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VC Angell
I grew up in many towns in many places and two countries as my father climbed the corporate ladder. There were times I hated it, but looking back I think it served me well. I married just a couple ...view moreI grew up in many towns in many places and two countries as my father climbed the corporate ladder. There were times I hated it, but looking back I think it served me well. I married just a couple of weeks before going to Vietnam. Physically, I survived well there. My wife and the baby died in childbirth about a year and a half after I returned from Vietnam. In my 20s, I remember standing in a cemetery looking at her name, the baby’s, and my name. Only my name lacked the final date. I went from pursuing a business degree following my father’s trade to electronics. It was something I loved and still do.
I remarried and have one son. He is the first one since the Civil War who has not served in a war. For the fun of it, I have been using ancestry.com to trace my family. It appears we were always a warlike family or country – I am not sure which. I have found family members who served in the French and Indian war.
As I said, I survived the Vietnam War. However, I was attacked by a very hostile pile of logs at Fort Sill Oklahoma and temporarily paralyzed while in the Army. That spinal cord injury has come back to haunt me over 40 years later. The VA has been very good to me, but they tell me I am half the man I used to be. It leaves me as a disabled veteran, but what a better job for someone who is disabled than working as a writer?
I need to fill in a bit more here. As my son approached his high school graduation, I went back to school. I wanted to get an MFA in writing, but no one would have me unless I completed a degree in English. One day before he graduated from high school, I did that at the Bemidji State University and had a ball getting that degree. I applied to Western Michigan’s University because of their teaching staff who were writers. It was before Christmas that I was accepted. Later I was to learn, I was one of three who were accepted out of over 700 applicants. I was told when I arrived it would be one of the “best times of my life.” It proved to be. I found there were others like me who had to write. I remember writing “a scene” for a class and having an officemate asked me if she had told me her story because it was “her story.” The scene was about an abusive husband who was having sex – loving – his wife and she was crying throughout which he interpreted as her being turned on.
I have done some teaching at various universities including the University of Phoenix online. I love teaching writing to beginning students,but my first love will always be writing.view less