Gerard Wallace, who grew up in Brooklyn, suffered as a child and so devoted his career to ending childhood suffering.

Retired now, he lives in the rural Helderbergs and believes some of the worst suffering happens in rural areas.

Wallace, a lawyer who advocated for kinship family rights, had a hand in creating a dozen laws in New York state that gives grandmothers and other kin rights in caring for children whose parents are unfit.

“Why I got into kinship care and meeting grandparents raising kids is that my home was really a broken home,” Wallace says in this week’s Enterprise podcast. “My father was an alcoholic, worked on the waterfront. He was a good person but, when he drank, it was a nightmare …. We grew up in a state of toxic stress.”

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