Making an impact: Eaton finds his calling working with children
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It was a long way from being the class clown of the graduating class of 1980 or a long-term Kroger employee, but something else caught his attention there and he’s never let go.
It took just one visit to the Northwest Arkansas Children’s Shelter – a home for children burdened by abuse and neglect – about nine years ago for him to realize his life’s work.
“I just wanted to go visit it and see what I could do to help kids and see what their needs were. When I came here and visited, there was no doubt this was where I needed to be, so I asked them for a job,” Eaton said from his post at the shelter.
Eaton started working there part time initially and became the shelter’s executive director almost four years ago. Today, he is earning public accolades for being empathetic toward the children. In September, the local regional newspaper extensively profiled Eaton, highlighting his work.
The work is anything but easy. It makes him angry sometimes and is emotionally draining. But he said he finds encouragement from making a difference for just one child. He reminds himself of those goals every day during his half-hour drive to and from the shelter, which is located near Bentonville, Ark.
The 20,000 to 30,000-square-foot shelter provides emergency services, education programs and counseling services, including crisis intervention.
Eaton’s job is mostly to do fund-raising, engage in public speaking activities and make connections so those things get done. As tough as those things can sometimes be, it’s clear his purpose remains true to the children.
“As much as I know, the kids need me and the people who work to care for them, it is emotionally exhausting to see the children being sexually or physically abused or neglected in so many ways – to just see all the pain and suffering that these kids go through,” he said.
“They have been removed from a bad situation and I’m glad they have, but so many times, the kids feel they’re the ones being punished and the parents are the ones getting off.”
Eaton sticks to his mantra that he is to make a difference for just one.
“I tell everybody that I believe that this is where God wants me to be, so that makes it easier. The drive to work gives me time to prepare myself to be able to deal with it each day. And then my drive home each night gives me a chance to cry, to scream or to vent. And that gives me the opportunity to go back the next day and realize that I’m needed here to make a difference,” he added.
He is indeed a long way from home and is a changed man, but he remembers easily how he ended up in part, doing what he does.
“There’s no doubt that many people in McMinnville have inspired me, but I would go as far as to say it was Duane Gibe,” Eaton said of the then-youth minister at Cornerstone Baptist Church.
Family, of course, is also important and Eaton said he was always encouraged by them. And to that end, Eloise Eaton said while she didn’t always foresee her son working in social work, there were hints.
“When he was in high school, he started working at Kroger and worked there for a good long while and then when he went to Arkansas to go to school, he was going into youth ministry,” she said. “He always loved children and liked animals. Looking back, I can see him going into something like that, but when he was younger I didn’t foresee it.”