What fills my hours:

Reading, writing, creating, sleeping . . . logging Fitbit steps . . . solving NYT X-words . . . gardening, observing, pondering, doing the occasional internal cartwheel . . . seeing films, listening to jazz, blues, reggae, bossa nova, and rock . . . pretending unsuccessfully to be younger than I am . . . walking barefoot on beaches (as well as boating, sailing, kayaking, SUPing, swimming, and snorkeling) . . . enjoying knockout—thanks, Vivian!—meals and exceptional wines (Chateauneuf-du-Pape or Brunello di Montalcino, anyone?) . . . enumerating our manifold blessings, practicing gratitude, thinking mostly good thoughts . . . keeping an eye on the portfolio . . . mountain biking crazy-hard trails . . . keeping up with two houses (Spring Lake and Springfield) and a summer cottage (Glen Lake) . . . enjoying company and solitude equally . . . witnessing and savoring (and bowing before) the procession–the spectacle–of people and days . . . trying to be fully alive while alive and to keep in the distance for as long as possible the hooded guy with the scythe.

Family:

Companion and co-adventurer: Vivian Hutchison Wolbrink (married 50 years)
Daughter: Dr. Shelley Wolbrink, history professor Drury University.
Son-in-law: Dr. Jeffrey VanDenBerg, political science professor Drury University.
Granddaughters: Avery and Evelyn

Awards:

Spring Lake High School Teacher of the Year: 1986, 1991, 1995, 1999, 2001, 2007,
2009

Distinguished Teacher, White House Commission on Presidential Scholars, 1991

After Central:

Teacher, Ottumwa (Iowa) High School, 1968-69.
Teacher, Spring Lake (Michigan) High School, 1969-2009.
Managers, Villa Glen Resort (Glen Arbor, Michigan), 1975-2019.

Avid travelers: 25 trips to Europe in 25 years, all but one done independently:
Quick glimpses: floating on the Nile from Aswan to Luxor . . . flying on a sudden whim from Istanbul to Izmir to spend a day at Ephesus . . . hydroplaning to remote beaches in the Sporades . . . taking the train from Vienna to Ljubljana through beautiful alpine countryside on the same track my father had traveled in the summer of 1945 when, as a first lieutenant after the fighting had ended, he escorted Yugoslavian POWs “back to Tito”) . . . hiking in the Cotswalds . . . banging around Tuscany and Umbria in a rental car (our daughter and son-in-law live in Rome during the summer) . . . riding the tram through Lisbon neighborhoods . . . taking the bullet train from Madrid to Seville . . . driving a brand-new, six-speed Fiat through the west counties of Ireland for a week: seated on the opposite side of the car, driving on the opposite side of the road, pulling the stick shift toward me rather than pushing it away, and parallel parking successfully the one time I tried it . . . standing beside the mummy of King Tut in the Valley of the Kings, holding hands with our granddaughters . . . running across the Pont du Gard in the south of France on my fortieth birthday . . . swimming, like Odysseus, with the sirens of Sorrento on my fiftieth . . . body surfing at Rosemary Beach on my sixtieth . . . more body surfing and biking and beach trekking at Anna Maria Island on my seventieth . . . climbing the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon at Teotihuacan on Vivian’s seventieth. We’re flat-out lucky, extremely blessed, to have had these experiences and more, to sip deeply from the cup of life.

Phi Delta Tau Memories:

Mario Bava . . . “Ars longa, vita brevis” . . . the four-man room, the twelve-man room . . . the single phone for 16 people . . . the pegged piano we’d load on the back of a pickup and drive on campus sidewalks to serenade the beauties of Graham Hall–Knight Wells at the keyboard, Rick Fairlamb on the guitar, while we belted out “House of the Rising Sun” (it’s been the ruin of many a poor boy and God I know I’m one”) and “Flowers on the Wall” (playin’ solitaire till dawn with a deck of fifty one, smokin’ cigarettes and watchin’ Captain Kangaroo, now don’t tell me, I’ve nothin’ to do) . . . the pranks and outlandish schemes we considered and occasionally pulled off: we spent hours plotting how to move the Civil War cannon in the town square to campus, going so far as to monitor the nighttime rounds of the police and consider how we could muffle the sound of iron-rimmed wheels on brick streets; before my time Paul Bogart, a townie, had borrowed a calf from the nativity scene in the Square and stored it in the rafters of his garage until spring when he got it down, covered it in gold foil, placed it on the island, and posted big signs around campus instructing students to gather at the pond for the morning chapel service; also before my time, the marbles placed in the “V” of the folding chair used by Bill Lubenow—he would wait at the chapel door, close it behind the last student, turn the lock, and open his chair to sit down as the service began, except that one morning he opened his chair and a dozen marbles began to roll down the sloping chapel floor to the front—throughout the opening prayer they could be heard rolling into people’s feet, briefly stopping before someone shifted and sent one on its way . . . the ’57 Plymouth Savoy owned By (John Cobb?) because it had a door hinge that could pop the cap off beer bottles . . . Hell Week, Hell Night at the cabin and eating raw eggs, walking the train tracks from a few miles northwest of town where we’d been dropped off at 3 a.m. and reaching Pella at dawn, where we changed clothes, got inducted, and went together to Sunday brunch looking handsome in our new Phi Delt crests . . . the liquor bottles in the TV room filled with beach sand from Spring Break adventures . . . the “phantom shitter” who left giant turds in the upstairs bathroom for all to see, each bigger than the previous one, truly monumental fabrications that must have required days of willed retention . . . the time John Anker, whom I always suspected of being the phantom shitter, brazenly walked into the Beakes dorm, stole their six-foot wooden paddle in the shape of a beer bottle, and hung it in our house in plain view of anyone who looked in the front window . . . smuggling alcohol into Holland Hospital in a vase of flowers when Jack Farrell got mono and had to be quarantined there . . . the brilliance and lasting impression created by filial critiques: we’d pull the shades of the house, disconnect the phone, pass a hat, and draw a number–someone would say “one” and the critique began: for ten minutes we talked about the person holding the number; brutal honesty was the norm and there could be no rebuttal; it was how we released the tension of daily close living; Frank Pampino once said of me, “Paul treats me like he’s my father”; it later occurred to me that he was right and the lesson has stayed with me ever since; when the critique ended in the late afternoon, we had a keg waiting at the cabin along the river–mugs hoisted, all smiles, cleansed of rancor . . . these stories and hundreds more from the audacious experiment of Phi Delta Tau, founded upon the belief that heterogeneity was a virtue . . . we were a motley crew by design: the sons of farmers, ministers, businessmen; a collection of athletes and artists and Rolscreen scholars; a mixture of Midwest and East Coast; mathematicians, philosophers, chemists, psychologists, and historians; the four-year plan, the five-year plan; those who preferred Johnny Mathis for late-night moments with girlfriends (Don Logan) and those who preferred Frank Zappa . . . it worked, all of it . . . being a Phi Delta Tau Brother in Bond was one of the most significant experiences of my life, truly foundational.