Retiree With Love of Books Is Days Away From a BA

Six decades ago in Chicago, Joseph E. Lynch skipped college when he and his father couldn’t agree on a campus.

Lynch’s father wanted him to attend his alma mater, Xavier University in Cincinnati. Lynch, then 18, longed to attend the illustrious University of Chicago, but he knew his grades wouldn’t pass muster. Later, the real world--work, marriage, a child and World War II--intervened, and Lynch’s college dreams were dashed. But not forever.

On June 1, the 78-year-old retired public relations executive will make history as Cal State Fullerton’s oldest graduate.

Lynch is one of more than 17,000 students being honored at commencement ceremonies throughout Orange County this spring. At his June graduation, he will step to the podium to receive his bachelor of arts degree in history, plus a handshake from new university president Milton A. Gordon.

So why would a retired, successful executive take three to four courses a semester for two years to get his degree?

“To get a better job in the hereafter,” the Laguna Niguel man quipped.

But when pressed for a less facetious answer, the history major revealed a lifelong love affair with books and learning.

“I guess I’m tying a knot on an existence, on a package,” said Lynch, who retired in 1977 as Hughes Aircraft’s corporate assistant director of public relations and advertising. “It’s something I should have done when I got out of high school, then when I got out of the Army. So I guess you could say I’m rectifying an error.”

And there’s another, perhaps more important, reason, said history professor George Giacumakis Jr., director of Cal State Fullerton’s Mission Viejo satellite campus.

“He said he doesn’t want to sit around and wither--he wants his mind to be sharp,” Giacumakis said. “So yes, he has pushed hard, but at the same time it has kept him young.”

Lynch, a grandfather of three, will be one of the first Cal State Fullerton graduates to have taken all of his courses at the university’s 2-year-old campus in Mission Viejo.

Like so many “mature” students flocking to college campuses across the country these days, Lynch started with a single class.

At his retirement from Hughes Aircraft in 1977, Lynch’s gift was a 35-millimeter camera, a mysterious gadget that he had no idea how to use. He turned to the local community college--Saddleback College in Mission Viejo--for instruction.

“I went over there and enrolled, then I found the library,” he recalled. “I love books. I’m a book nut, ever since I was a little kid.”

As someone who tried--and failed--to develop an interest in golf like his fellow retiree friends, and in fishing, which he said he found boring, Lynch opted to become a library volunteer. With free time to spare, he quickly became president of the college’s library support group and a board member of the Saddleback College Foundation.

Along the way, Lynch found a few classes in the college catalogue that interested him.

“I took an English class, a history class, and pretty soon I was a class away from an AA (Associate of Arts degree),” said Lynch, who over the years had picked up a few credits in night classes at Chicago’s Central College and UCLA extension.

Lynch got his AA in 1981 but found he still had the college bug. So, for the past five summers, he has traveled to Oxford, England, to take history courses as part of the University of California’s summer exchange program.

“We studied the American Revolution from the British perspective, British and American imperialism, two years of Tudor history, and last year was the history of church architecture,” said Lynch, warming to his subject.

“It’s a fantastic course. Because you see, in medieval times, the church was the political, economic and social center of any little village. . . . Also, churches were built by the towns, not the church. So it was really competitive. Each town wanted a bigger spire . . . than their neighbor. That was really fascinating.”

Lynch is being treated for an irregular heart beat, similar to the condition that has recently struck President Bush. Treatment for his condition is likely to keep him from going to Oxford for a sixth summer of study, he said.

In addition to his work at Oxford, Lynch continued to take courses that caught his fancy. But it wasn’t until Cal State Fullerton’s satellite campus opened at Saddleback College in the fall of 1989 that Lynch set himself a new goal: a bachelor’s degree in history.

“It’s a wonderful background for cocktail parties because you can start an argument and settle it right then and there,” he joked.

Humor aside, Lynch concedes it has been hard work.

“How these kids do it, I don’t know,” he said, surrounded by wall-to-wall books and stacks of research materials and papers in a bedroom he has converted to a study. “I did it, I’m doing it. But I don’t know how. . . . It’s amazing just the amount of reading and research you have to do. And schools now are all emphasizing writing. Every class demands a paper, sometimes two, three or four!”

Despite those complaints, Lynch is a teacher’s delight, Giacumakis said.

“He’s fantastic to have in the classroom because he’s got such a keen mind and he’s got so many years and years of experience,” said Giacumakis, 53, who has Lynch in his current class on the history of Arab-Israeli conflict. “He a fascinating guy. He also relates really well to other students. He doesn’t lord it over them, or think he knows it all.”

Lynch is a self-deprecating sort who frequently downplays his accomplishments and often refers to himself as “an old goat.” But he’ll be graduating with a 3.69 grade-point average--not bad for a man 14 years on the far side of retirement.

“If I get anything less than an ‘A,’ I’m ticked, mostly with myself,” he admits.

So he studies incessantly, a practice that has worried his wife, Edith, who will be on hand for the commencement ceremonies along with their daughter, Irene, and a grandchild or two.

“I think now that I’m down to very, very short strokes, she approves of it,” Lynch said. “She thinks I drive myself too much.”

Despite the hard work, Lynch says he’s not looking forward to the actual graduation ceremony. “I guess it’s because of my age,” he said. “Some people I tell say, ‘I thought you had a degree 50 years ago.’ ”

With the golden moment so close at hand, the goal-oriented Lynch already is thinking about the aftermath.

“I’m going to feel terribly let down, I know, so I’m going to have to prepare myself. I gotta take on something else, but I don’t know what.”

Graduate school?

“I’ll have to think about that,” Lynch said.