About the Author

A native Iowan raised in the county seat town of Winterset, my first two post-high school years were spent at Wartburg College in the more-or-less equally small Iowa town of Waverly. In the summer between them, a couple of months in Europe with a church youth group started to open my eyes to a wider, and wildly more interesting, world. Midway through the second Wartburg year it became obvious to me I'd outgrown the school and small town Iowa along with it.

So I took the then seemingly bold and, for me, courageous step of transferring to the University of Iowa. It was a thrill to leave the small church college in favor of an unabashedly secular setting, and I was able to major there in the university's pioneering (for a state institution) School of Religious Studies (B.A. 1963).

The exhilarating liberation of Iowa City made the seminary I'd planned to attend in Iowa seem like a risk of reversion, so next I headed to the wicked East for three years at the Lutheran Theological Seminary (now United Seminary) in Philadelphia (M.Div. 1966). This big city sojourn also brought an internship on Long Island, acquaintance with New York City, and new friends with backgrounds tantalizingly different from my own.

Seminary opened doors, but it also unfortunately closed some. First year brought the traumatic discovery that I was gay, and along with it the equally distressing realization that the church of that time would not want me in the ranks of the clergy unless I remained a completely closeted hypocrite. (Ironically that denomination today is one of the country's most liberal on LGBTQ issues; I guess I chose the wrong time to be born.) In a panic I fantasized about getting into another occupation, mostly dreaming of newspaper journalism, but I had no formal training or connections in anything but religion.

So at graduation instead of heading to New York where my heart pointed, I decided to play it safe and return to Iowa, which seemed less threatening somehow. I was ordained in Des Moines at age 25, as was then the norm, and took up my first pastorate at a little church in Dunlap, an even smaller town than anything I'd yet experienced. In the process I discovered that I really did love Iowa, but that I was no longer equipped to live there.

Before long I was headed back to New York City so I could breathe again. I was entrusted with an old German parish. The only trouble was that the Germans had all moved up to Westchester County while the church was located in a sea of African Americans who had not the foggiest notion, nor concern, about what in the world Lutheranism was all about.

But miracles still happen when one is not looking. By total happenstance I met the man who has now been my life's partner for well over half a century. When he landed a major career position across the Hudson river in Newark, I decided my seminary quandary had been answered, and I joined him in the move. Then, however, I needed to find a new career myself.

To my enormous surprise and elation, I quickly ended up exactly where I had always suspected I really belonged: on the reporting staff of a major American daily newspaper, then the seventh largest in the country. Within a week I had my first by-line, beneath the fold, but on the front page of the Sunday edition. From general assignment to Religion Writer and then in due course Arts Writer and Critic. The ride was exhilarating, gratifying, and educational.

As the years passed, however, the arts began to pull me to themselves and I ended up for most of my adult decades as a representative for performing classical musicians, having founded my own agency.

Then, inevitably, retirement; at first eagerly anticipated but then a little regretted. A few years down the road we found ourselves in a lovely apartment with a private garden on a canal in Venice and two months to luxuriate in what seemed like paradise. But half way through I started to get bored. Yes, ingrate that I evidently was, I was getting bored in Venice!

My husband reacted with an uncharacteristic hint of annoyance at such an outrageous circumstance. "Write something," he ordered. After giving it a bit of thought, I realized that I'd been basically a writer my whole career to date. I'd been editor of my high school newspaper, a dabbler in newspaper work as a collegian, a writer of weekly sermons and on the staff of a small national journal as a clergyman, an actual newspaper journalist, and an agent whose work revolved around writing artist bios, press releases, and promo materials. Yes, I was a writer and I should be writing. Never mind this little inconvenience called "retirement."

I've been blessed with a diverse career experience, extensive travel, and a stable and loving home life despite the severe life-dislocation of finding out I was gay at age 22 and well before Stonewall cracked open the windows to let in a little hope. Hopefully I have some interesting things to say, and can say them interestingly. An awful lot of people have not been as lucky in life.

I hope you don't regret clicking on the button that got you to this page. But now you know, even if it's more than you really wanted to know.

Quick Press Summary

Phillip Truckenbrod was for some years Religion Writer and Arts Critic at The Star-Ledger in Newark, New Jersey, and subsequently headed his own agency representing American and European concert artists. As an ordained Lutheran clergyman he served parishes in a small Iowa town and in New York City. He holds degrees from the University of Iowa and the United Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, and is the author of three books.