Bullheaded Black Remembers Alexander

First flutist in the Ogden High School ROTC band without ever playing a note. ("The band has to look complete at the football games," Philip Dalby insisted.) Worshipped Thelma Reynolds, who gave me an A in Latin after seeing me weep for failing my high school algebra examinations. For two years I joined those who couldn't get enough of Lucille Chambers, who liberally doused us with Shakespeare, Dostoyevski, W.H. Hudson, Thomas Mann and Tasso. When I was eighteen I burned myself with fuming sulfuric acid in college organic chemistry and dropped out of premed. Lived for two years in New Zealand, on a Mormon mission, sometimes staying with the Maoris on their reservations in remote spots of nowhere--wild green mansions by the sea with names like Punaruku. Majored in English at Brigham Young University and joined the faculty for a decade while studying toward the PhD at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Utah. Taught adult education classes for many years at the McCune mansion in Salt Lake City and taught private classes, popular with civic leaders, on Milton's "Paradise Lost." Reluctantly, I gave up teaching in 1972 for a more lucrative career, spending the next twenty years as an officer in the Mortgage Division of First Security Bank of Utah, retiring in 1994 to be with family and friends under the hot, blue skies of Arizona. Inebriated with time, sunshine, freedom and reflections upon world history, I have written two books: "Bullheaded Black Remembers Alexander" and "The Earth Mother's Image," a title inspired by the art work of Judith Phillips. This last novel is still looking for the light of day.