Jay Terry Lees

It is interesting to reflect on the last fifty years! How to summarize? I left Utah the summer after graduation and went to Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. I also spent several years in Germany and did my junior year abroad in France. Although I went to Gettysburg intending to study the Civil War, my European experiences moved me back in time to the Middle Ages. I did my graduate work in medieval history at Tulane University in New Orleans and at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. Along the way, I worked various jobs: managed a bookstore for several years, taught at a Montessori school, then taught twelfth grade history and–strange to say–Latin to sixth, seventh, and eighth graders–not something I had ever expected to do! I was also head of the school theater program, directing all the plays and musicals. After a couple of one-year university positions, I got a tenure-track job at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, Iowa where I taught for 31 years. I enjoyed teaching British history, German history, and medieval history along with seminars on the Crusades, women in the Middle Ages, and Shakespeare as a historian, as well as taking students abroad to teach the Holocaust in Krakow, Poland and a course I call “Sacred Space” in Perugia and Montagnana, Italy. I’ve also managed to take several groups of adults to Italy. I retired in 2018. I’m divorced but married a second time to my dear Julie, who is a southwest archaeologist, my Indiana Jones! We have two daughters, Britta-Paule, a wetlands biologist with the Tennessee Valley Authority living in Knoxville, and Brynn Nicole, who is at prsesent (2021) teaching in a private school in Guayaquil, Ecuador. Our daughters have given Julie and me five wonderful grandchildren. And finally, I do remember a number of you well. I really wanted to make the reunion, but unfortunately that isn’t going to be possible. I do, however, get to Salt Lake from time to time and would love to get together with former friends and acquaintances. So, please get in touch!