John H. Clagett
Personal Information
Description
After graduation, John reported to LEXINGTON in Hawaii. In February, 1941, he was unexpectedly ordered to a PT Boat Squadron, Brooklyn Navy Yard. His two years in various PT Boat Squadrons ended on February Ist at Guadalcanal during the Japanese evacuation of the you-know-what island when his PT 111 was sunk by shellfire during an attack, and he spent the night in the water making friends with the sharks, supported by two of his crew. Six months in San Diego Naval Hospital, where he married Marjorie, his Navy nurse, then a year at PG School in Annapolis. Back to the hospital for more skin grafts; then to USS FARGO. Retired for wounds in 1946. Entered the Foreign Service, spent three years in Oslo, Norway, then got "riffed" in 1949. Received PhD from Yale in 1954. Started teaching at Middlebury College in 1955. Having settled in Vermont, John continued teaching Writing and English at Middlebury College until he retired as a Professor of English in 1978. Their two daughters grew up and got married. Marjorie continued her passion for gardening and flower arranging, and is now a top gardener with a beautiful and extensive garden, and a Life Judge in the National Council of State Garden Clubs. She judges flower shows and participates in seminars over much of the eastern half of the country. She collects Chinese art, having extended her knowledge of, and interest in it, during a tour to China in 1981, when such trips were a pioneering experience. John has continued to write and has now published nineteen books, fiction and non fiction, juvenile and adult, as well as a good many short stories and articles, with some translations in Dutch, Danish, French, German, and Spanish. He regrets the lack of best sellers. Marjorie and John do a lot of skiing in the winter - still -, have taken up Scottish Country Dancing, and manage to get to Hawaii each late March and early April for three weeks, thus missing the Mud Season. John has done some sailing in Maine. A high point in their year is the annual Castine Caper. John has had several superb sailing trips in Norway, each in July, once for three weeks. Clear, warm Gulf Stream water, a thousand islands, sunrise 0200, sunset 2200, black dark-never. No fog. John continues to enjoy hunting and fishing, with emphasis on some wonderful weeks in Baxter Park, in Maine. He has a fine grandson with whom he is a close friend, even though he is now a sophisticated twelve and three quarters, and knows more about high tech and computers than John will ever know. John is backing him for the Naval Academy Class of 1999. Finally, John says there is little to tell. Some one or other said that a fortunate country and a happy man have no history. (Addendum: Obituary in The Burlington Free Press on Nov. 18, 2013.)
Books
Typhoon 1944
Japanese kamikazes and a typhoon test the courage of the men aboard a United States Navy destroyer in World War II.
The Slot
A novel of U.S. Navy PT boats and their crews fighting the ships of the Japanese Navy during the early days of the battle for Guadalcanal in World War II, with a subplot of one young PT skipper's adulterous affair with his squadron commander's wife.
These hallowed grounds
Focuses on important United States battles describing their sites and military strategies. Includes major encounters of the American Revolution, the War of 1812, preliminary encounters of the Civil War, Gettysburg, the Little Bighorn, and Pearl Harbor.
Torpedo run on Iron Bottomed Bay
A seventeen-year-old sailor tries to prove the sincerity of a Japanese-American friend serving on his PT boat in the Pacific during World War II.
Rebel
America's most enduring symbol of rebellious youth, James Dean has continuously held the world's fascination since his tragic death at the age of twenty-four more than forty years ago. In the first complete, fully documented biography of this enigmatic hero, internationally celebrated author Donald Spoto offers a startlingly revelatory look at the short, greatly misunderstood life of an icon who remains frozen in time. Drawing on extraordinary mines of fresh material, including accounts of Dean's earliest television appearances and his on- and offscreen exploits while filming the classics East of Eden, Rebel Without a Cause and Giant, Spoto candidly explores Dean's years at the center of a group of actors who came to define the new generation of Hollywood idols and American ideals, including Montgomery Clift and Marlon Brando, Dennis Hopper and Sal Mineo, Natalie Wood and Pier Angeli, Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson. Here, too, is the story of Dean's convoluted sex life, which included simultaneous affairs with men and women. James Dean remains the eternal teenage rebel - tough but vulnerable, rude but tenderhearted, pained but brilliant. Based on a wealth of meticulous original research and new interviews, Rebel offers an illuminating perspective on the boy/man who has become the embodiment of rebellious youth - and on the American culture that has made him a living hero decades later.