It was hard not to notice the 8-year-old boy across the street who stormed in and out of his own house. The boy, a neighbor of William Dunn in Lakeland, Fla., did it often enough that Dunn wanted to see if he could help.

“I wondered what was going on in his life, so one day, I decided to ask him,” said Dunn, 57. “He told me that he didn’t have a father, and I realized there might be something I could do for him.”