The Liberty Champion
Jerry Prevo was “the guy next door,” but Carol Sherwood, at the time, was dating another guy up the hill.
“I didn’t know this,” Carol Prevo said. “He tells me that the guy on the hill came down and told him, ‘You better leave my girlfriend alone,’ and that was a challenge to him, and you know who won.”
After 56 years of marriage, it takes both of them to tell the story of their first date.
“It was the last day of (freshman year), and we were all going to a park to celebrate the end of school. Me and my buddy were sitting there… that doesn’t sound right,” Jerry Prevo said.
More dialogue cannot save democracy
David Allred/Going on Faith
In part one of what I am calling, “Meditations for a New Year,” I thought I would begin with one of the conclusions that I am taking away from 2020. Simply put, I learned last year that more dialogue cannot save democracy. We are going to need something else. We are talking around, above, and over each other these days. If talking has been a big part of the problem, I struggle to see how more talking could be the solution.
Allow me to back up a minute. In 2017, I was afforded an opportunity to join a group of spiritual innovators at Harvard Divinity School. It was an opportunity that this outsider, often marginalized, rural-educated Oliver Springs High School graduate would not normally receive. My friend and co-laborer in ministry, the Rev. Jake Morrill of the Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church, put in a good word for me and I was accepted to the program. In Boston for nearly a week, the academic elite (fo