Two Americans, One Lesson: How Childhood Shapes a Lifetime of Generosity

Generosity rarely arrives by accident. In a pair of recent interviews, Anita Smart and Rick Souders answered the same question: where does your generosity come from? Their backgrounds could hardly differ, yet both point to the same source, the example that adults set in their earliest years.

One grew up between extreme poverty abroad and extreme wealth at home. The other grew up in a small rural town with working parents who always found time to help their neighbors. Together, their stories show how early lessons in giving can guide a career, a business, and even a personal crisis.

From Brazil to a Wealthy New York Suburb

Smart was born in Brazil to US citizens, and as a very young child she witnessed extreme poverty. She still remembers it clearly, almost seven decades later. When her parents returned to the United States with two daughters ready for school, they chose a wealthy suburb of New York City for its safe neighborhoods and great public schools.

That move placed her in a world of wealth, power, and privilege, and the contrast shaped her worldview. She says her belief that abundance carries a duty to share came from that immersion.

“My belief that abundance of all types comes with the responsibility of sharing it with others comes from having been immersed in the value that it’s more blessed to give than to receive.” Smart said.

She does not treat that value as a lecture. Through childhood experimentation, Smart concluded that giving over receiving is a higher truth rather than a finger-wagging admonishment. She defines genuine generosity as thoughtful, intentional giving without expectation of anything in return, and she calls it its own reward.

As a child, she also studied the adults around her in her family, church, neighborhood, and community. She noticed that the most generous people seemed the happiest, the most relaxed, and the most spontaneous with others. She remembers them as the people who sparkled and glowed.

A Summer Camp Laboratory

In her early twenties, Smart worked as a YMCA summer camp counselor. The campers included inner-city children and suburban children who lived near the camp. Almost every day, someone forgot a bag lunch, and that routine gave her a front-row seat to generosity in its simplest form.

She describes the camp as a daily laboratory for sociological, anthropological, and spiritual observation. The children from the poorest families spontaneously offered half of whatever they had to the hungry child. They did so regardless of friendship or social status.

In her view, those children understood the visceral experience of hunger, and that understanding was its own justification for sharing. Their instinct required no instruction and no reward. It also confirmed what she had sensed as a child, that giving flows most freely from people who know what going without feels like.

A Small-Town Upbringing in Rural America

Souders tells a quieter story. He grew up in a small rural town where both parents worked and his father held two jobs. His father was a handyman who could build anything, and his mother was a very good cook and baker and, in his words, a super kind person. Both of them constantly helped other people.

That example taught him a practical lesson early. Positivity and kindness carried a person much further than negativity and selfishness, and they took far less thought and energy. Helping others also felt good and gave him a great deal of motivation.

In grade school, he joined 4H and the Boy Scouts, threw himself into both groups, and eventually became an Eagle Scout. When he went to college and later started his own business, he carried those values along. He says he remembered his mother’s smile and the loving, kind family that raised him, and that memory shaped how he ran his business and his personal life as he grew older and more established.

The Mile High Food and Beverage Photography Guy

Today Souders works from a studio attached to his environmentally friendly, ranch-style home in Golden, Colorado. Over the years he has worked with many iconic brands around the world, and he became affectionately known as the “Mile High Food and Beverage Photography Guy.” He credits a great team and some fabulous clients for supporting him every step of the way.

His most recent project, though, was deeply personal. His mother passed away in early 2023, and doctors diagnosed him with prostate cancer in early 2026. He needed something engaging and meaningful to help him through treatment, so he turned to his mother’s legacy.

He began sorting through her handwritten recipes, her recipe cards, and her very old hand-bound recipe books. As he worked, he decided to build a cookbook in her honor. He selected 60 recipes, made every one of them with help from friends and family, and photographed each dish professionally.

What a Cookbook Says About Giving

The result is a 90-page book titled Betty Jean’s Country Living Cookbook. It brings his professional skill together with the values his parents modeled. He turned a period of illness into an act of tribute, and he invited the people closest to him to share in the work.

The two stories offer a clear takeaway for anyone building a career or a business. Smart learned from the extremes of poverty and privilege that sharing is its own reward. Souders learned from a handyman father and a baker mother that kindness costs little and returns a great deal.

Both found that generosity does not depend on circumstances. It grows from watching generous people up close, practicing it early, and carrying it into every later chapter of life. For Smart, it began on a camp bench with a forgotten lunch, and for Souders, it ends up on the pages of his mother’s cookbook.