Mark Sipple ’78: Helping Lost Teens Find Their Way

By Karen Sharpe

The teenagers who end up at Malley Farm Boys Home in Somersworth, N.H., are the lost boys of the New Hampshire seacoast: their families are shattered—and they are at risk of succumbing to drugs and crime.

If Mark Sipple ’78 had his way, they would all discover what it means to trust, to feel confident and to dream. But Sipple, executive director of the residential program, knows such ambitions are impossible. With every success story of a Malley Farm boy who graduates high school and goes on to have a career and family, there is one of a boy who does end up in jail, or worse.

“I have very highs and real lows,” Sipple says. “You have to be able to deal with that mixture, and it makes the successes so much sweeter. It gets you thinking how mysterious life is and how hard it is to make sense out of it all. Every day, we’re just trying to bring new hope and vision and self-esteem to someone’s life.”

Sipple, 50, has spent half his life dedicated to showing the most disillusioned, disadvantaged boys that not only is there hope for a better life, but that it is within reach. Sipple found his calling 25 years ago at the then-fledgling Malley Farm Boys Home following his return to the United States after a three-and-a-half year stint in Honduras with the Peace Corps.

“We’ve been through everything, every situation you could imagine—boys trying to kill themselves, fighting, stealing, running away,” Sipple says. “Society would say just lock them up, but we try to save them before that’s a reality.”

While such a challenging career could lead to burnout, Sipple has made it his life—essentially being on-call 24 hours a day, seven days a week—even sharing his home with boys on holidays. He credits his staff and his family’s support as key to his—and the program’s—success.

“Many of my co-workers have been here 15-to-20 years,” Sipple says. “We have an environment for the people I work with that is very family-like and would be hard to duplicate.”

At any given time, Malley Farm houses 12-to-17 teenage boys, providing them with a stable home-like environment, along with educational, vocational and coping skills. Hundreds of boys have passed through the program since its beginnings, and many have returned to offer gratitude and thanks.  

It was at the College that Sipple found his idealism and his mission to help others.  
“At Holy Cross, I was really able to move in the direction of my dreams,” he says, “and the new generations seem to be reaching out to find something special in this world as well.

“It’s great to see students look beyond themselves to their less fortunate neighbors,” he continues. “We don’t all have equal shots in life, and for a lot of people it’s a miracle that they are surviving. Holy Cross students realize that. And it opens them up to the bigger picture of the world.”