Join the Movement: Father Peter G. Young Recruits the Leaders of Tomorrow

Father Peter G. Young built recovery programs across New York for people the system had given up on. In this short clip from The Slingin Podcast launch on Hoodz Radio, he isn’t looking back. He’s recruiting, and he’s talking straight to the next generation.

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Watch: “Join the Movement: Becoming Agents of Change”, Father Peter G. Young on The Slingin Podcast, Hoodz Radio.

Father Peter G. Young died on December 9, 2020, at age 90. Kay Bond recorded this conversation with him for The Slingin Podcast on Hoodz Radio.

In His Words

“He’s a winner, he needs to be challenged, so we can put the ball in his lap and let him run with it, or her run with it. They need to be able to be the leaders of tomorrow. So this is a recruiting kind of opportunity. We need you to be a part of it.”

Father Young is a lifelong sports guy, and it shows. He doesn’t talk about saving people. He talks about putting the ball in their hands. The person you might see as a problem, he sees as a winner who hasn’t been challenged yet. Then he flips it on the listener: this is a recruiting pitch, and you’re the one being recruited.

Passing the Ball

The phrase “agent of change” goes back to a Navy captain who challenged a young sailor named Peter Young. But this clip isn’t about where the calling started. It’s about where it goes next. At eighty-five, Father Young writes plainly that he can’t start over, and that somebody else has to pick up the work.

He also knows exactly who that somebody can be, because he watched it happen for decades. In his programs, the people who came in broken often became the ones leading the room. He calls them “wounded healers,” former clients who got clean and stayed on to guide others into recovery. Some started as inmates in prison treatment programs. Some, in his telling, went back as counselors into the very places where they had served their time. That’s the ball-in-your-lap idea, lived out.

From the Memoir

His memoir Fifty Years Young keeps coming back to the next generation.

From Chapter 40, “Gratitude to God for the Journey,” he asks a hard question about young people today:

“What has happened to the spirit of young people coming out of school with high ideals of giving back? Today everything seems to stress self-seeking goals. The ‘me’ factor is in the ascendant.”

But he doesn’t stop at the complaint. Later in the same chapter, he hands over the mission:

“It’s up to the future leaders to accept the challenge and the call to be agents of change.”

From Chapter 39, “Happy to Look Back on the Winners,” he explains where his “winner” language comes from. It started in the prisons, where giving inmates real duties made them “part of the solution.” His proudest example is Tyler Tice, a sought-after New York City basketball player who, by Father Young’s account, lost about twenty years to prison and addiction, then spent the rest of his life helping others. Tyler founded the Albany Tenants United Association, ran for the Albany Board of Education and served on recovery boards. The chapter ends with a line that could caption this clip:

“It all comes down to getting them to accept the hope of being a winner.”

And back in Chapter 40, he describes how that hope spreads in a group session, one story at a time:

“As one tells a success story, the others in the group listen and begin to hope: ‘If that person can do it, so can I.'”

Why It Matters Now

Every movement either recruits or dies. The Legacy here is real: a priest who spent decades turning people in jail cells and detox beds into leaders, mentors and advocates. But a Legacy that stays in a book is just history. It turns into a Movement when the next person picks it up.

That next person could be a young man coming home from prison who knows exactly what that walk feels like. It could be a woman with a few years clean who can look a newcomer in the eye and say, “I was you.” It could be a student with talent and no idea yet where to point it. Father Young’s point is that the ones who have been through it are often the best players on the field. They just need somebody to throw them the ball.

Recovery, reentry, rebuilding a neighborhood: none of that runs on one leader. It runs on a bench that keeps getting deeper. That’s what he means by a recruiting opportunity. He’s not asking for applause. He’s asking for teammates.

So are you in? Watch the full conversation with Father Peter G. Young on The Slingin Podcast at HoodzRadio.com, follow Hoodz Radio, and look out for 50 Years Young, our 10-part series on the life and mission of Father Young.

Respect the Legacy. Amplify the Movement.