At the age of 71, Stanley Mazaroff can look back on a rich life and can divide it into quarters.
He was a pioneering Peace Corps volunteer, a successful law partner, an art student and now a published author for the second time.
His book, "Henry Walters and Bernard Berenson: Collector and Connoisseur," published last month by the Johns Hopkins University Press, illuminates the often strained relationship between the Gilded Age collector and the art historian, an acknowledged expert on Italian Renaissance paintings.
But before the law career, the in-retirement graduate student and the book, there was the Peace Corps.
Mazaroff, who grew up on Park Heights Avenue and graduated from City College in 1956, went on to earn a bachelor's degree in history in 1960 from the University of Maryland, College Park.
After graduating from college and before entering law school that autumn at Maryland, Mazaroff spent the summer traveling across the country, digging ditches, chopping wood, bailing hay or working at any odd job that came his way in order to propel him a few more miles down the road.
Mazaroff made his way to Los Angeles, where the Democratic National Convention was being held.
"I met a woman who offered me neither money or work, but something, as it turned out, far more valuable — a ticket to the convention," Mazaroff wrote in an unpublished piece about his Peace Corps memories.
He was hoping to catch a glimpse of his political idol, former Illinois governor and two-time Democratic presidential nominee Adlai E. Stevenson, whom Mazaroff described as "a paragon of political virtue."
But something more important — and life-altering — happened at the convention.
"The Los Angeles stadium was packed with over 100,000 people on that memorable day on July 15, 1960, when John Kennedy delivered his acceptance speech," he wrote.
"My seat magically was so close to the podium that I could see his youthful face, hear the lilt of his voice and feel viscerally the impact of the words he expressed. Even today, those words, phrase by phrase, remain carved in my memory," he wrote. " 'We are not here to curse the darkness but to light a candle,' he said."
The future president reminded the crowd that the country was at a "turning point of history" and called upon a "new generation of leadership to serve as pioneers to America's coming new frontier."
On March 1, 1961, the new president established the Peace Corps, while Mazaroff, who was first in his freshman law class, was finishing up his first year in school.
After passing the Peace Corps examination in June, Mazaroff was one of four chosen from Maryland, and among the first of 200 men and women selected nationwide, to join as volunteers and go abroad.
"The Peace Corps is a terrific opportunity for the country and for young, idealistic men," he told The Evening Sun in an interview at the time.
He said he was "very enthusiastic" and that it "will add to my enlightenment."
"It's a chance to help nations help themselves and give something of yourself and gain a rich experience," he said.
After completing seven weeks of training at Pennsylvania State University, Mazaroff was sent to Magarao in the Philippine province of Camarines Sur in southern Luzon, where he worked as a volunteer leader and superintendent of the Peace Corps school program.
He had to find housing for volunteers as he confronted sanitation and health problems.
In his memoir, Mazaroff recalled a note a student left on the blackboard on her last day of school.
"'Stanley is a very good American.' It was and remains the most gratifying compliment that I ever received," he wrote.
In late spring 1963, Mazaroff's two-year odyssey was coming to an end.
"My life as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Philippines not only was an idyllic interlude of the Robinson Crusoe variety, but more importantly, a healthful counterweight to my incessant drive to achieve," he wrote.
He re-entered law school at Maryland, earned good grades, was editor of the Law Review and earned his law degree in 1965.
"When I returned home to the States, I had more trouble psychologically adjusting to daily life than I did upon arriving two years earlier in the Philippines," Mazaroff wrote.
"Late at night tremors that kept me awake told me all too clearly that I was going through withdrawal from an extraordinary experience that was in my veins and that I could not and did not want to forget."
He practiced law for a year before being drafted into the Army in 1966. Trained as a tank commander, he served instead at the Pentagon.
Mazaroff, who lives in Bolton Hill and has a weekend farm in northern Baltimore County, joined Venable, Baetjer and Howard in 1970, where he was partner for 28 of his 31 years there.
An expert in employment law, he specialized in defending employers in discrimination lawsuits.
In addition to his professional career, he taught at his former law school and was the author of "Maryland Employment Law," which is used by attorneys across the state.
After retiring in 2001, he enrolled at Hopkins, where he studied art history. His most recent book is based on documents held in the archives of the Walters Art Museum and at Villa I Tatti, Berenson's home in Florence, Italy.
"My book grew out of my studies and my interest in Henry Walters and Bernard Berenson," Mazaroff said in a recent telephone interview.
"Since the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps is coming up next year, I was asked by a woman in the Peace Corps to write something about being one of its original members," he said.
Sanguine about whether the Peace Corps really did "win friends for America," Mazaroff wrote that after reviewing letters he had written home at the time, volunteers and staff had grown somewhat "skeptical about the merits of the program."
"I wish otherwise, but I cannot state with any conviction that I made any concrete contribution to permanently improve the lives of any of the Filipinos who were my friends, neighbors and students. … Yet, I cherished my tour in the Peace Corps and life in the Philippines and still do."