A Bio for the Board Election

If you were asked to write an auto-biography on one page, what would you say? I suppose it would depend on who you thought the audience would be. Here is one I wrote for a condo board election coming up soon.

David May

I am the former Social Service Director for Ramsey County. As such, I. oversaw a team who broke all records for the numbers of foster children who were placed in adoptive homes. I then became the District Administrator for the Florida Department of Children and Families in West Palm Beach and broke the same records in that district.

Charlene and I moved into Lexington-Riverside in August 2012 and immediately moved to Port au Prince, Haiti, to host a guest house for medical mission teams for two years. We came home here in 2014 and have been here for six years. We were raised in Memphis and are delighted to be back on the Mississippi River.

We love Lexington-Riverside. When Charlene and I came here we determined to help the residence become more of a community, to be more like a neighborhood of friendly neighbors. Whether elected or not, we will continue that effort. 

I put out the monthly newsletter, “Down by the Riverside.” Charlene agreed to chair the Social Committee and I make most of the flyers and help them balance the books. I co-chaired the Water Committee for a while and opened it to everyone interested. I sat on the Amenities Committee for as long as it lasted and am a member of the Recycling Committee. I was a board member here for one year.

I was a Captain in the United States Marine Corps, with time in Viet Nam during the war. I served as an elder in two churches, one in Florida and one in Minnesota. I am the author of five books, and Charlene has published one as well. All our writings are aimed at encouraging others to help anyone they encounter who could benefit from their assistance.

If I am elected to the board, I will approach each issue seriously, keeping a watch on the budget, the short-term need, the long-term benefit and the effect on property values. Thank you for the opportunity to stand for election.

Haiti and the Zoo

The Quilt – Part 3

I love this picture. We bought the t-shirt at a Baptist encampment up in the hill country from Petionville. Petionville is the wealthier part of Port au Prince. The little compound has a restaurant, a souvenir store and a small zoo. Roberta would occasionally load all her kids into one of the large trucks, along with Charlene and me and would haul us all up the hill to what they called “the zoo”.  She would feed us all in the American style restaurant after we had checked on the animals.

Our trip to the zoo was just one of many delightful memories of our time in Haiti. We visited the country for about 24 years and we spent two of those years hosting the Estes Church’s guest house for medical teams and other transient missionaries. While there, we met lots of fascinating people, including Roberta’s friend Bobbie. Bobbie was a retired education professor who wanted to improve the Haitian educational system. She and Roberta worked out a plan and Bobbie would come down every three or four months bringing along some of her former students, now teachers in Tennessee’s school system. They formed relationships with teachers and principals in some of the more promising schools and began to teach them how to better reach their students with the material they wanted them to know.

Bobbie was hit hard by Roberta’s murder. You can read her reaction and much more about Haiti in Charlene’s new book "Roberta - Joy and Courage in a Clay jar Too Soon Broken"