This memoir highlights some personal and significant learning experiences over the past seventy years, lifting these moments from each decade beginning in the 1940's. From World War II right up through the most recent decade, the author describes some of the experiences that have influenced, shaped and changed him. As an educator devoted to the pursuit and practice of lifelong learning, Dr Gruber is still at work helping others to pursue their own learning and development, whether as leaders of schools, or as teachers, parents or community activists. As someone committed to organizational development and school reform, Dr. Gruber is a proponent of planned change. He believes that one of the critical variables in the success equation is a "purposeful shared vision." It is evident to him that the Biblical precept in the Book of Proverbs had it right. "Where there is no vision, the people perish." For individuals and institutions to succeed and thrive over time, change is not only a prerequisite, it is an essential characteristic. Change is inevitable. The question is what kind of change would you like? What can you learn that will enable and empower the kind of change you want and who will you be as a result? "Our journey as lifelong learners reveals who we are as human beings, not simply human doings. When we speak of passion and purpose beyond ourselves, we need to know what the implications are and how we can realize more of our humanity, our own individual and collective purpose. I believe that this realization has enormous power to effect growth the is real and lasting." Preface p. vii
About the Author: My roots were in west central Ohio, and my education included a B.A. degree at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio; a Master of Divinity degree from Princeton; an M.S. degree in Child Development and Family Relations from Penn State University and a Ph.D. in Human Development and Family Studies, also from Penn State. I served as a Presbyterian minister in New Jersey and Michigan, left the institutional church in 1969, was a high school teacher in Michigan and Connecticut, and became the head of a K-12 school in Philadelphia in 1985. Following that introduction to the responsibilities of leadership, I served several more schools and was recruited in 1994 to start a new school in Albuquerque, New Mexico (http: //www.bosqueschool.org). For the past 15 years I have been a school consultant and for the major part of that time I was an associate with a firm in Boston, Massachusetts. I left there in 2007 to spend two years in London as a principal at The American School in London (http: //www.asl.org) and returned to serve as an interim head of school of that I founded in 1994. I contribute regularly to a blog http: //leadsandserves.blogspot.com/ and on the web site of the Santa Fe Leadership Center (http: //www.santafelead.org). I am the father of three children, stepfather to four and grandfather to twelve. My wife is my life partner, my able assistant and fellow traveler. A large, loving, extended family is a source of continuing delight and an occasional worry over one or another around some life change or landmark decision and how it will all come out. Sensing a lack of domestic ritual in today's culture we try and fill in the gaps where and when possible and affordable. We live on 6 acres in northern New Mexico in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Our peaceable kingdom includes a magnificent view across the Chama River to an 8000 foot peak, Sierra Negra, a menagerie that has included, at times, miniature donkeys, chickens, dogs, cats and some sleepy koi in a small pond. There are the usual wild critters that entertain us on the river and beyond led by bald eagles, a variety of ducks, Canada geese, other wild birds and the ever elusive and destructive beaver. The coyote chorus at night along with hooting owls lull us to sleep in a tranquil, remote, outdoor environment that is much to our liking. We are often on the road in Sugar II, our home on wheels both in the United States and Mexico. Travel is our drug of choice.