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  George Louis Byrnes Jr.
I am the first son and second child of George Louis Byrnes and Florence Lindhom.
Both of my parents served during World War II: my father in the Army and my mother in
the Navy. I have five sisters and two brothers. As life would have it, only three of the
eight children still live in the immediate area of Rye, New York.
Following graduation from Rye High School and without any immediate plans to attend
college or pursue a trade, I began to travel. In 1966, I took a service job at a hotel in
Bermuda where I stayed for three months. I returned to Rye with plans to hitchhike to
California (it was the summer of love) but learned when I returned that my draft notice
had arrived. As the Viet Nam War was expanding, I chose to enlist in the Air Force,
along with a childhood friend, John Ripley, rather than be drafted. This meant I would
serve for four years instead of two. While I was skeptical of the propriety of the war, I
still felt an obligation to serve and sought a way to serve that would not likely involve
armed conflict. It wasn’t a bad decision. Subsequently, I learned that the average
American deaths in the years between 1967 and 1969, the killing years, were over
15,000 which included many Rye boys and some of my friends.
I think I will always remember the day I enlisted. As I walked down the path from our
house to take the train to New York, I waved back to my mother watching her eldest
son go off to war. She had done all she could do to make things seem normal by
packing my favorite lunch, rare roast beef sandwiches from George’s deli. I waved back
to her, both of us knowing everything was about to change in inconceivable ways, but I
didn’t know then that I was also waving goodbye to my hometown. I never resided in
Rye again.
Following basic training in Texas, I was given various service options and chose the
medical corps and, following further training, I chose to be assigned to Andrews Air
Force Base (now named Joint Base Andrews) where I would be assigned for the
duration of my service (1966-70). Further medical training involved rotating through all
the hospital departments (surgery, newborn nursery, etc.). I eventually was assigned to
the Emergency Room staff which treated active duty members as well as retirees and
dependents.
 One of the preferred assignments for ER staff was to be on the flight line whenever the
President (first Johnson and then Nixon) flew in or departed Andrews, although I remain
skeptical that our presence provided any medical benefit to the President. For us, it
was just quiet time away from our commanding officers and the hectic ER.
Medics at the time were given a lot of responsibility to give shots, EKGs, suture minor
wounds, etc., and I found that work both interesting and challenging. I recall watching
a surgeon suturing a deep wound that involved both ligament and nerve damage. The
dexterity of his hands was mesmerizing. However, because of my immaturity, I found
myself bucking against the military protocols that controlled the medical side of the
Emergency Room, so I began working more on administrative tasks.
As it turned out, this was another good decision. I had begun writing poetry to express
my general discontent (with the military, the war, myself) and my daily desk assignment
gave me time to write. The poems were of course usually dreadfully bad. John Ciardi,
then poetry editor of Saturday Review and translator of Dante’s Divine Comedy, politely
commented on a poem I sent him. Rather than just calling the poem garbage, he wrote
that in his “humble opinion” poems were not made up largely of adjectives. Good
point. Nevertheless, while I didn’t know it at the time, I had begun an apprenticeship in
language that would lead me to becoming a Professor of English. My writing was a way
to push back against the restrictions of the military and to protest against the Viet Nam
War, but it was also a kind of intellectual isometric exercise that would help me to
develop the intellectual abilities that had largely been dormant until then, as my
academic record at Rye High School would firmly attest.
 I was discharged from the Air Force with the rank of Sergeant. I recall Master Sergeant Swinely, to whom I reported, telling me at our final meeting that he was convinced I “would do well in anything I put my mind to.” This was his kind way of saying I was not his best corpsman but he still had hopes for me. I was discharged three months before serving the full four years of my enlistment under an education program that provided for early release if you had enrolled in a college. I chose to go to St. Petersburg Junior College in Florida to develop the academic skills I knew I lacked. During that year, I married Carol Hunter.
To continue my undergraduate education, I decided to combine my long delayed urge
to travel with the goal of graduating from college by going to a different college each
year. After being near the ocean in Florida, the next year I wanted to be in the
mountains, so I enrolled at Utah State University in Logan, Utah. The next year, Carol,
my wife, was offered a teaching position in Ontario, Canada, so instead of transferring
to the University of Colorado as planned, we moved to Canada where I attended
Guelph University in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. At the end of that year, Carol and I
separated. I decided to hitchhike across the United States and then head north to
attend the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia where I was
told I needed to remain for two years if I wanted to earn a degree. After graduating
from UBC in 1977, I then enrolled in the graduate English program at the University of
Toronto where I earned a Masters degree. The following year I enrolled in the Ph.D.
program.
While enrolled in the Ph.D. English program, I began teaching at a local college,
Humber College, which began another long journey to understand how to teach. For
the next twenty-five years, I taught liberal arts courses at Humber and was awarded
the college’s three most prestigious faculty awards: Distinguished Faculty Award,
President’s Leadership Award, and Innovator of the Year. While at Humber, I also began
helping lawyers and judges sharpen their writing skills through seminars run under the
auspices of the Canadian Institute for the Administration of Justice.
In 1990, I met my current wife, Linda DeMeritt, who was then a Professor of German at
Allegheny College before serving as the Allegheny’s first female provost in its two
hundred year history. Given our jobs, we maintained a long-distance relationship
(Toronto, ON - Meadville, PA) for eighteen years until I retired from Humber in 2008. I
then taught at Allegheny as an adjunct professor until we both retired in 2016. We now
reside in Port Charlotte, Florida and summer at our cottage in Indian River, Michigan,
with our cat, Pumpkin.
 As a child, I played Little League baseball on the Bullets team but did not have the
opportunity to play high school sports. I think that missed opportunity to compete is
one of the reasons that I am an avid golfer today. At the age of 77, I still maintain a
single digit handicap. I have won the club championship at the Indian River Golf Club
five times and successfully defended the Senior Club Championship this year. For the
club’s centennial in 2024, I published a comprehensive history of the club. It tells the
remarkable story of the club’s survival during the Depression and World War II and its
slow but undaunted evolution from a “village layout” when it opened in 1923 to the
challenging modern golf course it is today. I am currently a member of the club’s Board
of Directors and Chair of the Greens & Grounds committee.
As I look back, I can see how influential my time in the U.S. Air Force was for me. I
entered service as an immature person with few employable skills and left with a sense
of purpose having acquired a fascination with how language works both in literature
and in the real world. Unlike some of my friends and thousands of other young
Americans wounded or killed in Viet Nam, I left the Air Force whole and healthy. To be
honest, whenever someone thanks me for my service, I feel a bit uneasy because I
know that the price others paid for serving was so much more than I paid. While I
appreciate their good will, I silently pass on their compliment to all those fully deserving
of it.
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Bio 
