I founded and ran a nonprofit youth sports organization for over 30 years called the Berkshire Baseball & Softball Club, which later became the BIG Vision Foundation. We ran teams, tournaments and a 130 acre sports complex. I loved every second of what I did. I loved working with kids and teaching them leadership skills and life lessons through sports and community service. I thought that I would have died doing what I loved.
Then in 2019, I felt a calling from God for my wife, Sandy, and I.
We decided to leave our comfort zone and start a new journey.
I’ll be conducting speaking engagements and writing more books on our travels. More importantly, this is our chance to continue my mother’s legacy of giving back through volunteering.
We will tell the stories of the people that we meet along the way.
This is truly “The Journey of My Mother’s Son” and as Michael Franti says in the opening verse of his song, “Gloria,” “When many little people in many little places, Do many little things, then the whole world changes.” It will be our job to share and tell the stories of those “Many Little People” through this podcast and my writing. Some of the people that we interview may be famous, most will not be, but they’ll all have a story to tell about the difference they’re making. Some stories will still have a sports theme, others spiritual, some will be about music, others about food, some will talk about travel, but all will be about the many little people, in the many little places who are doing the many little things to make the whole world change. We pray that you enjoy these stories and are inspired to do your own little things to make this world a better place for all of us.
"Collect experiences, not things."
- Dan Clouser
A large part of the inspiration for my wife and I to live full-time in an RV came from my mom, thus the title of the podcast and my most recent book.
When she was in her mid-40's she decided to leave a good paying job and travel the country. She took an old 1967 Plymouth Valiant and removed the back seat, put in a sheet of plywood and a mattress that reached into the trunk to make a bed and took off with no real agenda.
She would stop to work if she felt that she was running low on cash. Once she stopped traveling full-time, she went back to school to become a drug and alcohol addictions counselor. She still traveled to volunteer. By that time, she had graduated to a little Toyota camper.
She did a lot of volunteer work with the Salvation Army, mostly during hurricane relief efforts in Florida, but her biggest impact was probably when she volunteered for almost a year at ground zero following 9/11.
After she passed, I loved reading about the people that she had met throughout her travels in her journals. When Sandy and I decided to follow in her footsteps, I thought that telling those stories about the people we've met and places we've been in real time through podcasting, blogging and social media would be pretty cool, however, my guests are not limited to those we meet through our travels.
For my first blog entry, I just took the dedication that I wrote for her in my first book and published it again. If you'd like to read it, below is a link:
Dedication, Loretta Magary, The Wind Beneath My Wings
As far as the show, it's a pretty casual conversation.
I do ask the same "final question" to all of my guests. The sub-title of the podcast is, "Many Little People in Many Little Places." Which is derived from the opening lyrics of the song, "Gloria" by Michael Franti, which go, "When many little people in many little places do many little things, then the whole world changes."
So, the final question that I would ask will be, “What are some of the little things that you do to help make the world a better place?”
In this episode of the Journey of My Mother’s Son podcast, I talk with Santo Marabella.
I was honored to have the opportunity to have my old friend from Berks County, Santo, on my show. We have been friends for over fifteen years now. We first got to know each other when we both served on the board of the Berks County Visitors Bureau and through volunteering with the Reading Filmfest. However, I never really knew Santo’s story of how he arrived in the United States until recently. It is an incredible story, and again, I feel honored to be able to give Santo a place at my table, and help tell a little bit of his story on my show.
Santo D. Marabella, MBA, DSW, The Practical Prof® is an author, playwright, filmmaker, speaker and educator with writing, directing and producing credits for books, television pilots, a musical, short films and plays. He is the co-founder ReadingFilmFEST and the ReadingFilm Office, for which he served as ReadingFilm Commissioner (2006-2018). Recent projects include writer/director of the play Rocky Road Ain’t Always Sweet, (2024). producer, AVA (2023); producer, FLASHLIGHT (2023); director/co-producer, workshop for Love Is Afoot!, an original musical (2023); writer/producer/director, THE CAREGIVER (2022). Marabella, Professor Emeritus of Management, Moravian University, is a member of The Lambs®, The Dramatists Guild of America and Theatre Communications Group.
His newest film, Il Mio Posto a Tavola (My Place at the Table) is a first-person documentary which examines our universal need to belong, as seen through the heart of the filmmaker. Born in a Catholic orphanage in Aosta, Italy, and flown to the United States just one week shy of his first birthday, Santo D. Marabella was one of over 3700 Italian born children adopted by Italian American parents between 1951 and 1969. Known as the “Baby Scoop” era, tens of thousands of Italian unwed mothers were forced to give their children up for adoption, leaving behind generations of children devastated by their perceived abandonment.
Though he was the treasured only child of his adoptive parents, Santo was bullied by his peers and struggled from an early age to fit in and connect with others. Growing up, the realization that he was gay further deepened this isolation, straining his relationship with the Church to which he was so dedicated and the parents he so loved. Despite self-doubt and fear, he refused to be stopped. He tried harder and achieved more, carving out a life as a caregiver, educator, writer and artist. But he was still on the outside. In this journey to belonging, Santo returns to Italy to find his place at the table (posto a tavola)
To find out more about the film, check out its website at https://ilmiopostofilm.com/.
Vinnie Potestivo, Editor-in-Chief of
I Have A Podcast®
