BOOK REVIEW: THE WONDER OF REAL PEOPLE -- ASPIRE TOWARD THE HIGHEST

BOOK REVIEW: THE WONDER OF REAL PEOPLE!

ASPIRE TOWARD THE HIGHEST: Bernie and Rita Turner and the Founding of Walden University by Wade Keller

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© December 29, 2010

Novelist Paul Theroux writes, “English autobiography generally follows a tradition of dignified reticence that perhaps reflects the restrained manner in which the English distance themselves in their fiction.  The American tendency in the 20^th century was to intrude on the life, at times blurring the line between autobiography and fiction.” 

Having myself written a memoir of my youth as a novel, I approached this book with some caution, mainly because I know the principals, not well, but I know something of their struggle.  Rita and Bernie Turner walked boldly into the jaws of academia in the self-conscious climate of the diploma mill industry common to Florida, and encountered all the havocs one might expect.  They had a legitimate idea of promoting social justice through education but with the naiveté that traditional education was ready to look beyond its walls to an alternative university without walls. 

Author Wade Keller, throwing caution to the wind, allows biography and autobiography to melt into a moving story of two ordinary people of extraordinary gifts who find each other in love and devotion, and discover their strengths are of a kind that not only move mountains, but also move minds.

*     *     *

THE ARCHITECTS OF WALDEN UNIVERSITY TELL THEIR STORIES

BERNIE TURNER

The Turner lives read like a novel of an irrevocable force fed by a common synergy.  Their families came from different sides of the Poland-Russian border but with a common culture in Judaism.  Their early separate lives were as New Yorkers, but otherwise the order and plan gave no hint of a consistent plot.

Bernard L. Turner tells his story first.  He was born July 24, 1926 of Jewish immigrants, David Turnovsky and Julia Gordon.  Home was a tenement house in the Bronx.  His father anglicized his name to Turner.  When he was three, the family moved to Washington Heights, a neighborhood adjacent to Harlem, where his home was above an Irish bar.  His father was a barber in the days before they had electric cutting shears.  Bernie was expected to be a barber, too, but he saw the sores and hairs underneath his father’s nails and vowed somehow to escape that. 

Never disrespectful of his parents, and inclined to humility, there was a nascent combativeness under his skin from the beginning.   He worked from the age of six to eight threading paper bags with a steel string for an outdoor food stand.  He earned five cents an hour.  His older brother discovered him working, and scolded the man who employed him.  This stuck with Bernie who didn’t know there was anything wrong with him stringing the bags in a cold basement with just a candle for light.  He thought since his parents knew that it was all right.

Bernie attended public school.  From the age of ten, he also attended Hebrew school, and had his bar mitzvah when he was thirteen.  It was at this stage that the hidden steel in his personality started to show.

Washington Heights had “gangs” of immigrants of many nationalities.  They protected their turf and as he says, they knew when to do battle and when not to do battle.  He would carry this instinct for survival forward.

When he was in high school, he chose the vocational rather than the academic program feeling he was not up to the latter.  Underestimating his abilities was a trait in his personality.  It didn’t help that he had poor eyesight and lacked corrective glasses.  Even so, he delivered the Herald Tribune newspaper in Harlem after school, and shied away from an apprentice course in barbering, graduating high school at age 16.

World War Two was underway.  He joined the Organized Reserves, and six months later, at age 17 in December 1943 was called up for active duty.  First billed for Cornell University and an engineering support program, an urgent need for infantry came up with him being sent to Fort McClellan in Alabama for basic training.

*     *     *

Reading Bernie’s account of combat in Patton’s Third Army caused me to recall John Dos Passos’s “Three Soldiers” and “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque.  War is hell and Bernie doesn’t romanticize his experience as he receives The Bronze Star and Combat Infantry Badge. 

We can feel the cold, the insufferable rain, sleet and snow as American soldiers trudge through France often with holes in the soles of their boots, wet sox, depleted rations, broken down equipment, chilled to the bone but constantly moving forward.  Bernie is amazed at one point to meet and talk to a two-star general at the front, thinking generals were always ensconced safely in the rear. 

There is humor in the pathos, camaraderie in a climate of fear and death, and then the shock of the war’s end, now acting as liberators.  When Bernie’s unit reached Dachau, he approached survivors of this concentration camp and they shied away.  He spoke to them in Yiddish and they were still apprehensive.  All had numbers tattooed on their arms.  He learned later they were all survivors of different families.  He writes, “At that time, I didn’t even know what the hell a concentration camp was.  In the barracks we would get a newspaper that was distributed by the Army, and it talked about the atrocities there.”

One night he grabbed a newspaper with a photo of dead Jewish bodies all lined up, and stormed into the basement looking for the German prisoners held there.  He said, “Warum?!” (Why?)  One of the German Waffen SS officer’s answered, “Propaganda.”

*     *     *

Bernie Turner at this point in his life was still a teenager, a boy who from the age of 17 to 19 had had to grow up fast to survive in the unreality of war.  He was coming home a man with a social conscience but with no idea as yet what it was orchestrating.  One could imagine what went through his mind.  Here was a Jewish boy, who saw members of his ethnicity, indeed, people of the region of his own ancestry stripped of their families, their lives, and their loves.  They were people of the Polish-Russian border towns, who had been sought out for extermination for no other reason than being Jewish.

Franz Kafka wrote “The Trial” to display the world of injustice. The book opens with one of the most powerful lines in all literature: “Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.” 

Bernie, who is inclined to understatement, says this of the German people of Dachau:

“It was interesting that either they were ignorant of what was going on themselves, or they were deluding themselves – or at least trying to create the impression that they didn’t know anything.  To the credit of the German people, [today] they have films about the atrocities in those camps, and they mandate that every young kid within a radius of ten or twenty miles of Dachau must come at least once to see that camp and to see that film.  That is an incredible thing for a society to do.”

*     *     *

THE SEED IS PLANTED

As Bernie and Rita Turner approach, evaluate and then deal with one hurdle after another, I thought how critical struggle is in development.  Without struggle there is little possibility of one’s essence surfacing.  One can only know the existence of that essence – not through dreaming or fantasizing or hero-worshiping  –  through struggle.  Struggle is personal.  It is intimate.  It is done alone.  There are no personal trainers or self-help books to displace struggle, or to persuade one that it does not exist or apologize for it in any way.  With struggle, one must embrace one’s fears, doubts, devils, and rise above them, sometimes even soaring, as struggle has wings if one would embrace it and fly. 

Bernie and Rita embraced struggle personally, individually, and then collectively to become a force to reckon with, but it would never have happened if they had not first embraced it, alone.

*     *     *

The United States would be a different place today had WWII not been followed with the GI Bill of Rights.  The GI Bill changed the culture, complexion and complexity of the country.  Chances are I wouldn’t be writing these words had I not received the GI Bill for my graduate education.  Bernie, like millions of other American veterans, was able to acquire a college education.  But first, he had to go back to high school as he had taken a “general diploma” rather than “college preparatory diploma.” 

His first job after graduating from Columbia University was as a buyer in ladies sweaters at Mays Department Store in Brooklyn.  His greatest pleasure was studying the people especially on Saturdays as hordes of women crashed through the door of the store. 

His next job was with the National Industrial Conference Board where he secured information from major industries regarding the cost of living index.  This gave him insight into how corporate society operated.  He was witness to workers being treated as business assets subject to being discarded or replaced at the pleasure of the corporation. 

This inclined him to begin graduate work at the New School for Social Research.  He was blessed there with professors who had escaped Nazi Germany, and was fascinated living in the midst of a time of violent social change.  It also proved a turning point when a professor asked if any student was interested in working as a business agent and organizer for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union.  Bernie was.

The union agent job involved interacting on the shop level with people, and organizing workers who were not organized into the union.  He discovered a knack for organization with the conflict resolution skills required of the job.  He writes, “For the first time in my life it dawned on me that I really could be persuasive in a very significant manner.  That might not have registered instantly, but looking back it was a turning point in my life.”

*     *     *

RITA

Rita Raisel Tumorinson was born March 7, 1931 of immigrant parents who came to America from the same region of Russia/Poland as Bernie’s parents.  Rita’s mother was born in Poland to a family that was very poor.  Her grandmother made boots and her grandfather tended an orchard.  They lived in a house of dirt floors.  Rita’s mother, Rose Rothstein, told of gazing at the fruit on the trees attended by her father hoping for the taste of one, but knowing it was not allowed.  In town, she spoke of having to step off the sidewalk into the gutter when a non-Jew approached.  In Poland, rabbis educated only boys.  Girls were not taught to read or write. 

When Rose Rothstein arrived in America, she lived with relatives, and found a job making wigs.  She couldn’t read or write.  She bought a blackboard and taught herself to read Yiddish and a little English. 

It was early twentieth century before WWI.  Benjamin Tumorinson, another young immigrant, went to work in a furniture factory.  In early 1917, he enlisted in the US Army and fought the Germans in France.  Once the war was over Benjamin left the military proud of his US Army service and honorable discharge. 

Instead of returning to the furniture factory, he opened a used furniture store.  Business boomed.  He met and married Rose.  They bought a house with wood floors and thought they were rich, and then the Great Depression hit.  They lost everything, the store and the beautiful house with the wood floors. 

Rita was born during this period.  There was already an older sister.  Her father worked long hours six days a week on Long Island, and only came home to the Bronx one day a week.  Rita took intense satisfaction from her father’s storytelling, which fed her creative verve. 

As a child, she went to evening union meetings with her parents where they sang songs in Yiddish eulogizing the work ethic, emphasizing their cultural heritage and the idea that good things happen to children who adhered to high work ethics.  An uncle who was a writer for a Jewish newspaper had in his wallet the famous quote:

“In Germany the Nazis first came for the Communists and I didn’t speak up because I was not a Communist.  Then they came for the Jews and I didn’t speak up because I was not a Jew.  Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.  Then they came for the Catholics and I was a Protestant so I didn’t speak up.  Then they came for me and by that time there was no one to speak up for anyone.”

It was a quote Rita would not forget.  She was an avid reader of such series as Judy Bolton and Nancy Drew, then True Confessions where she learned at the age of eleven something of the mysteries of life, subjects that were not discussed by her parents.

She was graceful and honed in the good looks and carriage of a natural beauty with brains.  Her older sister Marilyn became her mentor.  Marilyn received Abraham Lincoln High School’s highest award in bookkeeping, and went on to a successful career in accounting.  Rita followed suit demonstrating quantitative skills and discipline, no doubt influenced by her sister, as well as a valuable asset in the Walden University journey.

Rita’s favorite subject in high school, however, was history and international affairs as it brought the world to the doorstep of her mind.  She excelled as an honor student and was gifted as an independent thinker concerned with the welfare of others.  During WWII, Rita’s father built warships, while her mother monitored food stamp control.  Her father was part of the union’s effort to protect workers’ rights on the job, and beyond.  Rita writes, “My parents had a keen interest in not only what they believed right for the United States, but for the world as well.”  This became part of her mantra. 

*     *     *

The war over and high school behind her Rita announced to her parents she wanted to go to college.  It was 1949.  College and a career were incomprehensible to them.  She should be thinking of marriage and having a family.  Instead of college, she worked at Woolworth’s but college did not die.  Her boss there encouraged her to enroll in Brooklyn College, which in those days was free except for a $25 semester fee, provided you had good grades and could pass the entrance exam.  She worked out a plan to help support the family by being a full-time student and part-time worker.

*     *     *

Bernie and Rita Turner are inclined to an economy of expression in the telling of their story.  That said it is not difficult to imagine Rita’s enthusiasm for college, picturing her spending tons of hours at the Brooklyn University Library, or in the classroom bombarding her professors with questions, challenging them for empirical data.

What evolved from academia for Rita was a special interest in children of learning disabilities, children who were summarily labeled “retarded” and placed in classes for children of low I.Q.  She was surprised and disturbed by the many myths perpetuated concerning children of special needs without challenge.  Her drive to rectify this would become something of a paradigm shift in her work and approach to life.  She came to discover she had a discerning mind and took nothing at face value. 

Outside academia, she had a full social life with her work experience continuing in managing small offices and professional modeling.  She learned to be precise in her accounting practices and to continue the strong work ethic of her parents and her sister, Marilyn.  Meanwhile, she used her natural beauty as an asset to acquire modeling jobs.  She was coming to understand her power base. 

After college, she took a job teaching in a small private school for children of wealthy parents.  It was there she learned that exceptions were made for the wealthy as the school would rather tolerate poor performance than suffer a drop out.

She left that position for a school in Harlem, but declined when she saw how the school was run.  She accepted a position at an on Long Island.  No schools had been built during the four years of the war.   Classrooms were overcrowded.  This required innovative teaching, tutoring and curriculum planning.  Rita thrived.  She discovered her leadership and innovative skills and ability to handle the unanticipated.  “I loved every minute of it,” she explains.  Well that she did because it was like Bernie’s basic training in the army for the challenging years ahead to establish Walden University.

*     *     *

A FORCE OF TWO

We all know that life is filled with serendipity.  We can also recite how great empires have been built when certain people joined forces.  Walden University is such a story in that tradition.  The seed once planted in uncertain soil would defy the elements and grow into an alternative graduate learning institution expanding exponentially. 

That would miss the heart of the story.  This is a love story.  Where this story differs is that love found synergy to overcome one barrier after another.  Greed or gain, envy or jealousy is antithetical to love and to this story.  The focus from the beginning was social justice through an educational institution dedicated to that mission.  A force of two was driven by that love, love of each other, love of a common interest and objective, and love to leave their own footprints in the sands of time.

As electric as Rita was, Bernie was perversely shy.  But when she came by his table at a club, he pushed out a chair and said to this unknown beauty, “sit down,” and she did.  Several months later after they had been dating, he announced to her, “I told my mother that I was getting married.”  Rita said, “What?”   That’s how I found out that we were getting married.”  Doesn’t sound much like a shy person, does it?

Later Rita would say that she knew Bernie was an incredible leader, but didn’t know it.  She admired that modesty in him.  Rita encouraged him to go back to school to study law.  He said he didn’t have that kind of ability.  She remembers smiling to herself, “Oh, but you do.” 

She enrolled at City College of New York (CCNY) for a Master’s Degree in helping children with learning disabilities in reading.  After graduation, she became a reading specialist in the Long Island Centereach School District.  There her innovative approach was successful, but without adequate measuring instruments for reading disabilities.  This opened a whole new channel of personal discovery.  She was called on to develop a testing program to evaluate the effectiveness of basic pre-reading skills, then reading skills, and finally, New York State University at Stony Brook asked her to develop a program to enhance the potential for college freshmen coming from disadvantaged neighborhoods.  Professor Ralph Watkins asked her to design and implement the program, a major opportunity for one so young.

At the same time, she remained active in community action groups that discriminated against single parent mothers, or mothers with histories of drug abuse, or children on the basis of color or assumed learning disabilities.   

She mentioned the offer to her faculty adviser at Hofstra University where she was a doctorate student.  “Of course you shouldn’t take it,” the adviser said, “They should be offering that position to someone like me with more significant knowledge and college level experience.” 

On the way home, her car skidded on a patch of ice, flipped and threw her from the vehicle.  Glass was embedded in her skin, but otherwise she was okay physically if not psychologically.

*     *     *

Bernie, before he met her, had experienced how corporations were run, how profits took precedence over people, and how people were used and discarded indiscriminately as interchangeable parts in a giant corporate machine. 

Rita was hit with the broadside of academia where the politics of tenure and the infighting of childish adults become war games of professors.  The jolt of the near fatal crash woke her up to the emotional high she was enjoying only to have it come crashing down with severe suddenness from the calloused comment of her faculty adviser. 

Rita writes:

“In the midst of all that was going on I received an overwhelming offer I could not refuse.  Bernie noted that we had each successfully fought many battles and done innovative things, and that it was time for us to move on and encourage a younger generation and a larger force to replenish and fight for the social changes needed by our society.”

*     *     *

A DREAM IS BORN

The 1950s and 1960s saw Bernie and Rita honing their skills, Bernie now teaching at the college level.  Rita was showing her skills as an educator and organizer, administrator, accountant and executive.  Three children would grow up tall and straight like their parents, David, Amy and Tammy.  They would move to Naples, Florida.

Often glossed over in success stories is the journey.  The journey here tells the story.  Bernie learned something of what he was made as an infantryman in Patton’s Third Army on the Western front.  After graduating Columbia University, he worked on the National Industrial Conference Board, and saw how bureaucracy works.  At the New School of Social Research he was able to see the connection between his studies and his work as a union organizer in the garment district. 

When they moved to Long Island, he supported Rita in her work in civil rights, the United Nations, and such groups as SANE and Women’s Strike for Peace.

Noteworthy was Rita’s work on the Blaine Amendment for separation of church and state.  The Catholic Church launched an anti-Blaine campaign in Suffolk County in favor of a new constitution and abolishing the Blaine Amendment.  Suffolk County Township was 90 percent Catholic.  Rita and her group, however, prevailed.  The Blaine Amendment was not overturned.  She learned how to go into the den of the enemy and prevail.

*     *     *

Walden University was inauspiciously launched at Naples, Florida at the Cove Inn, where the first of four summer sessions were held between 1971 through 1974.

Florida, which is known as a diploma mill, looked to be having yet another one on the horizon.  Tom Morgan, Naples Bureau Chief for the Miami Herald did a story on Walden in 1971 with the headline, “Motel Ph.D.”  He would eventually change his tune and be a big supporter of Walden.

*     *     *

I’ve chosen in this review to concentrate on the two principals and how they evolved as individuals. Over half of the book is dedicated to this development, and I think, rightly so.  Bernie and Rita combined their strengths, and had the capacity to recognize and neutralize their weaknesses to face their adversaries with a solid front. 

*     *     *

It has been my experience that a small but significant segment of educators, often in elite positions, are vane and exaggerate their assets and hide behind their books and learning as if a carapace that protects them from self-discovery.  They assume the mantle of superiority and punish others not so handicapped.  Titles and honors, and attachment to esteemed institutions are considered their badges of authenticity.  They are a petty group, given to juvenile peccadilloes and dalliances while delighting in the insular protection of a world separate from the world at large.  If it is any consolation, it is as true in the corporate world, but such academics have more time for such exercise. 

Such academics hate change, social or otherwise.  They are true believers, who climb aboard the popular bandwagon of the times, legitimizing their status by writing books that document the ride.  It is unlikely such academics would threaten career status or reputation by entertaining ideas challenging the infallible authority of academia.   

Academia often promotes the idea of progressive education but only as a mantra, as the sad state of education demonstrates.  Education has remained essentially the same for more than a century.  Students continue to jump through the same hoops, are subjected to the same subjects, measured by the same grading system, the same academic progress in grades, the same requirements for college and advanced degrees, and the same ritualistic grind through the minefield of dissertation antics to produce what are called “scholars.”   . 

*     *     *

Bernie and Rita walked into this den of infallible authority with another view based on social justice in all its forms, but primarily based on graduate education that launches scholars, who have already done real work in the real world to enhance their skills to deliver more of a real punch to society in transition and limping badly. 

*     *     *

As you read the second half of this book, the first thing apparent is that Bernie is a team builder without ego.  He is centered with a working moral compass and cannot be thrown off stride.  The Turner’s realized to fulfill their dream of social justice they needed young minds with life experience to work towards that goal.  With only $15,000 in savings, they needed investors.  But as often happens, investors want to see a project up and running at full steam before investing. 

So, Bernie and Rita composed a two-page description of what they planned to do, ran off copies, addressed envelopes and mailed them to several thousand-school administrators across the country.  They received hundreds of replies.  One was from Harold L. Hodgkinson, a graduate of Harvard’s doctoral program.  He would prove instrumental.

The faculty grew with a similar component of well-established and successful academics from major universities. 

Summer sessions were held first in Naples, Florida and then several other places including university campuses.  A month residence was required with a set curriculum in which each doctoral student to qualify had to have a master’s degree and several graduate hours before attending.  Each doctoral student had an advisor with whom the student would stay in touch once the summer session was completed, and the student’s dissertation proposal approved with the research on it underway.  A student might require only one summer session followed by a year to complete the dissertation, but it was not uncommon for students to take several years to complete the doctorate.  Walden University treated every student as an individual, and measured the work accordingly. 

Bernie saw the big picture and had overall vision for a national university, while Rita excelled at administration, finance and admissions management, or the “nuts and bolts” of the operation. 

*     *     *

Bernie could see Walden University was quickly approaching an inevitable barrier.  The book reveals how difficult and yet comical the academic licensure process.  The accreditation is writhe with politics, pettiness, and posturing, which Freud has noted. 

Any school that has had to climb this mountain will appreciate the struggle Bernie and Rita experienced.  Neither of them had Ph.D.’s.  They recruited and hired key administrators with solid academic credentials.  They also attracted important industrialists to serve on the Board of Directors.  One benefactor, Howard F. Hunt, was an alumnus of Walden.  Then in 1991, a permanent home for summer sessions was found at the University of Indiana. 

Rita’s reliable administration and nurturing of students was paying off, but the true dividends came from her work in creating a system of guidance clearly understood by students with comprehensive measuring indices.  This work could stand up in comparison to any university.  Yet, the accreditation process wavered in the wind.   

*     *     *

The battle for accreditation was one that brought out the best in both Bernie and Rita.  By 1990, they had been fighting this battle for twenty years with an idea far ahead of the curve of alternate education and before the idea of on-line education was born.  Walden University was not meant to supplant traditional education, but to make available graduate education without all the hoops, and dog and pony shows that are a part of traditional institutional higher education. 

The book shows the struggle with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS).  Clearly, it expected a university to be a place and a space where students and faculty met, and where a comprehensive library for research was at that site.  Walden University had contracts with some 200-university libraries across the country, which was readily available to Walden students across the nation, library facilities greater than found at any Ivy League school.  Sample dissertations were chosen at random by SACS and found outstanding.  At one summer session, SACS interviewed ten students at random and found all had been awarded scholarships to other universities but had chosen Walden.  SACS had little affinity for Walden University, and so Bernie moved on.

He next turned his attention to California, where Dr. Anderson, Vice-President of Graduate Education at the University of Pennsylvania, headed Walden.  California accreditation followed with Walden being listed in the Federal Registry of degree granting universities. 

Walden strove for greater acceptance of its degrees among a larger body of states.  Bernie applied to Minnesota, and it sent a team similar to SACS to review Walden’s application.  The Minnesota team did a thorough job with the Minnesota Higher Education Coordinating Board granting Walden a license to award doctoral degrees in Minnesota in 1979.  It so happened that the North Central Association Commission on Accreditation and School Improvement (known commonly as the NCA) had recently accredited Union Institute and University in Cincinnati, Ohio, a non-traditional institution. 

Walden had attained licensing but not accreditation.  Bernie decided that the final stumbling block was that neither of them had Ph.D.’s.  Dr. Frederic Hudson of Fielding Graduate University was hired for the summer session in 1987.  In 1988, while Bernie was still president, NCA finally granted Walden candidacy status, a major step leading to accreditation.  Dr. Harold Abel, President of Central Michigan University was hired as president of Walden, taking a two-year leave of absence.  Accreditation followed by NCA.  Nevertheless, as author Wade Keller points out, Walden was still a freestanding non-traditional doctoral institution, and was proprietary in nature, an anomaly to the higher education accreditation system. 

*     *     *

Then, on February 23, 1990, President Abel received a call at his Walden office in Minneapolis, Minnesota that there were some irregularities, and that resubmission and reconsideration of the application was necessary.  Bernie and Rita saw it was the SACS all over again, delay after delay over the past 15 years.   President Abel said to Bernie, “”I think we should sue the bastards,” which they did.  On March 19, 1990, the commission reversed its earlier decision and granted accreditation to Walden. 

*     *     *

With accreditation, Walden grew so fast that a cap on enrollment at 15 percent per year was necessary.  Then Dr. Abel had to return to Central Michigan University after his two year leave-of-absence.  The new president was Dr. Glen Drake.  After being hands on and nurturing the idea of Walden from scratch, it had become difficult for the Turner’s not meddle with Dr. Abel, and now they found it doubly difficult to stay aloof with the new president.

In 1991, the Turner’s decided to sell and let their dream fly on its own.  They sold Walden to Don Ackerman a venture capitalist without quibbling over price or holding out in a bidding war.  Sylvan Learning Systems, Inc. purchased 41 percent of Walden University from Ackerman in 2001.  At the time enrollment was 2,000 students.  By 2003, enrollment was 8,000, and in 2009 it had surpassed 33,000.  Walden now holds two doctorate ceremonies, January and July, with summer sessions on both coasts with more than 4,000 graduates. 

*     *     *

This is a quintessential American story.  It is the manifestation of how an idea can encounter and overcome assumed insurmountable barriers.  It is a love story of two people who found each other in the lonely crowd and built a life together as well as a university.  It is a story of immigrant families who suffered much to arrive on the shores of the United States and settled in New York City.  There they worked hard and instilled in their children the values of industry and independence, and the heritage of their Jewish culture. 

Rita’s father fought in WWI as an American soldier and Bernie fought in WWII as an American infantryman.  It is the story of a family of three devoted children, David, Amy and Tammy, all college graduates and all leading productive lives, until David’s was cut short at the age of 34 in a freak accident in a remote area of Brazil.  There is a chapter reflecting each of the offspring in a family that has grown together in love against the current tide in contradiction of that trend.  It is love that has sustained the family through difficult times and love that carries them forward still aspiring to the highest in new projects such as the Florida Coastal School of Law.

The book is graced with pictures, memorabilia, documentation, and appendices that trace this journey.  It is a book every educator should peruse for its insight, temerity, persistence, dedication, determination and good cheer.  My one regret is that it lacks an index and bibliography.  I look forward to its sequel.

*     *     *