The Alumni Connection: Living the Boys Ranch Legacy
Joshua Daughrity, author, editor, entrepreneur and proud graduate of Boys Ranch in 1997, took a reflective journey through time and recounted the years he spent growing up on campus.
“I still to this day call Boys Ranch my home,” he said.
His connection with Boys Ranch didn’t end with graduation; it extends today to a network of over 700 alumni connected in their local communities and through the internet. With the help of social media, they’ve built a virtual brotherhood, sharing their lives, and supporting each other.
“I talk to some of the alumni more than I talk to my own family,” he said.
More than just the alumni, he’s kept in touch with staff members who left their mark on his life. “A lot of those men were early examples of the man I am today. Without them, I wouldn’t be me,” he said.
Joshua’s time at Boys Ranch wasn’t just a chapter; it was a life-changing experience that set the stage for his future.
Arriving at Boys Ranch in 1992, after a series of family tragedies that caused constant relocations for him and his brother, Joshua found stability and purpose.
In his first written work, an autobiography titled, I Won’t Be Shaken, Joshua dedicates three chapters to the experience of coming to Boys Ranch.
“People have told me when they read my first book, that the first several chapters of my childhood were like The Wizard of Oz, where the before part was in black and white, and when I started describing the Ranch, I describe it in color, including the smells, sights and sounds,” he said.
He went on to be involved in various activities, including sports, the yearbook, and Boys Ranch’s very first group of cowboy poets.
“I was actually able to be myself,” he said, a luxury he hadn’t experienced before.
“If I could take anything away from it, it was the chance to get out of a very toxic childhood full of abuse and neglect and give me the space and time to figure myself out,” he shared, a sentiment that carries into his present-day activities running his own publishing company.
About five years ago, Joshua began his literary pursuits with his autobiography. The original motivation behind the book was to ensure that his own children knew his story.
“I didn’t want them to go through the same life I did,” he said, explaining that he had lost his father when he was only 8, and his mother at 13. However, the act of finishing his 95,000-word book changed everything.
“For the first time in my life, I actually did something that would stick around after I was gone,” he said, claiming that the work provided him with a sense of self-respect and self-love that had been previously missing.
Joshua credits Boys Ranch for instilling in him the determination to finish what he starts, a lesson learned during senior-year goal-setting classes.
The impact of those classes resurfaced years later, guiding him through the discipline required to complete projects and pursue his passion for writing.
Joshua writes under the pen-name Joshua Loyd Fox, using his mother’s maiden name. He has gone on to author five more books and founded a company, Watertower Hill Publishing, to assist others in publishing their stories. The name is a nod to his home, Boys Ranch.
“When it was warm enough, every weekend I had any amount of time, I would climb up the hill by the water tower. I went out there about two years ago and did a video from up top, and my spot is still there,” he said.
“I write in my book that on top of Water Tower Hill is where I became a man. Every man has something like that in their early teen years. You either have a person, a place, or a thing like a job. Something that truly turns you into who you’re going to be for the rest of your life.”