Brenda Mack believes anything is possible.

After all, her family history proves it.

Take her great-great-grandfather Gabriel Carter, a slave in eastern Virginia who ended up owning the plantation where he worked.

While the Civil War was raging, Gabriel’s family was allowed to grow their own fruits and vegetables on part of the plantation. At night, Gabriel’s three sons would sneak some of those fruits and vegetables up the York River in their flat-bottom boat, trading with Union soldiers who paid in gold. The sons buried the gold on the plantation.

After the war, most of the freed slaves on the 800-acre Paige plantation fled, but not Gabriel Carter and his family. They planted their flag in Virginia.

Gabriel’s sister married the white plantation overseer in a secret ceremony -- such interracial marriages were against the law at that time -- and the overseer used the gold to start buying up the plantation. He eventually bought it all in his name, since he was white, signing the deeds over to Gabriel as he purchased them. In the early 1900s, Gabriel filed those deeds at the Gloucester County Courthouse. Most of that acreage has remained in the Carter family ever since. That began a legacy of remarkable achievements that lives on in the Carter family. No less impressive are the accomplishments of the family Brenda married into when she wed Greg Mack more than 40 years ago.

Brenda’s father was the chief probation officer of juvenile court in East Chicago, the first black to hold that position. Greg’s father, Col. Faite Mack, was an original Tuskegee Airman in World War II. Brenda's uncle was the first black nuclear physicist at the Norfolk Institute of Technology. Greg’s mother is related to Carter Woodson, who founded Black History Month.

Why wouldn’t Brenda not assume anything is possible? Especially when you learn that she was an orphan in Indiana for the first five years of her life. She’s half black and half Puerto Rican, and it was illegal in Indiana when Brenda was young to adopt racially mixed babies. She was adopted only because her father, the juvenile court probation officer, was able to pull a few strings.

Brenda vividly remembers her days as a ward of the state; she has a scar on her left arm from the time she reached for some food and was stabbed by a fork. She also survived stage three ovarian cancer in her late 30s.

Her history and experiences help explain why she has so much compassion for those around her who are hurting. And why she’s turned that compassion into action.

Her volunteer list is exhausting. In conjunction with Food Gatherers (www.foodgatherers.org), she arranges, sets up and cooks food every Thursday for anyone who needs it at the New Testament Baptist Church in Ypsilanti. She’s also set up a food pantry at the church.

She’s board president at Detroit Enterprise Academy, a charter school that teaches the three R’s plus morals and ethics in inner-city Detroit. She’s a volunteer usher at the Wild Swan Theater (www.wildswantheater.org) and also helps out with the University of Michigan’s Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Survivors’ Day celebration. Oh, and she home-schools her 4-year-old granddaughter.

It’s all quite tiring -- especially the long Thursdays spent cooking in her church -- but Brenda says “it’s the best feeling in the world. … It has really just been a remarkably blessed life. What He gives to you, you have to give it back.”

She makes it a point to say that all her volunteering wouldn’t be possible without the support of Greg, retired now after a long career as an executive at Ford.

Brenda often talks about giving back to the community. People sometimes respond by saying the community itself hasn’t done enough giving. Brenda has an answer: “If you don’t feel it does enough, then it’s up to you to do something.”

She has little patience for those who talk instead of do, especially for “discourteous” national elected officials. “It really just rankles me,” she said. “The American public is hurting and all (the politicians are) doing is bickering. It’s been left up to the American public to do what they aren’t doing.”

In particular, she thinks the system is leaving behind the poor, old, young and sick. “Volunteers are filling in the gaps,” she said. “Those of us who are blessed, it’s really important that we do this.” She especially worries about the Michigan law, which kicked in today, which says welfare recipients can collect benefits for only four years. “I’m sure we’re going to see a tremendous increase in need,” she said.

Brenda and Greg now live in Ypsilanti but plan to retire some day to Virginia, to the land originally purchased by her great-great-grandfather. But she doesn’t plan to stop giving back. “Volunteering is something I won’t ever stop doing,” she says. “I’ll probably find a niche down there, too.”

Kyle Poplin is publisher of The Ann magazine, which is inserted monthly in various print editions of AnnArbor.com. The next issue comes out Oct. 23. He’s also searching, through this column, for the most interesting person in Ann Arbor. If you have anyone in mind, email your idea to theannmag@gmail.com.