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I spent 32 years of my life on the Principia College campus--4 as a student and 28 as Professor of Music and College Organist. After graduating, I was accepted to participate on the fall 1969 Western Civilization Abroad led by Jim Green. That saved me from the Vietnam War. My local draft board permitted me to go on the trip with the stipulation that I would be back by December 1, at which time, if I had been called to serve, I would be drafted. December passed with no word from the draft board; I thought I had dodged the bullet because the draft lottery commenced on January 1, 1970 and I had a very high number. Then about a week later I received my induction notice. However, the State of Illinois intervened and instructed the local draft board that I had to have been drafted before January 1 when the lottery began. I will never forget the secretary of the draft board telling me I had been inducted while in Europe, but she had lost my paperwork and only found it a week into the new year. Divine intervention saved me from that experience!
I moved to Boston in 1970 to start my Master of Music degree at the New England Conservatory of Music, and I was on call as a substitute organist of The Mother Church, where I eventually served as Associate Organist from 1972 to 1983. This was a fantastic time for me; I had the Mother Church organs at my disposal. I played hundreds of services, including several years for Spanish services in the Original Edifice, monthly noon recitals in the Extension, and my four graduate degree recitals. A 2-CD recording of The Mother Church Extension organ (The Boston Years) documents my time there. I completed my Doctor of Musical Arts degree in musicology and organ performance at Boston University in 1985. I should interject that my doctoral dissertation on the great French organist Charles-Marie Widor was another fortuitous turn in my life--Divine intervention again! That work culminated in my editing 12 volumes of his organ works (1987-97), authoring his definitive biography (2011), being interviewed on the BBC and a full-length DVD production, having untold contacts and opportunities to speak around the world, and completing a second book currently in process of publication (2018). None of this would have happened had Mind not guided me and opened every step of the way.
After graduation I needed a job. I was doing post-doctoral work in Paris when my mother sent me an ad from the Monitor: Principia College was seeking a music history professor and college organist. BINGO! At first, I thought, "Oh, no! Not Principia again." Nonetheless, God pushed me to apply, and He certainly must have pushed the Principia Administration to hire me. Thus began 28 years of climbing the academic ladder from Assistant Professor, to Associate Professor, to Professor, to endowed chair (William Martin and Mina Merrill Prindle Professor of Fine Arts), to Unit Head of the Creative Arts and Communications, to Professor Emeritus of Music. 28 years is too long a time to enumerate what I consider my important contributions; however, I count the new organs in the College Chapel and Cox Auditorium, and the Chapel’s Jean L. Rainwater Carillon to be among my most important contributions to Principia. I feel great pride in having left Principia better than I found her with those world-class musical instruments. But perhaps even more important than the material assets is what I did to help move Principia off its untenable policy of discrimination against the employ and admission of LGBT Christian Scientists.
There is insufficient space here to recite that story, but for those who have not already read about it, I would direct you to three documents: my 3 December and follow-up 23 December 2013 letters to the Friends of Principia, and my key-note address given in St. Louis on 3 October 2015 to Emergence International. These detail everything and are easily accessed online.
I am presently very happy living in Jensen Beach, Florida. I think I am busier now than all those years at Principia College. I am traveling the world (even Antarctica), keeping up on my organ playing, and continuing research and writing on the topic that has given me a unique niche in my profession--the composer Widor. I must conclude by saying that I am grateful to finally be free to live who I am. I am married to a wonderful man who shares my zest for life and adventure.