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This Motown Singer Turned His Wild Mustang Ranch Into a Summer Camp for Baltimore Kids
How a Motown veteran is using his passion for wild horses to help at-risk children.http://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/national-treasures
What an inspirational person Jar is! His mixed-raced ancestry is uniquely American and I love that he is bringing mustangs and inner-city youth together!
If you visit Jar's home in the summer months, you can watch what happens when children and horses are brought together. Sunshine Acres, a farm in Northern Maryland with the ambiance of the American West, is graced with buildings that feature exposed wood and Native American motifs: carved totem-pole door frames, ceiling murals of horses and riders, and Indian blanket pillows tossed on the furniture.
At 69, Jar exudes an intense and joyful energy, not unlike that of the wild horses he loves so dearly. High cheekbones and dark, deep-set eyes hint at a Native American lineage—Blackfoot on his father's side and Cherokee on his mother's. But for his mother's extraordinary strength and pioneering drive, he might have been one of the struggling children he now welcomes onto his farm.
Dorothy May White was Baltimore’s first female radio disc jockey. She was an inspiration to Jar and his sister, Evonne, and worked hard to get them out of Baltimore’s Somerset Court Housing projects. Her efforts paid off when Jar became Baltimore’s first black male national recording artist of the era.
Dorothy May also gave her children another gift: a means of escape from the city. She regularly took Jar and Evonne to visit their great-grandfather’s farm in Virginia, where Jar experienced the most pivotal event of his life: “When I was three years old my great-grandfather lifted me up and put me on the back of his old mule. I realized then and there, that’s where I needed to be.”
At 69, Jar exudes an intense and joyful energy, not unlike that of the wild horses he loves so dearly. High cheekbones and dark, deep-set eyes hint at a Native American lineage—Blackfoot on his father's side and Cherokee on his mother's. But for his mother's extraordinary strength and pioneering drive, he might have been one of the struggling children he now welcomes onto his farm.
Dorothy May White was Baltimore’s first female radio disc jockey. She was an inspiration to Jar and his sister, Evonne, and worked hard to get them out of Baltimore’s Somerset Court Housing projects. Her efforts paid off when Jar became Baltimore’s first black male national recording artist of the era.
Dorothy May also gave her children another gift: a means of escape from the city. She regularly took Jar and Evonne to visit their great-grandfather’s farm in Virginia, where Jar experienced the most pivotal event of his life: “When I was three years old my great-grandfather lifted me up and put me on the back of his old mule. I realized then and there, that’s where I needed to be.”
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I thought that it was a remarkable story! It's worthy of a film, IMO. 
