Michael 

interviewed by Lynne Hawkinson

(Note: the material in brackets was added by the interviewer. Material in [italics] indicates action on the part of the interviewee).

Part One: The Family History

      My name is Michael Lawrence. I am from a Yank dad and a Bloke mom.... My mother was English and my father was American. My father is the son of a migrant farmer from North Carolina. He really struggled in his life to be a better person than the rest of his family. Struggled mightily to be a good provider. Low level education, but pretty bright. If he had had an education, he could've gone somewhere. Kind of an athlete, really tall. When he was a younger man, he thought he was the next Elvis. Even wore his hair like Elvis!

       My mother is English, from a north village, a poor coal mining town. Poor coal mining family. Her father was crippled and worked in the mines. [She] grew up pretty poor, in row houses, in a city called Hadoc. [She] grew up during the war, though, so she would tell stories. Her mother was once hit by shrapnel-- not killed, but knocked back across the room. [Her mother liked to watch the bombings] because she felt they were pretty!

        I have a sister. My sister is, um... we're not quite certain what is wrong with Linda. We're not saying that anything is. But she does not have normal intelligence. She doesn't have any genetic problems. My mother always assumed it was some kind of trauma, either from delivery (because at that time they used forceps to deliver a baby), or from a fall. But she's a quite interesting person. [She is] extremely honest, very forthright, very direct, never lies, never fabricates, never obfuscates. She's right down the middle, and always has been. She can speak, interact. She would be considered moderately retarded, I guess that would be the term that used to be used. She has fairly low I.Q. as measured by tests.

        She lives at home. She's lived with our parents all her life. She's now in her mid-forties. When my parents pass, she will live with me. That's always been our understanding. We're never going to put Linda in a group home or institution. She doesn't belong there!

        She works at a center for the handicapped or challenged. She's in the shelter workshop there, which means she's one of the higher functioning clients at that particular place.

        I can attribute certain aspects of my personality to having Linda in my life. I think I am a person of great patience and a good bit of that comes from my experiences with Linda and her friends. When I was young, my parents and I always took the responsibility of trying to teach Linda, because when she was growing up, they didn't have the infrastructure in place to support children who weren't normal, or, at least, normal as described by our society. So they kept trying to push Linda into schools and push her to stay on track and stay on the same grade level as everyone else and she couldn't do it. It was very difficult for her. So we did a lot of work at home, trying to teach her, but we could never really get Linda past, you know, twenty or thirty words. We could never get her past counting much above ten. We could never really get her fluid with money, with how to manage it. She'd recognize certain parts, but counting money and change was not something that Linda could do. Language skills are not bad... but going through that process.... We'd take Linda and we'd work with her, work with her, work with her, and if there was a break of any period then we'd be right back at the beginning. As an eight or nine year old kid who was pretty advanced academically, very fast at learning, it was very frustrating for me at that time. But as I matured and got a little bit older, it really did give me a sense of patience and understanding that I don't know if I would have had if I hadn't had that as part of my childhood.

        Also, as Linda got older and I got older, I supported and became a volunteer for a lot of her programs in high school and early college. [I] did a lot of work for the Special Olympics, helped her with her scouting troop, coached basketball teams and track teams and had quite a good time doing that. But currently, she's still at home, currently madly in love with my daughter, favorite thing in the world.

       There are strange things about my sister. She has two passions in her life, and they're both related to television and movies. One is Disney films, and she has every Disney film on VHS. Now, she has a DVD player, and she's been caught by the DVD bug, now she wants all of her Disney on DVD. But she has every Disney film out there. Her other passion is vampire films. I don't care how gross, how violent, how sadistic. It used to bother my parents. She has all the old Dark Shadows, and she has the new stuff, and all the English stuff. It just doesn't matter, if it's a vampire film, my sister's passionate in her desire to see it. No matter how cheap, or gross, or badly done. It's this weird dimension to her personality that she has every Disney film sitting next to every just [laughs] egregious vampire film. We've never quite figured it out-- Linda gets on these things, we never quite know why they are. Sometimes it's really quite interesting trying to figure out these quirks in her personality. Like I said, my parents used to be really worried that she was so interested in these vampire films, but it never manifested itself in anything.

             I met Jen, my current wife, my second wife, in a slightly scandalous way. I was doing a play here, and there was a bunch of faculty in it. It was a main stage production, and my wife was directing it. She was a senior. It was the last time, maybe the only time, that a student directed a main stage production. It was this huge musical set in the 1920's, all this kind of crazy stuff, but the house was full every night. It was a lot of dancing, a lot of singing, huge cast, and a student who knew me wanted me to be in it. She knew I acted. And Jen was directing it and she did not want me to be in it. I had this horrible reputation in all ways, you know, arrogant, womanizer, you know. She thought I was a heavy drinker-- I don't drink at all! But her friend said, "You know, this guy is not as horrible as you're making him out to be." So she cast me, reluctantly. This was during the time when I was pretty much alone. I was in great shape, though. We would do these two hour dance rehearsals and the first hour of it was all working out, and after rehearsal they'd all go out to eat or drink together, and I'd go running at like, eleven, twelve o' clock at night. I never really went out with the rest of the cast.

        And then I got chicken pox! I was entirely contagious. I got chicken pox after I was thirty, and if you get chicken pox after you're thirty, it's bad, it really sucks. So I wasn't doing well. I disappeared, and nobody really knew how to get in touch with me or where to find me, so I finally called someone and said, "Look, I'm contagious, I'm away." So I didn't come back until a week before the show. Since I was all pocked up, I couldn't really shave, so I had this three week, four week beard. Then, two days before dress rehearsal, I got my hair cut short for the show, and I shaved, and I came in, and people didn't recognize me, I looked so different. It was a 1920 play, so everybody had really short hair. So we did the play and after the run of the play, Jen and I started to [talk]. We could tell we were interested in each other and it was really hard for me because she was 22 and I was 32-- ten year age difference-- and she was a senior at Hollins, so I go [rolls eyes, throws hands in the air]. But this was someone I really cared about and wanted to spend time with, and I hadn't felt that way for quite awhile.

        She came to see me after the play, and we talked about it. I said, "Look, I want to let you know that I appreciate this, I enjoy you as a person. I know nothing will ever come of this, but, you know, thank you for everything that you've done for me." And she said, "Well, why can't anything come of this?" We went through this huge discussion and decided to give it a shot. She stayed here that summer, and she was here for another year, and then she went off to grad school. We stayed together throughout graduate school. Actually, we'd been together for six or seven years before we got married. But there were difficult times. In graduate school I was really playing the, "I'm older, you're younger, you need to be in graduate school, you need to be this wild, crazed person," (like I was when I was young), "--you need to be running rampant through the fields of youthful amore." I didn't know. But Jen was like, "I know what I want, I'm okay, if I find something here that interests me, I'll let you know." So the first semester of graduate school, we had a lot of that garbage going on. And then we sat down and dealt with that.

        She came here one weekend a month and I went there one weekend a month. She was in DC, so it wasn't that bad of a drive. It really became much more fluid after that, that first period of time, and I got out of that, "I'm the older, wiser one, and I know what you young people need!" Because I know what I needed when I was 22, and it was not to be tied down to anyone. But that's because we're different people.

        So we've been married three or four years, and we have a daughter [named Emma]. Emma is a wild card that I don't quite know how to apply anything to. Emma came to me fairly late in life. I was in my early forties. I was totally unprepared! I mean, I've studied newborns, I've studied infants, I've done research on them. I still believe that nothing prepares you for parenthood except parenthood. I don't think you really become an adult until you have a child. I don't care how old you are! Unless you have a child... I can't say that I was fully an adult until Emma came into my life. I still am probably not fully an adult, but I'm a lot more of an adult than before. And anyone who thinks they're busy before they have a child, I will just laugh in their face. I mean, I was working full-time and going to grad school full-time. That's busy. Four classes in graduate school, plus working fifty, sixty hours a week. And doing theater. I did fifteen plays within two years at one point. Work, rehearsal, work, rehearsal, for two years. But, it is nothing, it is nothing, compared to having a child! Because fifteen minutes of free time becomes golden. But I don't resent it for a second. I am with Emma. I am with Emma. And that's basically how I've spent my time since she was born. We're not doing daycare or anything.

        My parents are in their seventies now, which is kind of shocking at times, but they have been rejuvenated, about fifteen years off their age, by my having a daughter. So when my daughter Emma was born, they became a lot younger on me, which was good to see.

        I spent a lot of my early childhood zipping between Europe and the U.S. I was born in California, then off we went to Europe, came back to Virginia, off to Europe, back to Virginia. I'm happy I had the opportunity of growing up in England. My childhood was good. My parents didn't beat me or anything. They stopped corporal punishment when I was five. I remember my father coming into the room and saying, "You're too old to be spanked now." The most important thing about my early childhood was my responsibility to Linda, and my responsibility to trying to help her develop. 

        [As for my adolescence], I can't say I was a normal teenager. I was a little peculiar. I didn't smoke or drink. I still don't. I never had. So [my parents] didn't have to worry about that. I guess I had the other things. I was very independent. It was strange because my parents encouraged my independence. But, I mean, I just liked to go out with my ridiculous friends. And I never slept. I just did not need sleep, and my parents kind of had issues dealing with the fact that I had these weird sleeping behaviors. They never understood that fact. I'm getting more sleep now. Now, I can get by on three hours. My body doesn't like it all that much, but back then, I never needed sleep. But, the kind of weird thing about it is that I didn't date in high school or junior high. I was painfully shy. So I'd be out with my geeky friends. But a number of times, I'd come back and find the house locked, so I'd have to get a ladder and climb up on the back roof, pry my window open to get in.

        I went to school very early in England. When I came back to America, there was nowhere I could go to school. So I had to wait a year. I still started school at five. I was always one of the youngest kids in my grade. I was a strange, strange kid. I was very smart, but I never fully utilized it, never really put it to use at school, but I was smart enough that I didn't have to. So I went to school in England, then back to America, then back to England. The base school was pretty interesting. It was advanced in relation to American standard schools at the time. When I came back to America, I was taking classes that were two years under what I'd been taking, so I was like, "Jesus." I was taking science classes that were half as involved as science classes I'd had. And the class I took in ninth grade was two years behind, like what I had taken in seventh grade.

        I wouldn't say it was necessarily better  than American schools, though. I was going to the base school. Besides, European schooling systems are a little bit different. They pigeonhole people. You take tests and that determines what you can do.

        The social part of education is, in some ways, more interesting to me than the intellectual part of education. One of the most interesting parts of growing up in England and going to base school is that we had a very culturally diverse group-- much more culturally diverse than you would find in most places in America at that time. By culturally diverse, I mean black and white. The really cool thing about it is that among the children, there was no racism. It just wasn't there. But what happened was, because we lived on a base, there were constantly children moving out and children moving in, just constant flux. What happened was that we started getting kids from America that brought racial hatred with them. People move out and people move in, and you see the racism imported into our little perfect culture. You started losing friends. It was a very powerful influence on school. By the end of it, there was a tiny locus of people left-- actually, only three of us-- and we were really close friends, really good friends. But I lost a lot of very good friends, both white and black, because of the racism. The white kids were uncomfortable and my black friends didn't want to have anything to do with me anymore because I was white. But it was a perfect world there for awhile.

        Then I had to get used to the violence. It kind of started to degenerate there. I got beat up a couple of times. But the violence over there was really nothing compared to what I came back to, to the American school. The American school, again, was a very culturally diverse school. It was 50/50. Again, there was a little clutch of us really geeky kids. I think the geeky kids are the ones who kind of avoid this. [We] play chess together in the lunchroom. I can remember walking home from school, and looking down this alleyway, and it was full of these black and white kids, I mean, hundreds, and they were getting ready to have a race riot, and me and my friends were like, "Oh, another race riot," and kept on walking. Then the cops show up, screaming, shouting, people running, beaten up-- oh, you know, another race riot.

        But I think things are worse now. I mean, I came from a violent area, but the violence we had then was not as bad, I think, as the violence we have now. We were a pretty violent street. That was one thing I had to get used to when I came back, living in an area where there was so much violence. The school had a lot of lower class.... It was a crappy school. Every time I came back to school, the same kind of thing. A bigger high school, a couple of thousand, and racism. That was the thing I had to get used to in American education.

       College and grad school were different. I was not a good student. I had this thing, of not trying, and making people know I wasn't trying. I've been revisiting this, and what it came from was the caste structure of the rich white kids [and the poor kids]. I was very aware of the caste structure. They came from their private schools... it was very important for me to [do better than them] without trying. That worked for a couple of years. The third year, it stopped working. I hit the wall, where I couldn't go without studying. I had, like, third semester calculus and physics... I hit the wall. And you shouldn't go through stuff like that without studying, it was stupid, and I look back and go, "What a waste!"

        I went from a 3.98 to a 1.1 in one semester. I was academically suspended, and I was the only kid in the history of the program to be on academic suspension with a GPA of over 3.0, because I just dove. It was really bad. The actual result of that was that the Chemistry department (I was a Chemistry major at the time) said, "Look, we don't want you in our department anymore. We've ridden this roller coaster." I remember talking to my advisor at the time, because I really was a roller coaster student. I was in pre-med at the time, so I'd taken Organic Chemistry, and I was just hated by all the pre-med students, because I just blew through that class. They only gave one A, and they hated me for ruining it for them. But the advisor said, "I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do, we just can't ride this roller coaster anymore."

        So I got into Psychology, mainly because they were doing standardized testing, and I always did really well in standardized testing. They said, "We'd be interested in having this kid in our department." So I moved over into Psychology. I graduated with a Psychology/Biopsychology degree. I would've been kicked out if I'd been there another semester, because my advisor would no longer write me a letter of recommendation.

        So I came to Hollins as a graduate student in the early '80's, working with developmental psychology here, and they wanted me to leave the program. The director came and said, "You came in as our top student, but now we want you to leave."

        I can say in college I never turned in a single paper on time. Not one. Not one. Guaranteed, not one paper! I'd look at it and say, "I'll do the work that'll get me through, but I won't do all the work. I'll do what I have to do to get by." After awhile, I wasn't so concerned with getting high academic scores. I almost didn't graduate because of it.

        Because I'd changed my major, I was cramming psych classes, taking four or five a semester. I was taking this one, and I really didn't get along with the professor and I really didn't like the class. I had this major paper due. I did not turn it in. He said, "OK, are you going to do this paper or not?" I said I wasn't, because I'd figured out that I could pass his class without doing the paper. He said, "Well, if you don't turn it in, I'm gonna give you a zero. If I give you a zero, I'm going to fail you, and if I fail you, you won't graduate." And I said, "I'm not turning in the paper because I don't have to and your class is stupid." That's basically the conversation that we had.

        It went to exam week, and my girlfriend who was at school in DC at the time came down and said, "Your parents have supported you financially through all this, and you've done all this work, and you're going to throw it away on this kind of stupidity?" And it eventually sunk into my head. But that's the kind of mixed-up student I was.

Part Three: The Results of All This

       After I got out of grad school, I took some pretty pathetic jobs. For awhile, I worked with the FAA [an environmental organization]. I was going around the campus getting money. Then I did some work with emotionally disturbed children. What happened was, I was on the graduate school route for awhile, so I was taking jobs while being a grad student. I actually started working here, at Hollins, when I was 21. I worked in the library. Usually, you see English graduate students working in the library, but the woman who was in charge at the time asked me if I would work in the media department even though I was Psychology instead of English. So I did that. I was still kind of doing the graduate degree, I was hanging around here working, and then I went to Tech. I was a teaching assistant there. Then, I went off, and nearly was a pilot, then nearly was an air traffic controller. Then I got a call. I was told, "We have a hole here. If you come back and fill it, we'll make you head of Media Services."

        I was struggling. I was looking for jobs, and I was wandering around. I was without focus, I had just come off of a divorce, and I had followed a few other career tracks that, for various reasons, did not work out. There was a period of time when I wasn't doing real well... [Exhales, looks down]. A good bit of responsibility for my coming out of that place was-- and this is a strange thing for me to say, knowing me-- my wife. She was very helpful in bringing back to the standard world.

        I was not living the life of a normal person. The only thing that was stable in my life was work. I was working, I was doing my job, but there's nothing else of any consistency in my life. I lost a lot of weight. I was moving around a lot.... I'd just finished traveling around the west and come back here, finished up all the paperwork and stuff for the divorce and got that finalized. It was a tricky time. Definitely lost, on the side of vagrant really. Not self-destructive, not a criminal, not mainlining heroin [mimes mainlining], but not eating, very thin. I got tired of people saying how gaunt I was. That was the term for that time period, gaunt. People were actually thinking I either had cancer or AIDS. It was not an enjoyable time. I'm not quite certain how I survived the way I survived. It's weird. When you get to a place like that, you know, you survive, you do the things you need to do to get by. Then when you get out and you get back into the mainstream of life, and you start living in a consistent place and you start eating real food again and you start having a place where you can keep your things... within a month, you look back and go, "Man, how did I do that?" I mean, I did that for years. I'm like, "How did I live like that? What was in my head?"

        [During that time], I figured the job at Hollins would make a good stop-gap. I didn't expect to stay with it. When I went to college, I expected to be a doctor. Everyone expected me to be a doctor. I was really good at physiology and biology and medicine. I was smart in a lot of areas, but that was where I was the smartest. But I screwed that up. Still, I nearly went back into it. I was lost... I actually got into pilot school, but I have a rebuilt knee, so that got me kicked out. I couldn't pass the physical. And then I thought about being an air traffic controller.

        You know, standardized tests have gotten me everywhere I've been. Every graduate program, every job, except for jobs up here. I do extremely well on standardized tests. I got in the air traffic control program. I got 100th percentile on the standardized test. You got a 100th percentile the way they scored it, even though it's not statistically correct, but it's the highest score you can get. So I got in very fast, but halfway through I said, "Oh God, what am I doing? I hate this!" Every day, I would go into class and go, "Oh, this is shit!" So I didn't follow through with that route. It was too restrictive. It's a great job for young people who don't mind just learning a language and regurgitating it. 99% of the time you're bored to death, and the other 1%, you are wetting yourself. That's the way the job is. It's so much boredom and then it's sheer panic. You're sitting there talking to these controllers, and they're telling you about the times they've lost planes, and what it's like. Cracking up on you, in front of you, people who are teaching you. The bad part about it was that it was just so boring, so focused, no creativity, no expression. I gave up on that and came back here.

        I'm not a true technocrat. I used to be, but I'm more of a Luddite technocrat now. I have both tendencies. I like the flexibility of it [this job], I like working with faculty and students. There's this article by this guy, I haven't read it in years, but it's about how some people in life just get where they're going completely heedless of how you structure  your life, you just go where it takes you. I'm sad to say that I do, at times, feel like that's what happened. For awhile, I thought I would be a professional actor, and I did pretty well, but I just couldn't afford it. I couldn't handle the lack of pay.

        But I'm involved in theatrical productions now. I'm doing Death of a Salesman at Mill Mountain, and I also direct. I've made some videos lately. I made a non-profit video a couple of months ago that was pretty well received. [And I act at Hollins]. My sister, Linda, is really into live-action vampire stuff, so the only play my family has ever seen me in was a few years ago. I was cast as Dracula and I was in a play performing as Dracula. Because I was doing Dracula, Linda had to come see me perform, and that was just the ultimate! So they made the trip to see me in that play. It was a pretty bad production! I had my hair dyed black and gelled back, and I had this beautiful cape, and had the accent... it was very ridiculous. But there was humor in that version.

Part Four: Adult Life and Connection to Hollins

        My wife, Jen, is an artist, actor, dancer, choreographer, director; she has her MFA in dance and theater. [She is] now teaching here part-time, teaching at Roanoke College part-time, and works full-time as the executive artistic director of the Roanoke Valley Theater. She's very much responsible for getting me back into the real world, getting me connected with people again.

        No one expected us to be together for a second! Here was this bad, bad older man, and here was this sweet young thing. She was the personification of sweet young thing and I was the personification of bad, older man. So, whenever people would see us, or see me when they hadn't seen me for a week, they'd ask, "So, you and Jen still together?" And I'd say, "Yeah!" --"Really?" That was a constant mantra for, like, years. "You and Jen still together?"--"Yeah."--"Really?" I swear to God, every time I saw someone, that would be their first question and that would be the consistent response.

        There are differences to us, the way we are as people. We've always had a little bit of difficulty communicating. We don't have that immediate communication thing. That's something we always have to work on. I say something, Jen completely misunderstands it, Jen says something, I completely misunderstand it. We've learned that in some cases we have to be very particular in our communication. We have very different tastes in music-- although they're becoming more similar. We have different tastes in movies, in a lot of things. But there are a lot of things we also share. We've been lucky enough to act together a couple of times, we've been lucky enough to direct each other. She's actually used me in a couple of musicals, because men are sparse that can be used in dancing. Not that I am a great dancer, but I can lift people and I can jump. I can't really call myself a dancer but I lifted women and I jumped over things. Or off things! We've been together for quite awhile now, over ten years. Still very supportive, trying to find the path through life.

        Most of my adult life has been spent at Hollins. I have a very substantial emotional connection here. The most important people in my life have come from Hollins. [For example], my first wife was a Hollins graduate and we were the same age. She was a senior when I was a first year graduate student. My second wife was a Hollins student. Many of my friends I have met through Hollins. When I first came here, there were a number of faculty children who were my age. A lot of the students I've met during my time here have been very, very good friends. Some of them still call me. Now they're married and have children and-- ugh, weird. But there are students here that probably, I knew their parents, I've been here that long.

        I try not to think about it too hard. I got my twenty year pin last year and I was like, "I'm old..." [laugh]. "Are you getting an award?"-- "No! I'm not getting anything!" I've been here for twenty years! Oh my god! But I certainly have a strong commitment. It's really interesting. I think it would be very, very difficult for me if I were ever to leave here. I spent my childhood moving from place to place to place, never really was rooted. This is the most rooted I've ever been. I moved every three to four years, and we moved about three to six thousand miles. It wasn't like we moved down the street. So this is the first time I've had a basis in a very long time. I think the difficult part of leaving, if I were ever to leave, would be leaving Hollins. Not necessarily leaving Roanoke, although Roanoke's not really a bad place. But there would be some withdrawals, because there are good things about Hollins-- the people and the environment. It's been very, very good to me and for me.

        I've been here since I was 21, and it's changed. I have to say that Hollins now, compared to then, is ten times more diverse, ten times more open, ten times more involved with the world and the community than it was then. It was really isolated and set back in time [in the '80's]. That was my perception. It's much more in tune with the real world, and even with women's issues! It was really puzzling to me because this was a women's university and I really didn't think that it was involved with any of the women's issues. It was very conservative. There was nobody standing up for anything, except for the possibility of women's education. It was very bizarre, it was this dichotomy, this paradox, and I couldn't come to terms with it. Now it's much more in tune with itself, I think. Not that I'm any judge of that, but that was my observation.

        I very much believe in Hollins as a place of single-sex higher education. I think it has a name and a place that I would hate to see removed. I'm not certain where the school is going now, but in my mind this is a good place for Hollins. It's difficult to make that shift to co-ed, and generally women's colleges don't make that shift as easily as men's. That's just the data. You have to spend the money to put in men's bathrooms, stuff like that! They say you have to build up the sports program.

         I don't want Hollins to stay the same, but to continue to grow and develop and become better than it ever has been. Universities are all about striving for excellence, both in individuals and in organizations. Over my time here, it has become a very viable, very dynamic, very important site for education of young women, and women not so young.