Originally from Fairhope, Alabama, Rockwell, 92, gives presentations about his life almost every day of the week to students, tourists or anyone else who might be interested in Monteverde, a hamlet in the cloud forests of Costa Rica's northwestern highlands. He takes his plastic sandwich bag of photos almost everywhere he goes. He knows the story behind each one.

He is the patriarch of a small diaspora of Americans who, more than six decades ago, left their country when they felt their religious values were in jeopardy. Their impact on this traditionally agricultural region was deep, and they are still a visible part of the community here....

A mere eight days after his sentence was finished, Rockwell joined 44 Quakers from 11 families in Fairhope as part of an exodus to Costa Rica. Some flew; Rockwell and his family drove, including his 72-year-old father and 65-year-old mother. The journey from Fairhope to San José, Costa Rica’s capital, took three months. It took one month alone to get to the first town across the border from Nicaragua — a distance of 12 miles. It was before the Pan-American Highway was completed. The Quakers from Alabama made roads when they found none....

The community settled in a highland agricultural region that came to be known as Monteverde. When they arrived here, the Quakers improved the roads, introduced hydroelectricity and built a bilingual school. The community established the region’s first corporation, a cheese factory that serendipitously used Quaker Oats canisters as molds. Rockwell, who received basic medical training during World War II, saw the region through a hepatitis epidemic. The community created the region’s first forest reserve, around the headwaters of a stream they used for water.