Andrew Villalon
Andy's Autobiography (2021)
Welcome, fellow Staples alumnae!
I have spent most of my life as an inhabitant of the academic world. I went on from Staples to Yale University where I earned a B.A (1964), an M.A. (1966), and a PhD. (1984), and despite the fact that the last one took me forever to finish, I never seriously considered bailing out. For me, as for quite a few other students wrestling with seemingly intractable doctoral dissertations, this period that stretched on for years constituted my long-dark night of the soul, from which I finally managed to emerge due largely the unflagging encouragement of my wife and the indispensable aid of my Exon 500 word processor. (I may be the only person who ever profusely thanked his computer in the acknowledgments!) In addition to Yale, after high school, I also spent time studying at several foreign universities in Spain, France, Austria, and Mexico city.
During my academic career, I taught at a number of different schools; for the longest time at the University of Cincinnati and most recently at the University of Texas in Austin. I am now retired from both UC and UT and hold the rank of professor emeritus at the former. At academic conferences, which I still regularly attend, I self-identify by either my emeritus title—University of Cincinnati—or simply call myself an "Independent Scholar." I am past president of the Texas Medieval Association (TEMA) (2010) and De re militari: The Society for Medieval Military History (DRM) (2014-2017).
Since childhood, I have loved the study of history, the subject in which I hold my degrees, and as a result, I have taught or done research in a number of different historical fields. I have presented dozens of conference papers on a fairly wide variety of topics and written articles on a number of these including ancient and medieval warfare, the history of Spain, early automobiles (in particular one known as Locomobile), and World War I, history’s finest example of just how terrible war can be and why sentient beings should do everything they can to avoid it.
By the way, I have also written about one of my three favorite philosophers—Niccolò Machiavelli. (The other two are Aristotle and Michael Corleone!)
Somewhat ironically, despite my highly negative take on warfare I am best-known in the profession as a military historian! Along with my closest friend and collaborator of some thirty years, I have co-edited or co-authored eight books, all primarily dealing with warfare and violence, several of which have won awards for “best of breed”! But I hasten to add that my latest book (and possibly my last) will explore the life and canonization of a saint after whom one of our largest cities is named (San Diego de Alcalá).
Obviously, in my case, retirement has not involved an overly drastic break with the past; for while I no longer impart to students what (little) wisdom I have managed to amass, I continue to actively research and write about the various subjects that I have studied and written about throughout most of a lifetime.
Like most academics, I have not had a particularly adventuresome life; I have a couple of Aussie hats not unlike Indiana Jones, but that is where the resemblance ends—except perhaps for the travel. It has not been travel like that experienced by (the real) Richard Burton, Alfred Russell Wallace, or Ernest Shackleton, but it is fairly extensive. When I was just 8 years old, about the same time we moved to Westport, my father and mother had their first trip to Europe as part of the Marshall Plan and, wonder of wonders, they took me with them. In retrospect, I realize just how brave an act it was to take along an eight-year old on such a journey and I am eternally grateful to them for having done so. For ever since that first magical experience that included my first crossing of an ocean on a ship and my first plane flight (this one across the English Channel), I have been infected with an incurable travel bug. Over the ensuing decades (and there have been a lot of them), I have wandered across much of the globe, originally traveling either alone or with my parents and sister (also a Staples graduate); but now, for almost half a century, in the company of my fellow historian and equally travel-loving spouse, Ann Twinam.
I have stood on six continents and, in the process, visited almost all the countries of Europe and Latin America, as well as a fair number in Asia and Africa. I have spent many pleasant hours in quite a number of the world’s great museums. I have sailed across the Atlantic three times, cruised around most of the Caribbean both in regular cruise ships and wonderful old Windjammers. I have journeyed down the Rhine, the Danube, the Nile, the Yangtze, and the Zambezi Rivers; floated on a reed boat on Lake Titicaca and on a raft, through the Grand Canyon; and traveled once through the Panama Canal and several times through the Pillars of Hercules. I have been on two east African safaris, to Lake Victoria, the Rift Valley and the Serengeti, and journeyed south into Botswana’s mysterious Odavango Delta. After a visit Kuala Lumpur, home to the world’s tallest building, and neighboring Singapore with its spectacular night zoo (stopping to drink a Singapore sling at Raffles), I came out of the Malacca Straits and crossed the Coral Sea to Darwin then along the Great Barrier Reef to Sidney. I have sailed into the fjords of Scandanavia, Iceland, Patagonia, Alaska, and New Zealand and flown over the Alps and the Andes. My only helicopter ride to date was a spectacular one: from the bottom to the lip of the Grand Canyon. (Still haven’t made it to the Amazon.) I have driven the Romantischer Strasse, walked parts of the Great Wall and the Camino de Santiago, and trudged up the steep ascents to Mycenae, Montealban, Manchu Pichu, and Haiti’s Citadel. I have scuba-dived and/or snorkeled in the Caribbean, Hawaii, Tahiti, the Galapagos, and the Red Sea. In the Bahamas, I descended to the edge of the Tongue of the Ocean where one can gaze down into the abyss thousands of feet below (that scene in The Abyss is absolutely real) while in Bonaire, I managed to have a case of the bends. I stood atop a fair number of pyramids, including the Great Pyramid of Egypt (back in 1966 when one was still allowed to climb it), with its unsurpassed view up and down the Nile; visited Xi’an’s hall of the terracotta warriors, travelled by train along the River Kwai and walked through Hellfire Pass, gazed out from Berchtesgaden toward the mountains of Austria; visited the Shire; climbed to the dome of St. Peters in Rome and descended to the archaeological dig under that cathedral where the saint’s bones are said to lie; even helped lead a number of student tour groups around the Yucatan Peninsula to places like Chichén Itzá, Uxmal, Tulum, and Coba. I have been to the Cape of Good Hope, Cape Horn, Tasmania, and New Zealand’s southern island, all of the southernmost points on the globe, excluding, of course, Antarctica. (Actually, my wife is hankering to visit there too, but I am not very hot on the idea!) Without a doubt, travel has made an otherwise fairly mundane life exciting—even if I have not discovered the source of any rivers (neither, for that matter, did Burton) or been the first to look out on some vast peaceful sea! And while Ann and I have not managed to travel at all during what Defoe would have called “the plague year,” now that we have both gotten our Covid-19 shots, we are gearing up to continue the journey in 2021. Vietnam anyone? Some years ago, I missed an opportunity to get there!
When not writing, editing or doing research (either here or abroad) or traveling just for pleasure, I regularly find myself working at more mundane projects around the house and fighting what my family used to dub "the eternal battle against disintegration and decay!" It is a battle that I learned to fight while living in our home on Coleytown Road and that almost every house owner knows well! Or I may just be petting one of my beloved kitties—we usually have eight or so at any one time. When I told that to one of my former colleagues, she simply replied, “Ah, you’re an eccentric!” No, just an ailurophile, a characteristic I share with my wife. While growing up, I thought of myself if anything as a “dog person,” but I was decidedly wrong. (Over the years, our home has been graced by about 30 wonderful fuzzy muses/mew-es.)
During warm weather, which we have a lot of here in Austin, I can also be found out on Lake Travis, a great body of water created back in the depression era, when the federal government dammed “our” Colorado River at a number of points west of the city. Although undertaken largely for flood control, the series of lakes has since become a major recreational hub for the inhabitants of central Texas. We have our own little fleet there—a pontoon boat, a sail boat, and several kayaks. Through three seasons of the year, in our favorite cove, we swim and hand feed “our” turtles, ducks, and several large catfish. The marina where our boats are moored is only about a five-minute drive from our hilltop home in the appropriately named lake-front community of Lakeway. From the upper porch, we have a terrific view extending for some 30-40 miles out over what Texans call the hill country. (You can see even farther if you climb up onto the roof, though I am the only one to have done that, and it was to repair a leak, not take in the view!)
The only real complaint I have about Texas has to do with its right-wing politics, but fortunately, the state seems to be moving in the right (I mean correct) direction—away from the Red and toward the Blue. Furthermore, I have the great good fortune to live in an enclave of very well educated “lefties.” It has been a long journey from my Republican roots when growing up in Westport, but then, those Republicans amidst whom I grew up were definitely a different brand.
That, old friends, is my life since High School in a nutshell! And I hope to sustain it for at least a while longer, especially with the aid of the various replacement parts they keep putting into me as well as the shots I have recently gotten to combat the current plague!