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John
"Biff" Younger
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After high school I went to Stanford, and worked my way through
(plus loans; Dad had lied about having the funds; I did everything
from music store [a continuation of my stint at the Village Music] to
hustling) and majored in history, music, and classics. The classics
was a continuation of my (meager) interest in Latin with Fitzgerald;
music was my passion kindled by Mabel Pittinger, but I had only a
moderate talent for it (which I well knew); the history was easy
(with Kappelman's training, I was good at it). In the summer after my
sophomore year I worked in a brewery in Switzerland (Frau Roth's
German came in very handy) and made enough $$ to buy a huge BMW
motorcycle and spent the Fall touring Italy, Greece (my second home
now), up through Yugoslavia (as it was then), and Austria. Left the
bike with American Express in Hamberg to ship back to Stanford (yes,
it arrived 10 months later), and continued on through Germany (did
East Berlin through Checkpoint Charlie and was detained for 2 days),
France, and England and came back. The following semester I took a
Mythology in Greek Art course with a distinguished professor who
asked if anyone would volunteer to help him catalogue the Greek &
Roman clay lamps in the university museum, and I raised my hand, and
changed my life. |
|
After high school I went to Stanford, and worked my way through
(plus loans; Dad had lied about having the funds; I did everything
from music store [a continuation of my stint at the Village Music] to
hustling) and majored in history, music, and classics. The classics
was a continuation of my (meager) interest in Latin with Fitzgerald;
music was my passion kindled by Mabel Pittinger, but I had only a
moderate talent for it (which I well knew); the history was easy
(with Kappelman's training, I was good at it). In the summer after my
sophomore year I worked in a brewery in Switzerland (Frau Roth's
German came in very handy) and made enough $$ to buy a huge BMW
motorcycle and spent the Fall touring Italy, Greece (my second home
now), up through Yugoslavia (as it was then), and Austria. Left the
bike with American Express in Hamberg to ship back to Stanford (yes,
it arrived 10 months later), and continued on through Germany (did
East Berlin through Checkpoint Charlie and was detained for 2 days),
France, and England and came back. The following semester I took a
Mythology in Greek Art course with a distinguished professor who
asked if anyone would volunteer to help him catalogue the Greek &
Roman clay lamps in the university museum, and I raised my hand, and
changed my life.
Back at Stanford I began ancient Greek and ran around with David
Harris & Joan Baez & Ronnee Blakely and participated in
anti-war protests, but I was really interested in the old stuff in
the basement of the Stanford Museum. I graduated (1967) and went to
grad school at the University of Cincinnati, department of Classics
which has its own endowment and had then the best Greek archaeology
program in the US. Soon I got married to a woman I had met at
Stanford (or rather, since I wasn't paying any attention to her in a
horseback riding class, she ran me over in her red MG; I started
paying attention then). I got my MA in 1969, and was ok'd to continue
on to the PhD, and was drafted. Since my wife & I were having a
messy affair with an old boyfriend of hers, the army gave me a 4-F
and I went to Greece that summer to start excavations on the island
of Kea (just east of Athens) and to start the one-year archeological
training program at the American School of Classical Studies, which I
completed in 1970, and then stayed on in Athens, writing my
dissertation (on the chronology of Late Bronze Age [ca. 1600-1200 BC]
sealstones and fingerrings).
At the time, Greece was run by a military Junta that the US was
supporting (one of my down moments was giving Spiro T. Agnew a tour
of the Acropolis), and which was very repressive and autocratic
("el Leader" posters everywhere). As an archaeologist, I
was nominally constrained by the US Embassy not to interfer in
politics. But my wife was not so constrained. And soon we were mixing
with the underground resistence people (Theodorakis, Hatzidakis,
Melina Mercouri et al.) and, since she was doing her dissertation on
the French writer Robbe-Grillet (sadistic novels), she was running
messages and money to the government in exile in Paris and I was
boarding runaway resistence fighters in our apartment and smuggling
food and money to prisoners. Everything came to a crash in October of
1973. I had gotten my PhD earlier that May and was teaching in an
British high school in Athens (the entire senior class everything
from piano to trig, and coaching the soccer team [didn't know nothing
about soccer, but I sure learned]). In October, the students at the
Polytech University rebelled, and resisted all attempts to surrender
until the military stormed the walls with tanks; there were fleeing
students everywhere and 2, wounded, made it to our apartment where we
hid them. The whole city was put under curfew (we did grocery
shopping by candlelight at 2 am, sneaking around apartment
complexes). By December, things had lightened up but it was obvious
that the government was going to fall. Then, out of the blue, I got
an invitation to teach at Duke University in North Carolina (where'z
dat?), I accepted, my wife told me she was staying in Athens with a
Greek pilot (who was having an affair with his half-brother; I warned
her) and that she was having an abortion (!). So that was pretty much
the end of our marriage. I returned to the States in July, 1974, alone.
At Duke, everything went by in a kind of blur. I was still going
on digs in the summer, mostly to Greece where I dug at Knossos in
Crete and on the island of Melos (these were long digs lasting
several years each, mostly Late Bronze Age but sometimes good
classical Greek stuff), and shorter digs in southern Italy (a
Jewish-Christian catacomb) and in northern Israel (an early
synagogue). Upon arrival at Duke I came out as gay (Dad wanted to
know what he had done wrong - plenty, but that wasn't the cause of my
being gay; Mom just wanted me happy), taught Greek art &
archaeology day-in and day-out, loved it, was denied tenure in 1981
because one of my colleagues wrote a letter to the Promotion &
Tenure Committee that I was immoral, and then circulated copies of it
- he was so proud. I got a copy and took it to the President of the
university (former govenor Terry Sanford) who was outraged (bless
him!) and I was tenured the next year (full professor in 1990). So I
became political (yet again) and conducted grassroots campaigns to
get "sexual orientation" added to the university's
anti-discrimination statement (passed 1988), to establish a
President's committee on Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual (and eventually
Transgender, Transsexual) concerns (1991), a LGBT student programming
unit and center (1992), the first LGBT Studies course (1993, which I
taught every Spring semester, as an add-on [= no $]), a certificate-granting
undergraduate minor in LGBT Studies (1995), same-sex spousal
equivalency benefits for staff (1996), and a freshman-only program of
allied courses in race, class, and gender & sexuality called
"Diversity & Identity " (1996).
In 1992 I went to an archaeology conference in Tasmania (go
figure) and met Paul Rehak, a Roman archaeologist. We kept telling
each other we both had boyfriends (I had met mine in 1978, an
[unemployed] actor) and were therefore off-limits, but that didn't
work. Back state-side, I threw my boyfriend of 13 years out of my
life, Paul did the same with his, and he left his going-nowhere job
at Loyola University (Catholic institution & out-gay, not much
future there) and moved in with me and taught occasionally at Duke.
Then my 25-Year service medal came through the mail and I realized
that things better happen soon or another 25 years would pass in the
blink of an eye and I'd be dead.
So we started looking around, and lo! the University of Kansas
beckoned. Its classical archaeologist was retiring in 2001, and Paul
landed a temporary job replacing her for one semester; I moved out
with him and our 2 dogs on an unpaid leave so KU could look me over.
The department here and we were/are a great match; they thought it
was cool we were a gay archaeology couple handling both Greek and
Roman art (so does Art History, so does Women's Studies for which I
do sexuality courses). We met the deans who also thought we we could
offer the university something (a married couple in the same
department is rare; a gay couple in the same department, well, we're
it), and Paul was offered a contract, then a month later I was
offered one and we both accepted, much to disbelief of our colleagues
back at Duke. We then bought "Hadherway", this great 1880s
house at the top of Mt Oread in Lawrence KS, and moved in that
summer. I went back to Duke to honor the end of my contract and
taught my last courses there that Fall, and moved permanently (not a
glance backwards) to Lawrence on 1 January 2002 (change is great,
moving is hell). I've just completed my first full year here at KU
and love it. Northeast Kansas is rolling hills with a few trees and
lots of sky (much like northern Marin; North Carolina is rolling
hills too but they're covered in thick pine forests, so you see
neither hills nor sky; plus it has mosquitoes that raise welts and
make gardening a medical nightmare). And we have 5 dogs now, a 3rd
from our next-door neighbor who turned 82 and was being dragged down
the street, and 2 Shelties we couldn't resist.
If you need more information (masochist), take a look at my
homepage and resume+bibliography (linked): http://www.people.ku.edu/~jyounger
.
So that's my life. I look forward greatly to seeing you all! |
