Harry Cralle
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This is a true story about the kind of love for one another that God had intended. It is a love that arose between a young white man, the author, and a group of Native American high school students in an experimental school in Chicago in the early 1970s. I was a volunteer, general science teacher who attempted to teach science with a spiritual dimension within the guide lines of a public school. There are many instances of humorous and serious classroom events. However, most of the book is devoted to dramatic events outside the school involving sports, violence, crime, police, sexual abuse, attempted suicide, attempted murder, and great acts of self-sacrificing love. On two occasions adult Native Americans put me in mortal danger. I was saved in one case by two male Native American teenagers, ages 14 and 15, and in the other case by the 15 year old male and a 14 year old female. They risked their lives to save my life. These experiences show how the love that God had intended overcame all social and historical barriers, all anger and jealousy, all bitterness and resentment to generate goodness and the courage to battle and defeat evil. When we see the moon or planets, we see the reflected light of the Sun. In the love and goodness of these heros, I saw the reflection of the love and goodness of God From 1983 to 2017 I had a professorship in teaching and research at Texas A&M University in the Department of Soil & Crop Sciences. In my 34 years at TAMU, I taught more than 13,000 students and supervised more than 300 graduate teaching assistants. I taught courses in agricultural ethics, history of farming in the Great Plains, world food and fiber crops, sustainable crop production, agricultural extension, and international agricultural development. My research areas were the interaction of crops and weeds, biological nitrogen fixation, and the distribution of the products of photosynthesis within plants. I am now retired. In this book I show how deeply my teaching and understanding of life was affected by these young Native Americans.