School Story:
[From 50th Reunion Yearbook]
My stay at Mount Hermon was shorter than most of my classmates’--just my senior year. It was my seventeenth school, thanks I guess to the vagaries of U.S foreign policy and my parents’ fecklessness, I didn’t have time to learn much of the folklore or make life-long friends; nevertheless it was a fine year and I’m proud to have the diploma.
Most of my masters were excellent. Of course I’ve never forgotten Mr. Donovan. (Did many of you reap practical professional tools from TD’s instruction? In forty years of teaching English, I often cited his wisdom, especially “You can’t just sit in front of a blank sheet of paper and say, ‘Go ahead, little pencil; I’m behind you all the way!’” Can it be true that we weren’t allowed to use ink?) Another profound influence on my future was Pete Skib, who, when I first arrived for my job in the scullery, said, “You’re the laziest-looking boy I ever saw!” I wish I’d never mentioned that to my wife.
I loved the campus, the music, the Cloud, even chapel. I’ve always had a taste for good country, and I relished my strolls several dozen yards behind the rest of the Cross-Country C-Squad. I fished for brook trout in the fall and kept a young great horned owl in a box under my bed for a while during the winter.
Much to the surprise of Mr. Green, cross-country coach and one of my two math teachers, I was accepted at Michigan, but a Navy ROTC scholarship took me to Washington instead. My naval career foundered on the rocks of naval engineering my junior year (I never could get very interested in how the refrigeration system on an aircraft carrier works). At about the same time, I discovered that without knowing it I’d been preparing for a career as an English professor most of my life.
I’ve been married for forty-seven years to a girl I met the summer after we graduated. Two of our three daughters are still very much alive, and we have two granddaughters.
I relished my academic career, serving at three independent liberal arts colleges before joining the state system in Colorado in 1986. For a dozen years or so, I worked as dean or academic vice president. After four years as President of Western State College of Colorado, I recalled that the plan had been to teach and spent fifteen years as Professor of English at Metropolitan State College.
I made a happy career choice, but I’m not surprised that I like retirement even better. (Mr. Skib would not be surprised either, I reckon.) I’m a hiker, fly-fisherman, amateur naturalist and raconteur. I couldn’t live in a better place than Colorado for these pastimes, and Margaret and I live near an airport for times when we’d like a taste of some other good country.
