THE AUTHOR

Dr. David Lazear Hess was born in Mt. Vernon, Ohio, on July 19, 1933. He received his Bachelor of Science degree from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, his Master of Business Administration and Master of Arts degrees from Western Reserve University and his Doctor of Philosophy degree from New York University, with majors in American East Asian and Southeast Asian history. His doctor’s dissertation was “The Educated Vietnamese Middle-Class of Saigon and Their Legacy of Confucian Authority, 1954-1975.” From 1966 to 1968, he taught English at the University of Saigon and Pusan National University on Fulbright-Hays grants. Dr. Hess was a world-class traveling professor since 1979.

He taught history courses at Paine College, LaGrange College, and Savannah State College in Georgia, Frostburg State College in Maryland, Black Hills State College in South Dakota, Radford University in Virginia, Mansfield University in Pennsylvania, Texas A & M University in Kingsville, Texas, and USC-Aiken and USC-Spartanburg in South Carolina. He taught a total of forty history courses in thirty-six years of his teaching career. Dr. Hess was an avid basketball player in high school and, throughout his life, enjoyed watching all scheduled basketball games in Greenwood and other places.