Jonathan Quimby Mills – 50th Reunion Essay

Jonathan Quimby Mills

871 Chapin Blvd

Englewood, FL 34223

jonmills871@gmail.com

203-940-0118

Spouse(s): Mary Jo DeStefano (1973–forever)

Child(ren): Joanna DeStefano Mills Treon (1976); Charles Wesbrook Mills (1978)

Grandchild(ren): Westbrook Charles Mills (2012); Mia Joie Mills (2015); Arizona Mills Treon (2016); Barrett Mills Treon (2017).

Education: Yale BA ’69; NYU MA ’73; Columbia MBA ’78

Career: Teacher of English, History, Money and Banking, middle school to Community College, ’73–’78, ’96–2001, 2009–2011; C&I Commercial Lender, ’78–2009, Pensioner 2011–present

Avocations: Novelist, guitar and sax, AYA Board

College: Ezra Stiles

The draft of this statement detailed my emotional life, as if I were addressing my secret society.

Then I realized my better half might counsel me to differentiate between the public and the private.

So, I’ll suppress my attempt to shock (I never lost the youngest brother’s need for attention) and keep it to essentials.

See my profile for the details. My concern here is the important reality inside my head, the emotional arc of my life, the one where we finish.

A great truth for me is the imperative from the part of me that is unseen: the unconscious is unconscious. And it is powerful. I believe we are controlled by our emotions far more than we emotionless, educated males acknowledge. My good friends will remember I was moody. That surfaced in alcoholism (a classmate helped me by calling me a “high bottom” alcoholic) and continued big mood swings. I survived that midlife crisis, quit drinking, and reaped the rewards of our wealthy country in corporate jobs. I don’t know if my children can count on the same.

My emotional life is that of an apologist, a perhaps false humility of the younger sibling, what I call the “Third Brother Blues.” (My family is familiar with this running composition, which is my version of Dangerfield’s no-respect humor, rendered on a bad guitar.)

Yale gave me a wonderful life of the mind. In 1969, I had come to expect it would initiate my adulthood, because the legacy I came from promised it would. It was a culmination for me. I felt launched, and a young man’s arrogant cock-sureness came with it. Later, my time on the board of the AYA confirmed my belief in the immutable value of education, and gave me some more mature perspective on Yale.

Since college, I have lived a private and a public life. Yale exists uniquely in both. Its impact was profound. I never lost the perspective that Charlie Reich gave me about the politics of America. Kierkegaard still shapes my solipsism; Shakespeare my inspiration; Warren my aspiration. My contempt for self-promotion, avarice, and conflict of interest remain stubbornly, from its puritanical and Victorian roots, in place. If contempt is tempered by the humility of acknowledging an inborn sense of entitlement, it is only a shadow of self-awareness.

The life of the mind is what remains important, and I am a lucky man to be able to afford it. Past threescore and 10 I count myself as having acquired some moderating perspective on all certainties.

I never lost the need to teach, share ideas, seek a meeting of minds. I did not satisfy these needs in my work until the end, when I spent two years teaching in a private boys’ school. Earlier on, I seemed not to allow myself the luxury of what I most naturally enjoyed. To my regret, I resisted the ease of my talents. Now, with some personal discipline, I am a fortunate and happy old man in spite of it all.