AC_1965_Web

141 AN T I OC H CO L L E G E C L A S S O F 19 6 5 5 0 t h A N N I V E R S A R Y B O O K A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z S C O T T SCOTT SHERRAID THEN AND NOW 4 B.A. Japanese Design 4 M.A.T., Antioch-Putney ADDRESS 4 305 Allen St. Yellow Springs, OH 45387 CONTACT sherraidscott@earthlink.net S U M M A R I Z I N G M Y L I F E for the upcoming 50th college reunion I wonder where to begin. Fifty years—well, 72 actually—is a long time to look back on and perhaps it would be best to start with the now and work back. I live in Yellow Springs in my parents’ front yard in a Japanese-style house that my brother, Andy, built for me in the early ’90s. I am very involved with the Dayton Printmakers’ Cooperative and try to spend three or four days a week in Dayton at the studio printing and helping others to print. Here in Yellow Springs until recently I vol- unteered at the Glen and helped with their membership committee and the Nature Shop. I also gallery-sit for theYellow Springs Arts Council’s gallery and participate in a number of area shows each year. Printmaking is my passion. Living so close to my parents I am the designated caregiver and have been looking out for them since I first moved back to Yellow Springs in 1992 with the dream job of bring- ing a group of Kyoto Seika University students toAntioch to study each fall. In Kyoto each spring I would meet the group and teach a few classes of English conversation and composi- tion and the culture and adventure of studying at Antioch. The group would come in time to join with the freshman orientation and then with Antioch roommates have one quar- ter study here.Often the roommates would be Antiochians who wanted to study at Kyoto; there was a lot of back and forth and chances for friends to meet up again in another setting. I retired from this exchange in 2000 and began my new life as a full-time artist and printmaker. At Antioch in the ’60s I studied art and Japanese and was able to join the first Waseda study group in Tokyo in 1963.We had a summer’s orientation and intensive language study before starting special classes at Waseda and living with host families. Back in those days a dollar got you 360 yen and most Japanese did not have tele- phones or heat in their homes. Before the bullet trains, most Japanese traveled by public trans- portation and cars and traffic were not problems in Tokyo. The tall- est building was the Kasumigaseki Building and the airport was at Haneda, a quick monorail ride from downtown. Our arrival was big news and although it took us ages to get to Japan, via Hawaii andWake Island on a propeller Flying Tiger, we were met by TV cameras and treated royally. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Imperial Hotel was still inTokyo and there were only two subway lines, the Ginza and the Yamate (before Yamanote) sen. We all graduatedAntioch in 1965 to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech and I remember thinking that he was bilingual in English and his address to us was inspiring. After Antioch I returned to Japan, married Dewey Webster, did “alternative service” in Japan for two years but not enjoying the teaching as I had no idea what I was doing.After Dewey rode off into the sunset on his huge Honda I went to Hawaii to try to get into the East- West Center to continue my Japanese studies but was turned down and re- turned toYellow Springs where I en- tered the graduate program in teach- ing. I met and married Jack Miller and we went off to Putney,Vt., for grad- uate school and then Brattleboro where Jack did alternative ser- vice (Vietnam still going on) at the Brattleboro Retreat and I taught at the School for InternationalTraining.This was where I finally learned how to teach ESL and enjoy the classes while helping the students to improve their English. My fellow teachers were very supportive and we helped each other to have a top notch program. Jack was accepted to graduate school in Bangor,Wales, and we set off for a year there while he studiedVictorian literature and I studied painting and knittedWelsh wool sweaters. Jack and I returned to Ohio in