Bruce Thron-Weber - Executive Director
Bruce Thron-Weber (pronounced Trone) grew up in Bordentown, N.J. and
graduated from Bordentown Regional High School in 1968. He attended
Earlham College in Richmond, IN. It's a Quaker college and Bruce
proudly states that he is a Quaker. Bruce works with men and women whose
lives are filled with remorse and anger. He tries to encourage them to
choose reason over weapons in settling disputes so they can live
productive lives once they get out of confinement. He works one-on-one
with jail inmates and in group sessions with convicts. He does this for
free through an agency he co-founded in 1987 with friend Mark Wessley
,New Foundations Nonviolence Center. Through two- and three-day
workshops with convicts, volunteers work on "affirmation, communication,
cooperation, community building, and creative conflict resolution.
Bruce has had a variety of jobs - college instructor, research
assistant. Three things in his life have been long-term - his marriage,
his devotion to his faith, and his volunteer work, which has been
full-time the past couple of years. For his efforts, he was the March
2008 recipient of the Minoru Yasui Community Volunteer Award, named in
honor of the late community activist.
He studied psychology. He later earned a master's degree in microbiology
from the University of Cincinnati School of Medicine. He came to Idaho
Springs for a religious conference in 1978, where he met his future
wife, Penny Thron. He moved to Denver in 1980, and they married. They
have two children in college.
Bruce's philosophy is that most people in prison are more aware of the
negative things about themselves rather than the positive things. He
encourages them to see the good they can do rather than focus on the bad
they have done. If you feel better about yourself, you're less likely to
be set off by what people say about you. There are success stories. One
inmate, freed and clear of parole, volunteered to go back to prison lead
a group session. Another was freed, got his professional license
reinstated, and married.
Bruce says, "My life's purpose is creating a world of peace,
justice and community. And I believe what God has set for me is to work
with people in jail and in prison. How do I know this? One way is when I
don't do it, my life feel's empty."