Bobby Gilliam’s recent decision to retire as president and chief executive officer of Waco’s Methodist Children’s Home is an occasion for both regret and hope. Regret that Gilliam is leaving an institution he has served for more than 30 years, and hope that the work he and his colleagues have done on behalf of youths serves as the foundation for new leadership.

Gilliam, 57, has served in the 120-year-old institution’s top spot since 2003, after a national search mounted by the Methodist Children’s Home board of directors ironically found its strongest candidate among one of their own, even though Gilliam at the time was serving as director at Mooseheart Child City and School in Illinois. Now he leaves the home as he battles Parkinson’s disease, which led him to go on medical leave late last year after undergoing surgery to slow the disease’s effects. He made the decision to finally step down late last month, though as of Tuesday no date had been set for his retirement.

Few of us really think much about the Methodist Children’s Home except when it’s suddenly enlisted to house, nurture and protect youths on some grand scale. We saw vividly reassuring evidence of that in April 2008 when the facility provided lodging for about 50 children, all younger than age 10, removed from a secretive, religiously oriented polygamist cult near San Angelo.

And we witnessed it in 1993 when 20 children were removed from the Branch Davidian compound about 10 miles east of Waco and sheltered at the children’s home where they received counseling and care for nearly two months.

“(The children) just need to know that they’re safe, secure and that we don’t know what the future holds for them right now,” Gilliam told Trib staff writer Erin Quinn in April 2008. “And you just have to work hard, real hard, at letting these children know that none of this is because of them.”

Tim Brown, Methodist Children’s Home vice president for community services, credits his colleague with transforming the way youths are treated at the home, from a custodial, doctor-patient setting to one that taps into the dynamic potential of each youth by sounding out what moves and inspires that child to leap beyond his or her circumstances.

“He’s pretty gifted at it,” Brown told a Trib editorial board member on Tuesday. “He gets down and talks to kids in such a way that it shocks them into reality and makes them aware of the circumstances of their life. And he’s very good at asking ‘why’ questions.”

We’re told that board members won’t make their next move till Gilliam makes a decision about his formal retirement date. We only hope that his successor, while continuing to serve as many as 1,400 youths, never shortchanges the individual energy and hope invested in each and every child.