In 1962, after three years of graduate school in Massachusetts, I returned to the south to teach French at a prestigious boys school in North Florida. Born and raised in the south as was my wife, we are products of 1950’s southern culture. During the first meeting of the faculty and administration the Chairman of the Board of Directors, a wealthy business man from the area began his welcoming speech by telling a demeaning racist joke.

When I was twenty-five and just out of graduate school I served as chaplain to an assisted living facility. It was 1963 and we called them “old folks homes” back then. The “old folks” I visited, counseled and sometimes buried made the passage of time real for me. Their stories of family and children, successes and failures also taught me the inherent value found in life’s small moments.