Author Description

..". The first person I see as Betsy and I heave our backpacks and sleeping rolls up into the truck on Friday afternoon is George, who asks our names...before introducing us to the Amherst guys and Smith girls already settled in the open truck bed. He does the same for the others who join us. I like him for that. I stand all the way to camp, thoroughly enjoying the cold wind blowing through my old holey red sweater. It turns out he likes me for that." This is the story of a lifelong love affair. Buffy and George Calvert both felt most alive in the gritty, diverse, inner-city neighborhood of East Harlem where they could offer their children a chance to grow up in an integrated community. In the early fifties, Blacks and Hispanics could not move out, but the Calverts could move in and be neighbors. East Harlem -- 200,000 people crammed into one square mile of New York City -- graciously accepted them. Together they wrestled with the desperate needs around them. They stood up, sat in, marched, prayed and organized, and fought for equality, respect and hope. Buffy Calvert's Affair of the Heart is a story of personal and community transformation set against the background of a cutting-edge urban ministry and the Civil Rights movement. It takes the reader on the Calvert's journey of forty-five exhilarating years in East Harlem and eight more in the vibrant village of Andes, in the foothills of the Catskills.