Sincere gratitude.(The Goodness Of America)

Amsell Alexander Colebrooke, better known as "Bud," resides in Franklin, Tennessee, a suburb of Nashville. Afflicted with worsening Parkinson's disease, the entrepreneur and real estate developer retired last year at age 78.

During the early years of the Depression, his family (he is the second of six children and the oldest son) lived in Medford, Massachusetts. When he was eight, Bud's father, a Brazilian, abandoned the family and returned to South America. His mother, in desperate need of help, moved to New York City with the children, but assistance promised by a relative failed to materialize. City social workers eventually placed the children in orphanages. During a July 2003 interview with the Boston Globe, Bud Colebrooke described that period as the darkest of his entire life. "I used to go up to the orphanage roof," he remembers. "Then I'd pray to get out of that place...."

After several months his prayers were answered. New York welfare officials asked their counterparts in Medford if they would take the family. The request was granted. The children were reunited with their mother and moved into an apartment.

Medford's welfare program provided Bud's morn with $14 weekly, just enough to feed the family and keep them together. Bud recalls how his mother cleaned houses part-time for extra income, while he "would get up at 4 o'clock in the morning and go ash-barrel picking" before school, then fold and sell newspapers at a newsstand after school. In the winter, he shoveled snow.

Eventually, he completed two years at Medford High School, then served in the Army Air Forces during World War II. While stationed in Nashville, he met a local girl whom he married, and ...