We paid the families a stipend for having the student for probably about six weeks, so that helped buy our food. In Detroit and the other stays that was not an issue but for Appalachia that was very necessary. I remember sitting there and they said, “Well, what would you like to have? I’m going […]

What was unique, we didn’t visit four different areas of the country and observe people, we lived in homes. And so that was, I think, the real key or trick to this whole thing was we were instantly immersed into a family and a community in an area. Sometimes accepted, sometimes maybe not accepted right […]

It was in Tennessee, Gump Spring Mountain, outside Spartacus, Tennessee. I was living with a family, Grundy and Mary Young, and the whole mountain, this small mountain outside Spartacus, was populated with the Young family. And Grundy, who was maybe 42, and his brothers had started a small dairy operation. They made their livings through […]

I remember in Kentucky going to a settlement house or a school and this assistant principal came up and said, “Are you a social worker or are you something like a social worker?” Actually he didn’t tip his hat. He said, “Are you a social worker?” and I thought if I said something to that […]

I was really bummed by the time I got done with Appalachia. I mean it was boring. It was raining the whole time. I was living with a disabled, retired coal miner and his wife. We were doing nothing. They had an old black-and-white television set and it was almost surreal to be watching President […]

I lived in eastern central Tennessee, little tiny town. The people I stayed with didn’t have a shower. The father he’d been a coal miner and he’d had his leg badly broken, crushed and due to the lack of medical care they’d left the cast on for a really long time and his leg atrophied. […]