Comments:
July 2013: Biggest thing in my update is that, on Feb 22 of this year (2013), my wife of 30 years passed away. That is several months ago now, and I'm doing fine, but my emotions seem to stay just below the surface and are brought up extremely easily. I can't listen to music on the radio much without something triggering tears, and many movies do the same thing. I think losing someone so close is something that you never get over, nor never really want to get over, but you divide your life into segments---work, relationships with other people, hobbies, etc---that are separate and divided away from the passing of your wife.
Jan 2013, Here is the neatest thing I have going right now: Working at the university, I am able to take any of the courses offered on campus free-of-charge. This semester I am taking 2-year-old horse training, which means learning how to break and train horses that have never been ridden before. Lot's of fun, and have only landed in the dirt once so far.
Everything else below is the same as previously, so no sense reading it if you did at some time past . . . except that I am now associate dean of our college rather than assistant dean, which moves things up one small notch.
Been a university professor since 1990.
1 1/2 years at Southeast Missouri State
3 years at Clemson in South Carolina
Since 1995 at Texas A&M University--Commerce
A month After graduating from AC, Ron Voth and I thought to homestead in Canada & go live like Grizzly Adams. Went to Winnipeg, which was flat as Kansas, not like Sierra Nevadas. We left after three days.
Since then, I’ve lived in Missouri (3 times), Illinois, Michigan, South Carolina (3 times), North Carolina, Mississippi, and finally Texas again. Have had two wives: First one didn’t work out after, um, maybe a year and a half. Second one I’ve been with for 29 years. I think she’ll work out. She marginally thinks I’ll work out.
Jobs have included: correspondence course salesman, insurance salesman (I’m a rotten salesman), newspaper circulation manager/cameraman/ad man, Ramada Inn night auditor, bartender, radio station traffic dispatcher, piano tuner & organ repairman, truck driver (18-wheeler, ran from North Carolina to mostly Pennsylvania & New Jersey), truck dispatcher (my favorite job except for my present one), ran convenience stores for four or five years, worked for Kitty Litter testing clay while getting a second bachelor’s degree (gotta keep those cats happy). At about age 39 or so, I finally figured out what I wanted to do—and got a second bachelor’s degree, masters, then Ph.D., and became university prof.
I teach environmental sciences, have taught all the Earth sciences as well, and even biology a couple of times. Have now ended up being assistant dean of the College of Science, Engineering, and Agriculture. Overall, being a professor beats bartending, although that was fun too. So was being the chicken farmer for about a year while still a student at AC.
My sister, Lynda Fox, who was at AC for one year in about 1968-69, married Ernie Ratliff. He was a 1-W worker whom many of you knew. They live in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Ernie’s a trucker—has been for almost all the time since leaving AC, while Lynda has been a pharmacy tech for the past 15+ years.
