William Arthur Shullenberger II – 50th Reunion Essay

William Arthur Shullenberger II

30 Acker Avenue

Ossining, NY 10562

wshullen@slc.edu

914-923-0103

Spouse(s): Bonnie L. A. Shullenberger (1971–2009; married May, 1978; deceased 2009)

Child(ren): Shannon Alexander (1970), Geoffrey Shullenberger (1979)

Grandchild(ren): Dallas Rogers (1999); Max Rogers (2001); Isabel Mihalakos (2005)

Education: Yale B.A. 1969; University of Massachusetts MA 1978, PhD 1982

National Service: Fulbright Senior Lectureship (Supervised by USIS), Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda; 1992–1994

Career: Elementary School Special Education Teacher, Bronx, NY and Indianapolis, IN, for 3 years; Literature Faculty, Sarah Lawrence College, for 36 years

Avocations: Poetry, Dogwalking, Birdwatching, Swimming, Writing Icons

College: Berkeley

Hello, old friends. After graduation, I went to theological seminary at Union TS in New York, and realized in those crazy times that I needed to be out of school and in the world. I did intensive teacher training at City College in New York, and began teaching special education in the West Bronx at PS 104 on Shakespeare Avenue in 1970; then packed up and moved back to my hometown, Indianapolis, where my mother was homebound with cancer, and I wanted to be home with her. I chanced upon work while I was home, at a private school for emotionally disturbed children, ages six to 15.

The merciful surprise of this sad season was that while I was home, I met my brave companion of the road, Bonnie Lowry Alexander. She was a wild, free, and brave spirit who opened me up to life like no one else has, before or since. Bonnie was packing up from a difficult marriage and moving out to Cape Cod; and after my mother’s death, and the overseeing of the packing up and marketing of the family home, I joined her, and her toddler daughter Shannon. After a pretty carefree “honeymoon” time on the Cape, we moved out to Amherst, where Bonnie enrolled at UMass to complete her undergraduate degree, and I got myself involved in the doctoral program in English literature. It was there that I became a Miltonist, thanks to a saintly and inspiring mentor, Kathleen Swaim, and did my doctoral work on Milton’s theology as a kind of thesis on linguistics and poetics. We were in the Pioneer Valley nearly 10 years, when, surprisingly, near the time of completion of my dissertation, I received an offer of a tenure track position teaching Renaissance literature at Sarah Lawrence College, and I’ve been there ever since.

Sarah Lawrence is a teaching-intensive college, and that has suited me fine, though I’ve spent far more time writing student narrative evaluations than writing scholarly articles and books. Still, I’ve had some modest successes with a book on Milton’s Comus and a few well regarded articles; and more successes with some wonderful students who are far smarter than me. I’ve also written some poetry, when the Muse visits, though more rarely these days.

Bonnie, a raging Buddhist feminist when we met, was highjacked by the Holy Spirit in the 1980s, and while I was figuring out how to teach at Sarah Lawrence, she was figuring out G*d-talk at General TS. She took her M.Div. with her to Uganda, where we went to teach at Makerere University from 1992–94. For her service with the Anglican Church of Uganda, Bonnie was ordained a deacon and subsequently a priest; when we returned to the US, she was always proud to be serving in the Episcopal Church as a priest from Africa. Our jobs gave us chances to travel all over the world, and it seemed that wherever we went, we were always at home. Bonnie went on out ahead of us into the great Beyond, in February 2009; and I’ve been living with that strange simultaneity of her presence in absence ever since: close as a heartbeat or a dream-flicker, momentarily substantial, infinitely fleeting: “Love is as strong as death,” the poet of the Song of Songs rhapsodizes; and I believe it.

To my old friends whom I’ve lost touch with, I hope your lives have been blessed; and to the few friends who have still been close and in contact with me—Paul Moore, David Rosen, Jim Amoss, in particular—blessings and endless gratitude.