I started McPherson College the fall after graduation from high school and except for one summer helping out at the farm, I never lived in the South English community again. If that sounds like some kind of escape, perish the thought. I've always felt that our upbringing there was almost idyllic--fresh air, hard work, good parents, and a school and community that cared about you. I just found that my interests led me elsewhere.

But I had no idea what to do with my life when I drove into McPherson in September of 1955. So I majored in English, because I liked literature. Didn't know what to do with an English major, so I got a teaching degree. I taught for two years but I had always had a yen for adventure and the sound of a plane going somewhere could turn my head every time. I took a job at the McPherson Sentinel as a news reporter, then moved to a larger paper, The Hutchinson News. I ranged over western Kansas writing feature stories about interesting characters while also covering everything from train wrecks to hospital scandals. I did pretty well at that so they made me night editor. Thanks guys.

I figured 26 was too young to sit behind a desk so I moved on to a Scripps Howard news service in Cleveland. I'd been trying unsuccessfully to get The News to send me to Vietnam to write features about western Kansas grunts and I hoped Scripps Howard would let me be the new Ernie Pyle. They already had a guy like that so they sent me to Washington, D.C. to cover events out of there. After a year in Washington I got a job with National Geographic Magazine and my desire for adventure was fulfilled over the next 25 years.

I began as a legend writer, which is what they call people who write the captions under the pictures. Legend writers don't travel much so I started proposing ideas for articles and my first one was accepted--"North with the Wheat Cutters." The old saying is, "write about what you know" and I figured I knew combines, trucks, and farm people. Then came a series of other articles, about an Icelandic volcano, Mark Twain, an Apollo moon landing, Venezuela, oil, Nigeria, air pollution. I preferred articles that had to do with the outdoors and protecting the environment and found myself, through no design of my own, considered the environmental specialist for the Geographic. An editor named Bill Garrett liked what I did and created a new position for me, Senior Assistant Editor for the Environment. Then he and the CEO fell into constant disagreement and Garrett was fired. The new editor, no friend of mine, busted me back to senior writer, not the worst punishment one could have. But after four years of that again I felt I was traveling down a familiar old road, even if it led me all over the world. I was tired of leaving my wife and eight-year-old daughter for a month at a time, living in hotel rooms, struggling to get the right kind of information. My adventure cup runneth over

So when the Geographic decided to downsize like every other company and offered an early retirement package, I took it. I had long wanted to try different kinds of writing and wanted to work out of my home instead of commuting two and a half hours every day. On April 1, 1994, I took the early retirement and began a free lance career.

It has worked out well. In the six years since then I have published four books in which I wrote the entire text and have contributed chapters to two others. One of my books, "An Atlas of World History, " was a Book-Of-The-Month Club selection and another, "Birds of North America," was recommended as a Christmas gift in Parade Magazine. These have been books with many illustrations, and I am now concentration on books with all text. I am currently working on one that traces the life of a "perfect boy" who suddenly turned killer, whose trial I covered while a newsman. I feel it has relevance in an era when school kids suddenly open fire on their classmates.

I've had some wonderful experiences, but some failures too, not the least of which was my first marriage. We both now recognize that we were too young (20) to get hitched and we remain good friends. She remarried three years after we split and I followed two years after that. The four of us are congenial in our occasional contact which centers around the three children my ex-wife and I had together. I have two grandchildren that unfortunately live too far away--London and Manhattan, Kansas.

To round things out, my wife Barbara is editorial director for the Geographic's book division and our 14-year-old daughter, an accomplished ballet dancer, is a constant joy to us. We belong to a tennis club and an exercise gym and alternate between the two. We bought new bikes last summer and like to explore back roads and bike trails in the Virginia countryside. We love to travel. Favorite trips since our last reunion have included a bike trip in the Czech Republic, a month-long visit to Australia, and a month-long trip through Europe. We both sing in the choir of the Episcopal church we attend. So many of the things I enjoy now I learned as a youth in Kinross school and our community. Except for the travel, which I did by reading books voraciously as a kid.

Noel Grove

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