February 25th, 1996
A sprawling conversation, from personal philosophies, to current thoughts on work with Project Neighbors, to more on Walt’s history. Starting from a conversation on family values to the individual, and the destruction of the individual. Walt touches themes such as what it means to be a “true revolutionary” and moving against the state and “high tech,” before getting into more tangible work with Project Neighbors and how to build relationships, support one another, and moving away from “charity.” On talking about some of the families they have worked with in Valparaiso, and getting closer towards how Walt sees the world, he says: “I hate to use the word ‘make it.’ First of all, they won’t ‘make it’ in terms of the world. And secondly, I don’t want them to ‘make it’ in terms of the world. I want them to live and not just survive.”
From there, Walt and George dive into Walt’s history a bit during the Urban Studies program from 1968-1982. Walt talks about preparing to apply to go to Germany as an “out” financially, and spends years working on his German, spending summers working in Germany, and even working towards a PhD in Germany to apply to the Reutlingen program at Valparaiso University. Walt tries to move on, talking about how big Chicago/Cabrini Green were, and how Valparaiso was more manageable, but George brings him back to those 15 or so years during Urban Studies, where they talk about what fatherhood was like for Walt during that time – splitting himself, and his family – between Chicago and Valparaiso.
Walt ends reflecting on that time:
"After war and poverty, the other thing that has most affected my life – I'm leaving Lois out; she transcends it all – has been the fact that the students I've been with, have all been special students. Almost every single Urban Studies student in 20 years had to fight their faculty advisor, fight their parents. 'Why don't you go to Florence? Why don't you go to Cambridge?' ...'I don't want you to go to Chicago.' They had to want to come to the city....They were special students. They made some risky choices."
