The pastors and ministry leaders came away energized to have voter registration drives at their churches and motivated to encourage their congregations to "vote their values."

In a social studies class I did a paper on the history of Attica, which ended up being a little book that I created.

At one point I had dreams of being in the school band, but I didn't play an instrument that qualified me, and that was a problem. I always had fantasies to be part of that, but I did take my piano lessons quite seriously.

The environment itself was culturally a vacuum, in that there was simply nothing that would inspire me in the arts. But my parents were always very supportive of anything that I explored or wanted to do.

There was a certain amount of discipline, I think; my parents wanted to be sure that I was not just sitting around doing nothing.

It [piano lessons] wasn't a priority, but it was an interest and through that I became acquainted with classical music, which was a main interest at the time.

I developed friends in the community that were in walking distance or a bicycle ride away, so that I socialized and did a lot of things that children do in their early years.