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Appendix A The Passion for Service: Where Does It Come From? We think that authors cannot be separated from their words, and our backgrounds provide important context that enhances the picture of servicelearning presented in the book. At the same time, we want the main focus of service-learning to be on the activity, not on us. We have resolved this dilemma by providing a bit of autobiography in this appendix, where it can be easily bypassed but is nevertheless available to those curious about how we arrived at our passion for service-learning. Bob Kronick FAMILY LIFE, 1943–1961 Growing up in Sarasota, Florida, I lived in a home that encouraged service to the community. This service took various forms. The one I remember most strongly is my father helping black families buy homes outside the black ghetto, called Newtown. I remember families coming to our house with cash on Sunday afternoons and my father giving them money orders to pay their house payment. Many of our neighbors voiced surprise that my parents invited these people into our home to sit at our kitchen table while completing these transactions. There was always lemonade or iced tea in a large glass pitcher with flowers on it, 1950s kitsch. My mother helped one of these families legally adopt two children; she was a legal secretary. Newtown was a place where, in my teen years, we went to play basketball. Black kids did not come to the playgrounds where white folks played. On summer Sunday afternoons we played baseball at Payne Park, winter home to the Boston Red Sox and later to the Chicago White Sox, with some especially fine black baseball players. It was there that I learned to hit a curve ball from an ice truck driver named Pepper Martin. My formative years growing up in south Florida were fun, and I was exposed to cultural diversity at an early age. This exposure taught me the importance of appreciating and understanding those who are different from 154 Appendix A me. Our immediate neighbors were first-generation Italians. Mrs. Debernardi grew up with Pope Pious XII. She wrote the introduction for an eleventhgrade paper on Dante’s Inferno for me in Italian. I’m sure that got me the A. Her son suffered from some mental illnesses, and when he went away for treatment, we pitched in to help pay for his care. This exposed me early on to how people handle their problems in living. Our family experienced problems such as the premature death of children, family estrangement, and my father losing his job. These events helped bring us together. One of our other neighbors was a first-generation Cuban who worked for the Ringling Brothers Circus and trained the gorillas. Greeks who lived down the street took us to Tarpon Springs on Easter. I have thought about these experiences over the years but until now haven’t really reflected on them and how they shaped me into becoming a social psychologist, a professor, and a teacher of servicelearning . The years 1943–1961 were a great time to be a kid for me. After all, I was not a person of color or a person from a lower socioeconomic background. These early experiences had an effect on me, but they lay dormant for many years. It was not until my first year of graduate school that I moved from the world of thoughts and ideas to the world of action in the area of service-learning. MY PARENTS My father died on July 9, 1984. I believe the town of Sarasota, Florida, wept for him and that his silent grace and dignity were missed by that community. He was truly a caring person, and I didn’t realize how much his influence played a role in my becoming a service-learner and a helper until many years later. My mother also had strong influences in this area, as she was the one in a family of eleven who, whenever something went wrong, was always called upon to fix it. I was very involved in my father’s dying even though we were eight hundred miles apart. He did not choose to come and live with me during this time. He wanted to die in his own bed. My mother had died eighteen months earlier. They were married for forty-nine years. I learned from many people while he was dying how much he had helped them. Some of these people...

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