"Bob Boyer, a mercifully brief introduction"
I enjoy writing, traveling, and teaching. For most of my career I have been able to combine all three activities, with my greatest love being teaching. From the time I was a freshman at La Salle High School in my hometown of Philadelphia, I decided that I wanted to be a teacher. I have never looked back since then, though I have had a variety of ‘extra’ jobs along the way, including selling men’s clothes in a department store in Phoenix, Arizona and working as a laborer on constructions sites in Philadelphia. Well, I did get a break and spent my last construction summer as a job foreman.
I retired from full-time teaching in 2005, after forty-four years: four years in high school, three years in universities as a graduate teaching assistant, and the last thirty-six years teaching English at St. Norbert College in Northeastern Wisconsin. If you are counting, I am one year short. That was a gratifying year spent purely in studying toward my doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania. I remember that that was the year my mother said to me, "you are thirty years old and still in school. What is the problem?" Actually the luxury of full-time study enabled me to complete my degree sooner.
The teaching afforded opportunities for travel. I have taught in Canton, Ohio, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in Phoenix, Arizona, in Philadelphia, and in Northeastern, Wisconsin. I was fortunate to earn a fellowship to study at Oxford University in England, with my wife and four children along. Later on, courses that I taught, or research that I did, took me to Nicaragua (during their civil war), to El Salvador (just after their civil war), twice to Spain, and six times to the Philippines. I spent two sabbatical semesters in Spain, and I was a Visiting Professor in Manila, the Philippines, on one occasion. Friends have been referring to me of late as “an adventurer.”
The teaching and travel have resulted in the books listed on this site, the most recent of which is "Sundays in Manila," the travel memoir based on my experiences in the Philippines. That country and the many friends and acquaintances I have met there keep drawing me back. I also write a monthly column for “VIA TIMES Newsmagazine,” a Philippine-American publication out of Chicago. You can find me, including a recent picture, on their web site (www.viatimes.com). I am currently working on an All-Ages Fantasy Novel set primarily in medieval Spain during the Arab ascendency there.
