The following article appeared in The Huffington Post in February 2017.
I was a redneck, but a year in Europe changed my life.
My hometown was Harlan, Kentucky, a coal-mining hub set deep in Appalachia. By 1989, through circumstance and chance, I gained a scholarship to study at a prestigious prep school in Massachusetts. My classmates included a Hilton, a Roosevelt and a son of the King of Jordan. Deerfield Academy offered a career trajectory far higher than I had any right to expect, if I could seize it.
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