One man's mission to reunite fathers and kids

As a veteran college-football coach, Tony Pierce was used to figuring out problems. But he faced a new challenge when one player, Ronald "Rock" Dillon, told him he was aching because his dad wasn't around. Mr. Pierce made a life-changing decision: He gave Mr. Dillon's father a call.

"I knew I couldn't let him hear my anger and frustration," says Pierce, assistant head football coach and defensive coordinator for Alabama State University in Montgomery. "So I just said, 'Your son seems really down because he hasn't seen you in a while.' "

The young man's father, Ronald Stephenson, says hearing those words went deep. Mr. Stephenson, who had been in and out of prison, knew he had made mistakes. "It had gotten to the point where I almost gave up" contacting Rock, he says.

Right then, Stephenson made a commitment to be a better dad. That call changed Pierce, too. He realized those without devoted fathers didn't need mentors or advice. They needed their dads.

And so in 2003, Fathers in Touch was born – Pierce's organization aimed at reconnecting dads with their children of all ages. It's part of a growing movement to help more fathers be there – physically and emotionally – for their kids.

Pierce, himself a husband and father of three, has reunited more than two dozen dads with their children.

"Talking to Coach helped me give [my dad] a chance," says Dillon, a former player for the Charleston Sand Sharks arena football team who now talks to his father a few times a week. "I guess I was so mad because I loved him so much."

Of course, there are many good dads, Pierce notes. But the fatherhood issue he and others are tackling has grown dire. In 1960, 17 percent of children lived apart from their biological dads at any one time, says David Popenoe, author of "Life Without Father." Today, that rate has doubled, he says.

"Back in 1960, there were more fathers living with their children than probably at any other time in history, because of low death rates and high marriage rates," says Mr. Popenoe, who is co-director of the National Marriage Project. "Now we're almost at the opposite of that extreme."

The decline of marriage is one important reason that the number of father-absent homes is swelling, he says: "People are divorcing in large numbers and, even more importantly, having children out of wedlock."

In the 1990s, the nation started paying attention to the influence dads have on the family, says Roland Warren, president of National Fatherhood Initiative. "People found there was a link between some of the most intractable social ills and whether a child was growing up with a committed dad in their lives," he says.

As awareness began to grow about the issue, so did organizations to tackle the problem. Pierce's program is among those that aim to bring comfort and healing.

"What Tony is doing is trying to prepare men to reconnect with their fathers and deal with those father-wounds, even if their father is in the grave," says Carey Casey, CEO of the National Center for Fathering. "We identify what's wrong and say, 'Here's how you fix it,' " adds Mr. Casey, who has known Pierce since he was a high school coach.

According to the National Fatherhood Initiative, thousands of programs around the country – in sectors as diverse as business, faith, the military, corrections, and healthcare – help dads be the best they can be. Some programs focus on helping men who have young children be stronger dads.

But the way Fathers in Touch restores relationships by asking fathers to return to an adult son's or daughter's life is more unusual. In fact, it's the only such program that staff members at the National Fatherhood Initiative have heard of.

"This kind of program is very important," Mr. Warren says. "It's difficult to be what you don't see. Your history is linked to your legacy."

How Pierce's father played a role

The idea for Fathers in Touch has been growing all of Pierce's life, he says. His parents divorced when he was 7. Pierce is proud of the way his dad stayed involved with him and his siblings: He picked them up every weekend and took them to movies and the park and to visit family. But as he looks back, Pierce considers ways his dad struggled, too: Sometimes he drank too much and disciplined them too little.

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