For the past 11 years, Jerry Millhon has been studying communities across the country: how they function, the challenges they face, the forces that determine their coherence—or lack of it.

His observations have been anything but academic and removed. He has traveled from one coast to the other, interviewing and filming individuals and organizations involved in community-building efforts. To date, he and film-making partners have made over 50 films on a range of topics at the crux of what it means to successfully coexist with our fellow humans in a community.

It started in 2011 with a lunch meeting that Millhon will never forget. A conversation with long-time Whidbey Island resident Lynn Willeford and friend Stephan Schwartz lit a fire in Millhon that has burned brightly since that day. The three considered the question: why is Whidbey Island the community it is today? A decade later, Millhon remembers Willeford’s response—because of its geographic location as an island, separated from the mainland, we care for one another; we have to in order to survive.

It was this answer that motivated Millhon, former executive director of the Whidbey Institute, to pursue a new path of discovery.

To read more, visit Whidbey Life Magazine.