1982 Press Photo Robert Aronson

Caption: Robert Aronson, During the unemployment of the Depression, Robert Aronson?s electrical engineering degree from the University of Detroit brought him nothing more satisfying than work in his father?s tire store. A visit to Sunrise Farm, however, proved to him there was a way to put his skills to use and break through the cheerless stultification with which the economy had surrounded him. In the later summer of 1936, at age 26, Aronson reported for duty at the farm and was placed in charge if the powerhouse, pumphouse and other stationary equipment. Keeping the machines running sometimes meant precarious hand-stating of the enormous diesel engine in the powerhouse and sleeping in the pumphouse during the rainy months of spring to make sure any cloudbrust was quickly drained from the fields before it could inundate newly planted crops. Although he was at the farm for only a year, Aronson encountered two influences that were to frame his subsequent life. First, he came to know Rochel Keyser, a young woman who worked in the communal house where most of the farm?s children lived. Second, he was invited to speak on electricity to the children in the farm?s school, ?my first contact with young people as a teacher.? Sunrise Farm soon went under, but not so Aronson?s love for Rochel, to whom he has been married for 43 years, or his passion for teaching. Upon returning to Detroit, Aronson earned a bachelor?s degree, and later a master?s degree, in education from Wayne State University. In 1972, he retired from Mumford High School after 32 years as a teacher of industrial arts.(Jun 24).