In March 2007 I shared with you my sense of connection between my mentors, Al and Alice Boothby, and Bill McIntosh, a participant in The Starfish Fund. What I did not give you was the complete picture of why we created The Boothby Institute, named for the Boothbys, as a permanent home for The Starfish Fund. The reason is simple. While we wanted a non-profit home for our “leg up” program, we want to accomplish more, much more. Perhaps a little additional history will complete the picture.

It is difficult to say how my life might have turned out without the Boothbys’ influence. Although very bright and always interested in scholarly pursuits, they were doers. Once having understood an issue, they wanted to be active in its solution. In my senior year of high school, Mr. Boothby made it possible for me and another classmate to spend six weeks at Palmer Memorial Institute as exchange students. So that we would understand a little better the environment we were about to enter and its relationship to the “white” world, during the two day, twenty hour trip from Millbrook, New York to Sedalia, North Carolina, Al would only stop where people of color were welcomed. Howard Johnson’s was out – no people of color worked or ate there. While there were adequate alternatives in the northeast, as soon as we crossed the Mason-Dixon Line, restaurants and service stations were segregated. If allowed at all, people of color were often made to sit in designated areas. Bathrooms were often “out back.”

My roommate at Palmer was Woody Odum, the Captain of the basketball team. I traveled as often as I could with the team to all Negro high schools throughout the state. Conversations about “what was going on with the white kid” were common. In Mt. Airy, the model used to create the mythical home to “Andy of Mayberry,” the buzz was particularly strong. Woody simply said, “Just sit and listen.” White kids don’t come here. The only white spectators are college recruiters. Because I liked it there, I often sat in the back of the bus. One night in the same instant I realized that I was the only person on the bus not of color and that the difference was, I had chosen to sit where I did. Rosa Parks became crystal clear in that instant. There were no people of color on television or in magazines other than Ebony and now I knew why.

We watched from a clothing store for people of color, across the street, as Woolworth’s was desegregated. Mr. Boothby had warned us extensively not to participate in the demonstrations, for it might get in the way of plans for the school. Time magazine reported about one of the demonstrations I witnessed and said that the protestors were rowdy and disruptive, justifying the use of force. I had seen nothing but order and quiet protest. When I wrote to challenge the editors’ report, their response was that even reporters were entitled to editorial license.

The Boothbys were interested in our experiencing the real circumstances, not a picture painted with a point of view. At the time, in unwell and unenlightened places in the world there were questions about whether people of color were capable of inspired academic work. When I returned to New York, we wrote a grant to the Ford Foundation that became the Palmer Summer Program, a year later, one of the pilots for Upward Bound. The fact that that program was based on creating inspired environments, where ownership and responsibility were a given, was directly the result of the Boothby’s work at Palmer. It was clear that the capacity for learning was present in every youngster, the question was access. In that first summer, the average I.Q. rose 17 points. Not supposed to happen, according to experts.

So if you are going to create an organization that is about understanding and doing, I’m not sure we could pick a better name than The Boothby Institute. Its purpose is to create and provide resources (tools) for individual and institutional excellence by providing participants the opportunity to experience ownership and responsibility in a climate of empathy and loving-kindness. There are four primary areas of concern we intend to address.

In Education

Our interest is not simply in understanding the current morass in public education around the world, but to provide vehicles for its dramatic transformation. There is considerable evidence that we can now define inspired teaching. If we are able to define it, why do we find it so hard to recreate it at will? Would it be so difficult to create environments where young people achieved brilliantly and knew that their worth in the world was not connected to test scores? Why is it not possible to make every classroom a nurturing, result-producing environment? Do we not care enough? Do we not see the connection to the results people produce in their adult lives? Are we not willing to fight policies or unions or spend money in order to produce the results? Do we want kids who all know the same thing or ones who see themselves as responsible for their own education?

Violence

The kind of violence that happened at Virginia Tech is completely understandable. Why is it so difficult for us as a society to accept that violence comes from violence? What needs to happen so that people understand that each second is either a positive contribution to a person’s development or a detriment to it? Is it that we are afraid that we have some responsibility in the matter?

Incarcerating People

How is it that the richest nation in the world has the highest rate of incarceration of its citizens? Could it be that everything we think we understand about recovery and reclamation of lives is applied almost no where within the prison system in the United States? How is it we think we can punish people into wellness? Why is it that we continue to confuse who people are with their behavior?

Poverty and Disease

As a country, we spend 3/10ths of 1% (one percent) or .003 of our Gross National Product (GNP) on all humanitarian aid outside the boundaries of the United States. It certainly is not because we do not have the money. Jeffrey Sachs in The End of Poverty says it will only take .007 of the GNP to solve the problem worldwide. Could it be that we are not interested? Is it possible we do not see ourselves as connected to these people? Is it possible we believe that even with the support of leg-up funds, these people cannot solve their own problems?

We believe there is a tremendous amount of work to be done. We will continue to use and develop further the programs developed by Access. We also intend to explore new approaches to bringing these issues to solution. It is, and has never been our intention to “work on” these problems; it is our intention to participate in their solution.

Some people I have known for a long while and whose opinions I trust say that I (we) haven’t been clear in making it known that your support is absolutely critical as we begin this venture.

WE

NEED

YOUR

ASSISTANCE

(MONEY, TIME, THOUGHTFULNESS)

The success of all these programs will depend in large measure on you and a hundred of your closest friends. If you believe that people knowing that they are loved, valued and that the capacity for all things resides within them is critical to us solving our greatest problems, please share this work with others.

It is through you that others will learn what they can do. Everything has a ripple effect. My meeting the Boothby’s in the 1960’s led me to Bill McIntosh in 2005. And somehow you got connected with us and receive this monthly newsletter. If you haven’t already, please take some time to visit The Starfish Fund website (thestarfishfund.com) and consider making a contribution, knowing that your contributions support The Starfish Fund and its participants, the development of new avenues of access and influence in the areas of education, the end of violence, incarceration and global poverty. And please share this site with everyone. Thanks for listening!