From Servant Leadership to Social Entrepreneurship: Becoming Hopeful Travelers
Don DeGraaf, Professor of Health, Physical Education, Recreation Dance and Sport
Jay B. Nash Lecture
March 16, 2007

Editor's Note: The author gave this address upon receiving the Jay P. Nash Award in Baltimore, Maryland, in March 2007.

As the excitement of learning of my selection as this year’s Jay B. Nash award winner faded, anxiety quickly set in as I wondered what I would say this morning. My mind raced with a number of different possibilities as I started the writing process. It seemed to me that one promising angle was to go back and see where my own interests might connect with the work and writing of Jay B. Nash. I was familiar with some of Nash’s contributions such as his pyramid of leisure but other contributions I read with new interest, finding such titles as:

• Recreation as a Foundation of Democracy
• Leisure for What?
• Education for Leisure – A Must

What I found as I read was a kindred spirit, someone who shared many of my own experiences and thoughts: someone who lived overseas as well as spent time on Indian Reservations in the Southwest; a person committed to living a virtuous life and contributing to the common good; a person committed to organized camping and to using leisure and recreation to build strong relationships needed to make democracy work. As I reflected on these similarities, my talk today began to crystallize in my mind. I realized I wanted to share several snapshots from my own life, which have reinforced many of the lessons that Jay B. Nash wrote so passionately about during his own life, lessons which Harvey Jessup, in his biography of Nash summarizes by telling us to Travel Hopefully and follow the gleam. It is my hope that through our time together this morning we can explore how we, as recreation professionals, can Travel Hopefully and make a difference in our world.

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