Kids Today are Centered More on Community Service than Government Service’

And, says TV actor/Congressman/ gubernatorial contender/nonprofit CEO/
talk-radio host/university professor
Fred Grandy, (you can breathe now!) ... that’s not necessarily a bad thing!


Fred Grandy

> “I learned more about acting during my eight years in Congress than I had in all my years in Hollywood!”

That is a glimpse of the flavor of Fred Grandy’s easy, informal 40 minutes with his Joint General Session audience Saturday afternoon. Grandy’s patter sounded like a stand-up routine--but carried with it the validity of solid experience. The friendly, 57-year-old Iowan may have first earned attention as an actor in a fluffy TV show (The Love Boat), but he followed that up with four terms in Congress; a near-victory in 1994 against the incumbent in the Iowa governor’s race; an extremely successful run as CEO of Goodwill Industries (doubling its revenue and nearly tripling its customer base in just five years!); and now, double duty as a major-market news-talk radio host in Washington, DC, and a public affairs professor at the University of Maryland.

Grandy, noting growing volunteerism among college-age students, is optimistic about the future of community service in America, and therefore about organizations like the Moose. And, he lauded DC-based Darell Hammond (right) of Mooseheart’s Class of 1989, founder and CEO of national nonprofit playground builder KaBOOM Inc., as “a true visionary... who saw a need and filled it.”