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Today's Featured Biography

Mary French Baumlin

I stayed in TX for a while after HS and went to (then called) North Texas State University my freshman year and later finished my BA in English at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. I moved away to Philadelphia, PA to work on a Master's degree at Villanova U. Big mistake. Didn't like the big city or the northeast. Came back, finished Master's at Southern Methodist (while working as a legal secretary in downtown Dallas) and PhD in Shakespeare & British Renaissance Literature and Rhetoric back at TCU in 1985. Met my husband there. He, too, has a PhD in British Renaissance Lit and Rhetoric (though his focus is poetry, not Shakespeare).

We found university professorships in Springfield, MO in 1989 at Missouri State University, and we've been teaching here ever since. I love the Ozarks-- the weather here is perfect for me. Summers are hot but not as bad as in Texas; winters are a bit snowy but at least you get to wear your winter clothes and a snowfall melts off before any other bad weather comes in. In Philadelphia, once you lost sight of the ground, you didn't see it again until April. We just moved to a house in a wildlife preserve that is wonderful-- sort of the best of both worlds. Wooded, quiet, with a view of the lake from my bedroom window and deer wandering through our yard; yet I can be at the mall within 5 minutes.

Probably the highlight of my professional life was teaching for a semester in London in the spring of 1998. My university owns a flat near Kensington Palace, and they send someone every semester to teach in a consortium. I will never forget the feeling of London and the green winter grass of England. A beautiful experience.

My husband and I don't have children; we have two dogs who think they're our babies, and we don't disabuse them of that notion. We have an English Pointer (white and black) and a standard longhaired Dachshund (black and tan) who take up more of the bed than we're allowed.

I did go to the 10th, 20th, 25th, and 30th reunions. I thought that the 20th was the most fun of them all-- it seemed the best-attended. The 30th was a small crowd, and there was a loud band that kept people from being able to talk. Can't dance at our age. What were they thinking??? :-)

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