Papa

Dear Maria,

I wish to nominate Dante Germanotta for a posthumous Outstanding Alumni of North Central award for the year 2006. This will be the 55th year of his graduation from North Central. You suggested earlier that this might be an appropriate year to make the nomination.

Dante represents the highest example of the kind of dedicated service to a wide diversity of his fellow human beings, the kind of dedication and service that North Central College encouraged and prepared students for in the 1940’s and 1950’s, that which is still instilled in its students today. During the tumultuous civil rights struggles of the 1960’s, Dante chose to participate in that struggle toward justice by teaching at an all-black college in a segregated community and by supporting the students’ efforts to establish both and identity and civil rights. He participated in local, state, and national groups to promote further civil rights. Following that experience and further education, Dante entered the lives of migrant workers in Ohio, struggling, also, for identity, fair wages, and fair treatment. He followed that service with committed efforts to offer substantial education to prison inmates, believing that many wanted, needed, and deserved education. He helped to establish a system in which area universities of Massachusetts participated in providing this education, getting state funding for the programs. He was recognized by the state of Massachusetts, the universities in the Boston area for this effort, but especially by the lives touched throughout his life..

After graduation in 1951, Dante entered Evangelical Theological Seminary, graduating in 1954. Following graduation, Dante and his wife, Betsy Erdmann Germanotta, also of the class of 1951, served three years as pastor to two EUB churches in small Wisconsin communities. The following describes his participation in and with communities of diversity, all in stress due to societal changes. Dante, with his family, represent courage, commitment to justice, and willingness to take risk to promote values learned early and held throughout the entire years of his life. He with his family:

1. served an EUB church in Cambridge, MA, as pastor and Walpole Community Church as Minister of Education while pursuing hi PHD in Social Ethics and Sociology of Religion at Boston University, 1957-1965.
2. served on the Walpole Human Rights Committee and started a prison ministry at Walpole Prison
3. served as professor at sociology at Claflin College, Orangeburg, South Carolina, on of two all-black colleges in South Carolina, in 1965.
4. marched with others on behalf of civil rights in 1963.
5. became involved with the South Carolina education project, encouraging the black community to vote, while a part of the Claflin Community.
6. advised the college chapter of NAACP among all black college professors and students.
7. was appointed field representative for the Southern Regional area of NAACP
8. was appointed to the Human Rights Committee following Orangeburg massacre, October, 1968,
9. completed his doctoral studies in 1968.
10. went to Defiance, Ohio, in 1968 as Sociology professor, choosing that location knowing of the migrant workers coming north from Florida.
11. took part, with his students in projects to integrate migrant students in to the community and to advocate for their welfare interests.
12. worked on behalf of the Students for Black Liberation.
13. joined the Farm Labor Organizing Committee to promote better working conditions and better living conditions in plants such as Campbell Soup, as well as on farms.
14. started an alternative elementary school for the community to serve the children of all races, languages and economic conditions with open classrooms.
15. moved to Massachusetts in 1974, as sociology professor for Curry College in Milton, MA.
16. pioneered a prison education program with the Mass Council on Prison Education, Curry College, Boston University, and ten other university participants.
17. encouraged innovative education principles as the board’s conscience for maintaining high quality education as a member of the Lincoln-Sudbury School Committee.

Let me know how this sounds, looks, reads, etc. I want to send it in immediately. Leota

there are more, but i liked this one the best.
RIP papa.