Meet tHE TEAM BEHIND
MITKA’s Secret.

Steven W. Brallier

Steven Brallier, the lead author, is both a collector and teller of stories, a quality he likely developed in his childhood on the western highlands of Kenya. The oral traditions of Luhya storytellers together with the panoply of everyday experience delighted him and his brother and sisters.

After graduating from Cornell in 1975, Steve worked for two years as Director of Public Information at Anderson University. When an opportunity came to become a concert promoter, he became the founding manager of Spring House Productions in Alexandria, Indiana, and, later, for Brallier Productions in Nashville, Tennessee.

In 1987, Steve became an agent for the William Morris Agency, Nashville, a position he held for twelve years. After leaving William Morris, he, for several years, worked as an independent contractor, in several roles within the entertainment industry. Among these roles, he worked in business development with Tangible Vision. Between 2007 and 2009, he served as the executive director for the Gospel Music Foundation. Following this, he worked with 1220 Exhibits in Nashville in various assignments but, principally, as a lead in 1220’s contract with American Express.

Steve retired in 2012 and has been devoting himself to writing, golf, and caring for his mountain cabin in Sewanee, Tennessee. He was nearing the end of his first novel, Then We Will Know, when, in late 2016, he was asked, by Adrienne and Mitka Kalinski, to write Mitka’s story. Since then, Steve has interviewed Mitka, Adrienne, their family, and friends over numerous days—some fifty total—and has accumulated more than 120 hours of audio and video records. He and his co-authors have also studied several thousand documents, photographs, and video—mostly primary sources—that bear witness to the veracity and power of Mitka Kalinski’s story.

Steve was given unfettered and exclusive access to Mitka Kalinski and to seventy years of extensive records and photographs that document this story. From this, a deep mutual love and respect grew between author and subject. This trust, together with an innate skill as a storyteller and the capacity for hard—even dogged work—established Steven as the one to tell the story of Mitka Kalinski.

Joel N. Lohr

Joel N. Lohr is a contributing writer to Mitka’s Secret, a project for which he has served as a visionary. Currently the president of the cutting-edge Hartford Seminary in Hartford, Connecticut, Joel is an award-winning author, scholar, and passionate leader in interreligious relations and higher education. Prior to joining Hartford Seminary, he was Dean of Religious Life at University of the Pacific in Stockton, California where he held academic appointments in the School of Education and the Department of Religious Studies.

Joel is a first-generation college graduate, the son of Dutch immigrants to Canada who adopted children from Bangladesh and Laos early in his life. This formative childhood experience would leave an indelible mark, eventually becoming the impetus for his graduate work and eventual research on religious inclusion and exclusion. He earned a BA in Religious Studies (Trinity Western University, Vancouver, Canada), an MA in Theological Research (University of Durham, England) and a Ph.D. in Religion and Theology (University of Durham, England). Following his doctoral work, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Toronto.

Joel’s research has focused on the outsiders in the Bible, specifically within the Torah/Pentateuch, as well as Jewish-Christian relations and dialogue, Abrahamic faith dialogue, and Intercultural Competence, Diversity, and Leadership in Higher Education. He has written and contributed to numerous books, both academic and popular. His first monograph, Chosen and Unchosen: Conceptions of Election in the Pentateuch and Jewish-Christian Interpretation, was awarded the R.B.Y. Scott Award by the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies for “outstanding book in the areas of Hebrew Bible and/or the Ancient Near East.” Another was awarded an American Library Association CHOICE book award. All of his publications, both technical and popular, tie into his love and passion for dialogue.

Joel has contributed to the writing of Mitka’s Secret in many ways. His knowledge of Judaism and his understanding of causes and impacts of anti-Semitism have been invaluable in establishing the context for Mitka’s story. His skills as an author and his attention to detail have strengthened the text. And his perspectives on the power of faith to heal have helped the authors understand and convey the role of faith in Mitka and Adrienne’s life and healing.

Joel is also a master (journeyperson) carpenter who, of late, has had scant time for this type of work, despite his love for it. He and his family do, however, make time to indulge their passion for the outdoors as they hike, snowboard, ski, and explore parks and nature.

Lynn G. Beck

Before Lynn G. Beck was a writer, she was a reader—a voracious reader who would spend early summers with Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys, middle years with Agatha Christie and Laura Ingalls Wilder, and teen years with virtually any work—fiction or nonfiction that captured her fancy.

It was likely this love of reading that led Lynn to choose English as her college major. This same desire and her commitment to teaching led to her pursuit of an M.A. in English from the University of Mississippi. Ironically, in the land of Faulkner and southern culture, she concentrated her graduate work on British literature and concluded her program in 1976 with a thesis on T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets.

For the next three years, she indulged her love of all things English through teaching British literature to high school seniors. The sudden and unexpected death of her husband eventually led to a career shift as she moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to study nursing at Belmont University. Between 1982 and 1985, she worked at various nursing jobs but eventually returned to teaching.

In 1988, Lynn entered a PhD program at Vanderbilt University. While she was enrolled there, she and her mentor completed one book, published in in 1993. Lynn’s dissertation, Reclaiming Educational Administration as a Caring Profession, won the American Educational Research Association’s Division A “Dissertation of the Year” award in 1992 and was published, with few changes, as a book by the same name by Teachers College Press in 1994.

Lynn’s first academic appointment was at UCLA, where she held various administrative and teaching roles. This was followed by two years at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. In 1999, Lynn was appointed Dean of the School of Education at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. In 2005, she received a similar appointment at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California.

Lynn’s research has centered on the ethic of care and its role in education, on educational reform, on the preparation of leaders, and—most recently—on education for the health professions. She has authored or co-authored eight books, numerous chapters and articles, and an array of reports and grant proposals.

Lynn retired in 2017 and has since devoted her time to consulting and to work on Mitka’s Secret. In addition to contributing to the writing effort, Lynn has taken a leading role in researching the historical context of the story and to curating a voluminous collection of material including video records, photographs, correspondence, reflections of friends and family, and primary source material.

Robert Lucchesi

The child of Italian immigrants, Robert (Bob) Lucchesi was raised in a farming community in California’s central valley. His large, loud, and loving family, running triathlons, and movies were his passions. Bob planned to pursue a career as a screenwriter and set his sights on Hollywood, but love intervened when he met his wife, Lisa. He shifted gears and took a job as a manual laborer at Teichert Construction Company. He never, however, lost his commitment to screenwriting. Work, family, late night writing, and quick flights to L.A. to pitch scripts and pursue possibilities characterized his life. Eventually two sons were added into the mix. Bob earned a bachelor’s degree in business management from the University of Phoenix. His hard work at Teichert was rewarded by promotions. In time, he rose to the position of Director of Safety. He never, however, lost his love for film.

Bob’s connection to Mitka’s story began on a camping trip to Bodega Bay, California in the spring of 1994. At the campground along the shores of Doran Beach, he and his wife located a campsite and backed their 1955 Heilite single-wheel tent trailer into the spot. Fellow campers noticed. This rare, vintage oddity of a camper guaranteed an audience, including the camp host.

 Once settled into the campsite, Bob unfolded a camp chair, sat and took in the sunshine and ocean breeze, when he heard a faint sound, a tenor pitch familiar to him. Bob knew that only one instrument made the sound he heard. It was an accordion like the one his father had played; it was a sound of merriment that had filled his childhood home.

Leaving his lounge chair, Bob followed the melody to an early model Pace Arrow motor home. There he encountered a man whose powerful arms pushed and pulled his accordion bellows rhythmically, whose large hands pressed the keys and tapped the buttons adroitly. When the song ended Bob clapped and introduced himself. It was the camp host.

Bob asked, “When did you learn to play the accordion?”

His blue eyes twinkling, the host said, “Seven… maybe eight years old.” Then he said, “I traded a piece of salt pork with one of the other prisoners for his accordion.” 

“Other prisoners?” Bob questioned. “But you said you were seven or eight years old.”

The twinkle faded from the host’s eyes as he turned pensive and replied, “Yes… I was.”

The screenwriter in Bob instantly recognized this man had a story to tell—one unlike any story he’d ever heard. Over the ensuing months Bob returned to Doran Beach again and again, and he telephoned Mitka and his wife Adrienne, all to interview them and hear more of Mitka’s story. Bob would not let it go. He began to research Mitka’s story, travelling to Sparks Nevada and the Kalinski family home often. He patiently nurtured the story, believing the time would come for it to be shared in a book and film.

Currently, Bob serves as the director for what has come to be called informally the “Mitka Project.” As such, he oversees Mitka’s speaking engagements and serves as the Kalinskis’ liaison and business manager as they interact with parties interested in Mitka’s story.

Mitka’s Secret: A True Story of Child Slavery and Surviving the Holocaust would not have come into being had Bob not held on to the story from that long ago camping trip.

Bob recognized that Mitka’s was a story worth telling. He shepherded that story for a quarter of a century. He now waits with excitement and anticipation, for the world to meet Mitka.