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DERIC
PERSONAL HISTORY
I'm writing this brief account during early Febuary of 2006, during
a redesign of my website. I hope to return and do a much more thorough
job at some point, after I have caught up with
putting Biology of Mind material on the website.
So....born May 16, 1942 in San Antonio Texas,
where my mother was staying with my grandmother, Ollie Machemehl,
while my father Marlin Deric Bownds, II (I'm III) was away working
as an aircraft inspector during WWII. Early years in a prefab house
built by my father on Kerby Lane and 35th st. in Austin. Running
barefoot with other kids in on the street, eating pills bugs and
dogshit in the playground, being odd man out when teams were selected
(still am...)... frequent trips to stay with grandmother in San
Antonio (the nice one, who spoiled me..... guess who Len, my partner
of 17
years, vaguely resembles, especially with respect to a nuturing temperament).
Moved to 1708 Mohle Dr. when I was in ~second grade, 1949. I went
through grade school, junior high, and high school there, before
taking off for Harvard at age 17. The Mohle Drive House is now owned
by the Bownds Family Trust and occupied by my son Jonathan
and his
partner
Shana
Merlin. Jon runs his own web and internet consulting company.
Early in grade school, I shamed my parents into
buying me a piano by drawing out a keyboard on a piece of paper and
sitting in the middle of the living room, pressing the imaginary
keys. I had an innate facility at reading music, was a church organist
in junior high and high school years, gave recitals, etc. In junior
and senior high school I was a academic nerd, hanging out with
a few
similar
types,
joined
the
marching
band
to
avoid having
to do physical education. I was actually admitted to the University
of Texas as an electrical engineer major and promised student directorship
of the Longhorn band when fate intervened. A fellow nerd in my
high
school
homeroom
bet
me $10 that if I applied to Harvard I would get in (he had applied).
I bet I wouldn't, and lost. I found later that I was part of Harvard's
quota system (to avoid only admitting east coast preppies), a student
from the south or southwest expected to be average. I felt a bit
isolated at Harvard, didn't make long term friends, did rehearsal
piano for the Gilbert and Sullivan Club. I was a resident tutor at
Winthrop House during my graduate student years.
In my last year of graduate, and first year of
postdoctoal work I was engaged to Jane Morton, high school sweetheart,
who had come to Harvard Graduate School to do medieval english literature.
She suddenly and tragically died of a melanoma. Six months later
I was becoming increasingly aware of this pleasant and intelligent
technician who worked with Hubel and Wiesel's cat colony. We dated,
got engaged, and married, and head out to Wiscosin for my first job.
Jon and Sarah were born in 1974 and 1976. Jon's current state given
just above, Sarah now lives with her fiancee JT Smith in Graylake
IL, and commutes to work
for
Rotary
International in Evanston IL. In 1974 I told my wife that a good
male friend that she had introduced me to was more than just a friend.
She was accepting, wanted to stay in the marriage, and so for the
next 14 years I played it straight in public but had a series of
monogamous relationships with men I had met. One of these men I still
consider my best friend, he is now partnered to a man my age in Chicago.
I finally decided in the late 1980s to be myself full time, my
wife Marilyn and I parted peacefully, are still close, and she has
remarried a very nice guy. I have had a close friendship,
for 17 years now, with Len Walker. He is a nurturing person, a gourmet cook, who has
a sense of space and design that makes up for my complete lack of
environmental
skills.
I had bought a condo in Madison in 1988, two blocks from the family
house,
so
the
kids
could
pop
back
and
forth
easily.
Len and I lived there, then I sold the condo to my parents who were
visiting frequently, and we bought Twin Valley, an 1860 stone school
house just west of madison converted
to a residence
by
a Frank
Lloyd
Wright lieutenant named Herb Fritz. You can see pictures of that
house in the music section of his website. Len has worked and lived away from Madison, as a college administrator, for the past 7 years. We spent christmas
of 2004 in Ft. Lauderdale, really liked it, the upshot being purchase
of a condo overlooking the south branch of the Middle River, just
adjacent to Wilton Manors, a small town with perhaps the highest
concentration of gay residents in the country. I'm now a snowbird,
mid-November to mid-April in Ft. Lauderdale, the rest of the year
in Madison.
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