Valentine Adams

I was born on February 14 and named, by my overly romantic mother, Valentine. I think she had harbored the fantasy of naming a child Valentine all her life because her maiden name was Hart. And yes, I got both names. I am Valentine Hart Adams. I have one sibling, a sister Victoria who shares my middle name. We grew up on a 44-acre estate in east Texas. My father was a Ph.D. M.D. who never practiced medicine except on us when we were kids with a belly ache or the like. He did research and his field was nuclear medicine. At his death in 1995, he held over two dozen patents for various medical instruments. The person I have to thank for my introduction into manhood was the girl next door. The ranch, farm, estate, or whatever next to ours was small by all standards in our neighborhood. The Methodist Church owned it and the house was used as the parsonage. And so it was that the preacher’s daughter was my downfall and uplifting all in one. I attended private schools through high school. Upon finishing that episode of life, I went away to a state university in the east. I’d heard from my mother how great things were in the east. She’d grown up near Philadelphia. Her father was also a physician and had been very happy with my Dad as a son-in-law. Since my mother was an only child, my sister and I were the apples of grandfather’s eye. I attended his alma mater but, I’m certain to his disappointment, I avoided science like it was a disease. And I wasn’t at all curious about medicine. I was going to travel the world and report the news. I didn’t even slow down after my BA in Journalism. I had learned that I possessed a taste for writing and the same great university had a creative writing masters program. At the age of twenty-four, armed with the MA as well, the only reporting I could imagine myself doing was print. A friend of Dad’s from his college days was the CEO for a media company in the southeast. I was hooked up with a job at a daily in a small metropolitan community of about 100,000. Unfortunately, I was joining an industry that had already used up most of its life expectancy. After two years without a raise, I left to take a broadcasting job in the DC area. The company owned half a dozen radio and about as many TV stations. Being junior, I started on radio and didn’t move to TV until nearly two years later. I had a ball on radio. Almost all the folks who worked there were supportive, didn’t have huge egos and loved to play jokes on others, especially when they were on the air. I still have friends I met there. I have an enemy or two that came along with that tour as well. One of those was a really hot blonde who graduated from an Ivy League college and was, at least in her own mind, destined to be the next great national anchorwoman. Our meeting was like an explosion. It caused damage that wasn’t fully known for months. I was married to her almost four years before catching her in an ... uncomfortable pose. I relocated. During those initial few days of being totally free for the first time in my life, I made the commitment to completely change who I was. I admitted that what I really wanted to study was American culture. Why have Americans done what they have in the 20th century and what are the links among politics, economics, wars, religion, entertainment and psychology in their decisions to do what they had done? So it was back to school for three more years and a PhD in 20th Century American Culture. I had only a couple of basic criteria for jobs after I finished my PhD. Good weather and a small population were major considerations. One of the positions I was offered was at a southeastern university with about 9,000 students and sub-tropical weather. The city was little more than a college town and it had that certain old southern charm and warmth, not just the weather if you know what I mean.