Running head: MY PHILANTHROPIC AUTOBIOGRAPHY 1

My Philanthropic Autobiography

Ronald King

PHST P201

Indiana University- Purdue University Indianapolis

MY PHILANTHROPIC AUTOBIOGRAPHY 2

In a previous version of this assignment, I discussed how my past had made me more

receptive to the tenets of philanthropy while self-consciously regarding the very real shame that

can accompany both giving and receiving. Since I submitted the preliminary portion of the

autobiography, my personal circumstances have done much to remind me of the tenuous

emotional position those in need often inhabit. I have had a bit of an existential struggle as I

contend with the possibility that I am not in so strong a position to help as I might have

previously supposed, and I have been forced to make some tough decisions. Ultimately, though, I

believe that these trials, such as they are, only serve to confirm the path I have chosen.

Shortly before the beginning of the semester, as I was deciding that my future lay in the

nonprofit sector, my relationship of nine years was coming to an end. These difficulties were

made all the more poignant by the fact that we have two children together. Continuing my

education has always been motivated by the desire that my children be better advantaged by

circumstances than I had been in my youth, and it was with this in mind that I did what I usually

do in time of crisis: put my head down and keep working.

It was as I began to fulfill the service portion of the syllabus that I began to have doubts

about my direction. As I spent my hours at Gleaners, working to feed the disadvantaged, I

continued to spend my meager student loan funds to feed myself while I extended my stays on

my brothers sofa from 3 nights a week to 5, seeking to avoid drama with my childrens mother. I

read Freemans parable about Reverend Carnes, who gave so much he hindered his ability to

truly help, and I feared that, in my zeal to give my children a better future, I was hurting them in

the present. Then I remembered how acrimonious communications had gotten between their

parents, and I reconsidered. Even if I could have spent more time with them, I had no place to
MY PHILANTHROPIC AUTOBIOGRAPHY 3

bring them. My brother is, regrettably, an alcoholic, and his apartment is no place for two very

small children.

The cornerstone of my initial philanthropic autobiography hinged upon the idea that one

must honor generosity by expressing generosity in turn. I stated that I am often at my most

generous when I am lacking. In a sense, the events of the past few months have left me unable

to truly fulfill this very important idea. I have not been able to be generous to my children, not in

any immediate sense. So I knew that, if I was to be more of a part of my childrens lives, I had to

try to build something now. I had to find my own place, and I had to be able to invite them in. All

along, my goal in continuing my education was not merely to financially support them, but to be

a role model for them. Their mother is a nurse. As far as they know, their father is a guy who is

gone far too often because, in his own words he needs to go to school to get smarter. Being

that they are so young, I would not expect them to fully understand that I am working to try to

improve the world we live in, but someday they will. But all of my time, in planning for the

future of my family, was spent in the realm of someday, when my children needed me in the here

and now. So I struggled to find a job that would accommodate my academic schedule while

providing enough income to pay for a safe place for them to be. When I finally did, it was at

UPS, doing the kind of manual labor I thought I had left behind forever. I am an old 39,

physically. Doing such exhausting work on the overnight shift while attempting to attend all of

my classes has proven to be impossible, and I am finding myself leveraging my previously

excellent work this semester to hang on to a solid GPA. I have no idea how I am going to manage

in the fall, except to say I am fairly certain that continuing to load packages into 18 wheelers

probably is not in my future.

MY PHILANTHROPIC AUTOBIOGRAPHY 4

So I am left where I was two months ago. Am I a sort of reverse Reverend Carnes, so

bent on honoring a vision that I fail to see what must be done in the present? I do not have

enough remove from my situation to know. I am haunted, though, with the fear that I might not

actually be doing what is best for my children. I am a baseball fan, and have been for most of my

life. Growing up in Boston, my favorite team is the Red Sox, and the Red Sox all-time great

player is Ted Williams, who was very nearly the equal of Babe Ruth in the 1940s and 50s, at

least as a hitter. Ted Williams was a complicated, somewhat angry man. He grew up in San

Diego with a dissolute, indifferent father, and a deeply religious mother who devoted nearly all

of her time and energy to the Salvation Army, leaving Ted as essentially an orphan. In later

interviews, when Williams even bothered to address the subject of his mother, he expressed a

mixture of shame and anger. Surely he wondered why he did not seem as important to Mae

Williams as the indigent families she worked so hard to help. If only she had found a way to

share her avocation with her children. If I am to avoid the fate of Reverend Carnes, or worse, the

fate of Mae Williams, I must work to exemplify philanthropy to my children, or, in a sense, all of

this is for naught.