Hermance, Ed*

NAME: Ed Hermance*

Biography:

He likes to garden and read and make love. He has had some hard times, mostly due to crises of the people he feels responsible to; but for the most part he has had a pretty easy life, catching breaks when he did something impulsive, such as running away to the Colorado mountains to live with a hippie commune, before discovering that he had no way of making a living there, then rolling on to San Francisco, where the first day a cable car conductor invited him to come live with him and his wife in a beautiful apartment on California St. just west of Van Ness. When he couldn't find more than a part-time job at San Francisco State, a friend in Germany got him a job in Germany (see below).

Date of Birth: 8/20/40, Houston, Texas

Education:

high school diploma--Mirabeau Bonaparte Lamar Senior High School, Houston, Texas,1958

B.A. (Philosophy)--Dartmouth College, 1962

M.A. (Comparative Literature)--Indiana University (Bloomington), 1965

Employment:

1953 - 1962: children's swimming teacher and lifeguard;

1960 - 1962: clerk in the Stefansson Arctic Library, Dartmouth College

1964 - 65: English instructor, Auburn University

65-68: English instructor, Indiana State University

69-70: English instructor, Schiller College, Boennigheim, Germany

70-71: Lektor fuer Anglistik, Tuebingen University, Germany

72-74: manager of the Ecology Food Co-op (36th & Race & Lancaster), Philadelphia

74-77: clerk in Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania

76-85: co-owner of Giovanni's Room with Arleen Olshan

85 to present: owner of Giovanni's Room

Greatest adventure:

In 2001, 6 months before 9/11, travelling with a driver with whom he shared no language through the Fergama Valley in eastern Uzbekistan.