‘John Malloy’s father was
in Army Intelligence and assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Shanghai when Malloy
was an infant. When Chiang Kai-shek fled China three years later, in 1949,
Malloy’s family was the last one out of Shanghai on a plane. From there they
went to the Philippines during the Huk rebellion. And then there was Java and
Borneo and jungle living. By the time Malloy was seventeen, he had moved
forty-four times. In his young life as a rolling stone, Malloy learned to rely
on himself. Whatever allies and friends he might have begun to cultivate in one
place were always torn away by his constant displacement. In schools in New
York, Washington D.C., San Francisco, and Oakland, as the new kid, he learned
to fight. Every day was a trial. While living in San Francisco he ended up in
juvenile hall. Later, he did time for assaulting the perpetrators of a rape.
Being unprotected from bullies in school wasn’t so different from how it was in
jail. The big eat the little. But Malloy was a warrior. It was during his time
in jail that something crystallized for him. “I knew that I was going to clean
up my mess and spend the rest of my life working in institutions to help take
care of the people who no one else was taking care of.”
His resolve led to the
creation of a school for young people who had been incarcerated, the Foundry
School. Intuitively at first, and later in a more conscious way, he arrived at
highly effective ways of helping young people whose lives had spiraled down
into violence and crime. Word of Malloy’s integrity, courage, and effectiveness
spread. It’s how he began to meet Native Americans who entrusted their at-risk
children into his care. For Malloy, it was a pivotal event. In Native American
spirituality he found a way of looking at the world that resonated most deeply
with his own experience.’
Covey Cowan, San Francisco, California
