Vermont couple uses magic to help refugees around the world
11:49 PM, May. 10, 2012 |
LINCOLN — Over the past decade, clinical psychologist and Burlington College professor Tom Verner has traveled from his home in Lincoln to more than 30 countries. Each year he has spent five to six months in communities devastated by war and natural disasters, as well as regions suffering from severe poverty and its debilitating long-term effects.
But it is not traditional psychological services that Verner has provided to refugees in places such as Somalia, Nepal and Eastern Europe; to hurricane and tsunami victims in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Thailand; or to youngsters struggling to flourish in the red-light district of Mumbai, India, or a gang-ridden city in El Salvador.
Instead, Verner deploys a different set of professional skills: he performs magic.
In addition to working as a psychologist and professor, Verner, 66, has been a professional magician since 1976. He even owned a magic shop at one point.
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