August 2018
Fifty years ago I was thrown together in a dorm room as a college freshman in Kansas with a kid from Junction City and a guy from Hutchinson. It was to be one of those serendipitous positive events that helped shape my life. I have heard horror stories from parents about their children’s and grandchildren’s college roommates from hell. Mine couldn’t have been better!
Josúe Perez was a tough, smart little sucker who, as the son of a decorated Sergeant Major in the Army, had been all oer the globe and knew how to take care of himself. He spoke fluent Spanish and was studying to be a teacher. Freeman Lance Miller, a music major and violin whiz, was a gentle soul who grew up in a “big” city close to my small rural hometown, but whom I had never met during high school although our paths had surely crossed dragging Hutch main street on Friday nights. I was just a tall, skinny kid just off the farm who loved nature and science and had aspirations to be a doctor.
We survived that first year as a team, and then became fraternity brothers, having a ball along the way as they corrupted a Mennonite kid by teaching me to dance and drink beer.
Lance transferred to Kansas University his junior year, and he became the doctor as well as a devoted Jayhawker! Joe went on to teach at our college then led an impressively varied international career including a stint as president of a technical college in Phoenix. I decided to forego medical school (damned advanced calculus) and opted to save the world as a lawyer, at a time when the country was in great social ferment. I was elected as chair of Kansas Collegiate Young Democrats (I think there were maybe 10 of us.) and my political fate was sealed.