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81 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 K E L L O C K KELLOCK ALAN THEN AND NOW 4 B.A. History FAMI LY 4 Wife, Loren Kellock 4 Daughter, Lexi ADDRESS 4 1881 Cypress Bend Court Boca Raton, FL 33498 CONTACT 561 715-7650 alan.kellock@gmail.com T O WA R D T H E E N D of my second year at Antioch, an administrator named Jane summoned me to her office. She asked me if I knew who Kwame Nkrumah was. I had no clue. She then told me he was the first president in sub-Saharan Africa after nearly a century of British, French and Portuguese colonial rule.Years earlier, he had earned a Ph.D. at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. Jane had recently met President Nkrumah at an academic confer- ence in London. He doubled as the chancellor of the University of Ghana, for which he recruited many eminent scholars from all over the world. He told Jane that he wanted to invite an American undergradu- ate to spend a year at his university to study African history and culture. When she offered that opportunity to me, I said yes on the spot, despite knowing nothing about Ghana.After our meeting, I raced over to the li- brary to bone up. I then called my parents to get their okay.They were startled about my wanting to go to Africa at the tender age of 19, but being Antiochians themselves, they quickly offered their full support. During my stay in Ghana, I got a call from President Nkrumah’s office inviting me to the presidential pal- ace to meet “Osagyefo,” which was what Ghanaians called Nkrumah. It means “The Great One.” As we got close to our destination, the car he sent to pick me up was sur- rounded by a dozen soldiers with guns drawn. I was caught up in the middle of a coup d’état in which 25 people were killed and dozens more wounded at the presidential compound. Nkrumah survived, but security was very tight after that, so I never did get a second chance to meet him. My year in Africa led to a doc- toral program in African history at the University of Wisconsin, follow- ing which I taught African history at Columbia and St. John’s University. But eventually I succumbed to fam- ily tradition and got into the book publishing business, starting out at McGraw-Hill in Los Angeles and end- ing up as the CEO of Viking Penguin in Manhattan,plus a stint at Harcourt Brace in between. I got married only once—unlike many of my friends! But I held out until I was 42. Loren and I recently passed the 30-year milestone and are still going strong.We adopted a two-day old infant in Texas who is now an amazing 25 year-old woman, despite the fact that she’s a rabid Dallas Cowboy fan. We moved to Boca Raton, Fla., in 2000 to be near Loren’s family of ex-New Yorkers, by which time my own parents and younger sister had already passed away. That leaves only my younger brother Tom, who lives in Seattle— about as far apart as we could be in the continental U.S. He is a storied pianist and composer who toured for decades with the likes of Al Jarreau, Bette Midler and Manhattan Transfer.