A social work professor is showing his students the life he lectures about, the life of helping others, of being a good neighbor, of fully living.
He talked of this in a video call while standing in his mango grove in the Dominican Republic. But let’s back up.
Dr. Carlton Huff came to Grand Canyon University five years ago after more than two decades as an educator and social worker in hospitals and clinics or launching ground-breaking programs in New York City with substance abusers.
He told GCU News back then: “This world is not set up for us to be a bunch of individuals poking around doing what we think is best. I think there has to be some collaborative ideology on how we perform as human beings, how we perform as neighbors.”
Then three years ago, the full-time online faculty member began to see the growth around his home in Chandler, Arizona. He’d seen the same thing while living in Brooklyn.
“It wasn’t exactly an epiphany,” he said, just realizing he didn’t need to be here, “and I needed to find my place in this big world.”
Around the same time, he did have something of an epiphany. He heard someone say their name is “Liam” and misheard it as “Live.”
“I thought that’s it. That’s who I was going to be,” he said.
He changed his name to Live Endless. That’s Dr. Live Endless to students.
“Over the years, through my work in classrooms, in communities and alongside students, I came to see myself differently. And slowly, I realized that the name I had been given no longer told the whole story of who I am,” he said. “I chose a new name. Not to erase my past, but to honor the journey that has brought me here.”
The name doesn’t mean living forever but living to the fullest, and for Endless that means, “I want to fill life with service, kindness and beauty.”
He spirited out soon after to travel the world while teaching his courses remotely. He went to Cambodia and to Africa’s Nile River, he went to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and asked a kitchen worker to take him to the poverty-stricken area of the city where she lived, where the movie “City of God” was filmed. She said they will kill you there. He went anyway.
“Every country I travel to, I go to the worst places, the places where people are doing the work building the country,” he said.
He went to every country in South America, the Caribbean, six African countries and five Asian countries, and co-workers asked him to share his background in meetings. He also sent videos of his travels – “to places where the buses have chickens on the top” – initially focusing on the homeless and urging students “to see them as human beings and not a situation.”
There are 60 (GCU) full-time online social work faculty all across the nation, "from Maine to San Francisco" and now in other countries, said Colin Witherspoon, faculty chair of social work. Endless has focused on the poor.
"That really gets to the core of what social work is all about, helping people who are in one way or another disadvantaged, or need aid in some form," he said. "Most of us look at it through the lens of people living in the U.S., but because of his experience, it is very different – folks need help for a lot of different reasons."
His name was carrying a story back to his students at GCU, which he describes as “a Christian college where faith, service and education converge,” symbolizing his own growth and understanding “of what it means to serve others through social work.”
It meant going to vulnerable communities. “I’ve always taught that social work is not just a profession – it’s a calling.”
That led him to the Dominican Republic, where children were coming up to him while he talked, asking for a mango, as he stood on a six-acre property he bought a year ago that also includes pineapples and avocados, which he donates to neighbor families.
He said he settled there in part to try to help Haitian immigrants who are being discriminated against. He buys them school supplies or clothes or whatever he can do to help.
“My name is a set of attributes of how I feel. It’s what we give and receive. I start my day with what I can do for other people,” he said.
It changed his perspective, trying to live up to his name every day.
My former name represented where I began, but my new name reflects where my journey has led me and the person I am becoming.
Dr. Live Endless
He insists he's not advocating being a YOLO (You Only Live Once) or wants to influence students to follow in his traveling journey. But he hopes they see the spirit of the profession’s calling, seeing “social work as a way to bring dignity to others,” by sharing his commitment to service, faith and “a willingness to embody the change I teach.”
The wisdom he can share from his travels is that the whole world is our neighbors.
“We are all part of this large community. It’s not until you meet more of your neighbors that are outside your comfort zone that you learn the most about yourself.”
His students have much to teach even their professors, he said, often coming to social work through their own challenging life circumstances. In his own way, he could show how to enhance their own life while serving others.
“Through walking alongside people in their struggles and resilience, I’ve experienced my own transformation,” he said. “My former name represented where I began, but my new name reflects where my journey has led me and the person I am becoming.
“My students often hear me talk about growth, evolution and becoming. This is my way of living that truth.”
Grand Canyon University senior writer Mike Kilen can be reached at [email protected]
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