Unconventional

This memoir traces Paul Huntsberger through three stages of his youth and early adulthood. It opens with his childhood from 1941 to 1963, a period marked by hard family circumstances. Rather than following the conventional route his peers took, he chose less traveled paths that led to a young adulthood devoted to helping others. Along the way, he became the first person in his family to earn a college degree and went on to graduate study.

In his twenties, Huntsberger worked in a wide range of places and roles. He taught at a secondary school in rural Ohio, a middle school in Africa, and an inner-city elementary school in Philadelphia. He volunteered as an academic enrichment teacher in rural Alabama and served as a farm mechanization adviser in Orissa, India. He also volunteered alongside Peace Corps friends in Iowa and California, worked for a business in New York City, and spent a summer as a counselor at a summer camp in Connecticut while he waited to begin a master's degree at Ohio University in fall 1970.

The story's romantic thread begins at that Connecticut camp, where he met Jennifer Stretch, a British student who was also a counselor. Their chance meeting grew into a love story that endured 161 days of separation and several obstacles. Jennifer returned to the United States on March 16, and the couple married on April 10, 1971.

The book then covers summer 1971, when the couple took on a work project in Canada's Maritime provinces and throughout New England. By fall 1971 they were back at Ohio University, beginning their shared professional and personal life. The author notes that this next period is the subject of a further book, New Horizons, which he is currently writing.

Huntsberger's later career included advanced studies at Ohio University and Michigan State University from 1971 through 1980. In 1981 he secured the post he had long hoped for, in international education administration at New Mexico State University, where he remained until his retirement in 2010. In retirement he wrote Never Forgotten: Teaching in Rebellious Eritrea 1965-1967 & Returning After 35 Years (2014), and he has now written this account of his early life.