As we complete the second full month of the Barefoot School in Cité Soleil, Haiti, our staff administers tests – midterms, if you will – to the hundreds of students who comprise our student body. The original 100 children we planned to serve has swelled to as many as 300 and we keep our doors …
Category Archives: Heroes
Sportsmanship
Sportsmanship – fair and generous behavior and treatment of others – has been as important an aspect of my participation in athletic competition as an athlete and as a spectator as any other aspect of the game. In fact, good sportsmanship supersedes every other feature of the game in any sport and at any level. …
Love of Country
Fifty-one years ago – nearly to the day – I read Leon Uris’s novel of Berlin in the aftermath of WWII, Armageddon. I still retain that first edition though the dustcover no longer exists. I read the book over a weekend in the spring of my senior year at the United States Air Force Academy. …
First Responders Rising
Within hours of posting our plea earlier this week to support the Barefoot School – our learning center in Cité Soleil, Haiti – I received a call from Gail Megaloudis Rongen, Chairman of the Board of the Nicole Megaloudis Foundation. I am more than pleased to announce that Gail has authorized the Nicole Megaloudis Foundation …
Barefoot School
We have been supporting the Guepard Boxing Club of Cité Soleil (GBCCS) in Haiti since 2017. With our financial assistance in 2021, GBCCS was able to provide four meals each week to approximately 200 children after a 60-minute training session. Our farm project in the Arizona desert has ‘taken root,’ and is beginning to produce …
Who’s Gonna Do It?
In the ‘Gethsemane’ scene in the 2003 rock opera !Hero that considers “What if Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania?” Hero – played by Michael Tait – sings a powerful anthem that asks the question, “Who’s gonna do it, if I don’t step to it?” It is a formidable and intensely personal question. In my …
Clarence Oddbody on Each Man’s Life
Originally posted 12/20/2011… As Tom Shadyac professes in his film “I AM:” We are all connected. Each person on this planet is connected to every other man, woman and child, and it goes deeper still … all of creation is connected. Our connectivity mandates that we make good choices because even the least of our …
A Toy Story
As the Polar Express steams by Herpolsheimer’s department store – the England Brothers of my youth in Pittsfield, Massachusetts – the kids on the train stare in wonder at the store’s window displays filled with magical Christmas visions. “I want them all,” the ‘know-it-all kid exclaims referring to the abundance of extraordinary gifts and toys. …
Shoes
In America, we take many things for granted. In recent years, our sense of entitlement knows no bounds. About a year ago, my friend Justin posted this picture of four homeless Haitian boys sleeping on the streets in Cité Soleil with this commentary… “…are they the ones who make the choice to live like this?… …
No One Should Be Lost
As I prepared to park at Dwight’s company this morning, two young men approached me and asked in barely discernable English if I was “Sandy *****.” When I answered ‘no,’ they asked if I knew him. I noted a parachute logo on one man’s jacket. Since we stood a stone’s throw from SkyDive Arizona, I …