Debora Curry
English Dept - Administrative Assistant
Email: debora.curry@gcccd.edu
Office Hours: Monday-Friday 8am to 10am and 2pm to 4pm - email Debora for link for her Zoom Office hours
Source: The Gallery, 1974: A Photographic Directory of the Grossmont College Staff. El Cajon, CA: Grossmont Junior College District, 1974. p63.
Source: The Gallery: A 25th Anniversary Photographic Directory of the Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community Faculty, Administration, and Staff. El Cajon, CA: Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District, 1987. p66.
Source: The Gallery: A 35th Anniversary Photographic Directory of the Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community Faculty, Administration, and Staff. El Cajon, CA: Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District, 1996. p82.
Source: Document Collections and Photographic Archives of the Grossmont College English Department. El Cajon, CA: Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District.
After a year in Los Altos at Foothill College, Homer Bedford Lusk transferred in 1962 to San Diego State College to pursue a Bachelor’s degree in English, then continued on to graduate studies, where he earned his Master’s in 1968 with the completion of a thesis focusing on the work of John Keats. In early April 1969, with the arrival of the Lusks’ first child expected in a few short months, Homer hastily accepted the first offer of teaching employment to come his way, and on April 10 the Long Beach Register and the Press-Telegram announced him as one of four new instructors to begin teaching that fall at Golden West College in Westminster, California. In the meantime, Grossmont Junior College English Department Chair Charline Lamons contacted Homer directly to tempt him with an offer of tenure, which he accepted forthwith. To avoid the inconvenient move to Orange County during his wife’s complicated pregnancy, and to extract himself from his contractual obligations to Orange Coast Junior College District, Lusk wrote a personal letter of resignation to the Chair of Golden West’s English Department that extolled the troubling conditions of his wife’s pregnancy requiring they remain in San Diego for ongoing medical treatment. The story worked, and, with some feelings of guilt, Lusk was able to release himself from his contract and start working at Grossmont College in fall. (Lusk’s wife, Diane, experienced no further complications with her pregnancy, and that September she gave birth to their healthy baby daughter.)
While Homer’s name doesn't formally appear in the Schedule of Classes until fall of 1970, his teaching assignments during his first year on staff in the English Department were the basic skills classes would become his bread-and-butter courses for the remainder of his tenure. However, he also expanded his repertoire to include subjects squarely in his wheelhouse as a master’s graduate in literature, including Essentials of Literature, American Ethnic Literature, American Indian Literature, Contemporary Popular Authors, Mythology, and Science Fiction and Fantasy (a course he would inherit from Frank Vittor). In summer of 1974, Homer coordinated his evening literature course with the San Diego’s National Shakespeare Festival, which gave English 299: Shakespeare some attention in the local press; as a result, the course obtained a degree of gravitas during the regular academic semesters and would become Homer’s signature course for the next decade.
Between 1974 and 1977, Homer Lusk would serve his first of three non-consecutive terms as English Department Chair. By the end of his first term, the faculty of the English Department had joined ranks with others in a heated conflict with administration over the issue of collective bargaining. Vice-President of the Grossmont College Teachers Association, Ruth Anderson, who oversaw the protest movement against the Governing Board, stepped into the role of English Department Chair between 1977 and 1978, after which time Homer returned to the position until successor Glenda Richter became Chair in 1983. During his second term, between 1984 and 1994, Lusk hired nine new faculty members to the Department, including future chair Dr. Oralee Holder.
At the end of the 2004 spring semester, Homer Bedford Lusk officially retired after 35 years of teaching for the District but returned to the classroom that same fall as a part-time instructor. The next year, in August 2005, the Governing Board conferred upon him the status of Professor Emeritus.
Personal anecdotes are included on this page with the permission of Homer Lusk, to whom boundless thanks are owed. Homer aided, not just in the development of his own archival bio, but in the research and development of the entire Grossmont English Department Archives by supplying imagery from his personal collection of Departmental memorabilia and generously lending his institutional memory on a variety of topics crucial to this Archive. Thank you, Homer!
Debora Curry
English Dept - Administrative Assistant
Email: debora.curry@gcccd.edu
Office Hours: Monday-Friday 8am to 10am and 2pm to 4pm - email Debora for link for her Zoom Office hours
8800 Grossmont College Drive
El Cajon, California 92020
619-644-7000
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