,” LaFleur said.

Another success story came from Roberto Gonzalez, who is now 48-years-old and lives in Georgia.

“He has a beautiful home and a new pickup in the driveway,” LaFleur said. 

Roberto said, “If it wasn’t for you this never would have happened.”

That is what Job Corps is about for the LaFleurs.

“This program was always about helping the kids,” he said.

LaFleur spent the last 14 years of his career as the Center Director at four different Job Corps so he knows full well the challenges of making sure the federal funding was always in the National Budget.

“I used to go to Washington, D.C. every year and lobby,” he said. “We always had advanced warning in March. I knew what they [the elected representatives] were thinking.”

While he was working in Massachusetts at the Grafton Job Corps, LaFleur would visit with Senator John Kerry and Congressman Jim McGovern.

“We would bring real life Job Corps kids to their office to tell them their stories,” LaFleur said. “It’s a program that always had its bi-partisan support.”

LaFleur also remembers Job Corps’ struggles through his four decades in the industry.

In the mid-90s there was a Congressman who tried to shut down the program.

“Eric Lerner, the Center Director at Red Rock at the time, started a lobby,” he said. “It [the attempt to close down Job Corps] got shut down. The budget was cut, but not eliminated.”

If the Delaware Valley Job Corps and the entire program does succumb to the President’s budget proposal, LaFleur said, “It is going to hurt the economies of the communities where they are located.”