Thomas Alexander:
CLASS OF 1970
Highland High SchoolClass of 1970
Albuquerque, NM
Thomas's Story
After Highland, I went to UNM, starting off majoring in geology but then doing a double major in Philosophy and English with a minor in French. I had a draft number of 33 and so kept a nervous eye on the last phase of the Vietnam War. I went to graduate school in Philosophy instead of to Vietnam. Emory University in Atlanta gave me a chance to experience the South. I read lots of Faulkner and realized he was not a semisurrealist but a journalist. I got lost driving in the deep South and worried I'd never make it back to civilization and the comfort of my Kafka Apartment with the huge flying cockroaches. I also married a young medical student from Minnesota. We moved to Albuquerque for her internship and for me to write my dissertation. Just two years after we were married she died. I spent a period teaching in the NM St...Expand for more
ate Penitentiary through the College of Santa Fe--this was in the wake of the deadly riot of 1980 in which most of the prison was gutted. Those were also altogether too interesting days. I also worked at Jerry Lane's Bookstop. I remarried, this time to a woman in the law program at UNM and, on completing my degree, we moved to Southern Illinois where I got a tenure-track job at SIU-Carbondale, where I have taught since. We had two boys, Adam and Nate, both delightful and now well on their ways in life. Then comes marriage counseling, divorce, life alone in a house in the woods, and remarriage and happiness. I have recently retired and moved back to Albuquerque, though as The Beatles said:
There are places I remember
All my life, though some have changed.
Some forever, not for better.
And some have gone, and some remain
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