'Put another shrimp on the barbie' for Moody

By Mike Stepanovich

If Dale Moody could find a way to Timbuktu he'd take it. In fact one of the more surprising things about him is that he hasn't been there. The retiring CSUB education professor is a born adventurer. He loves to travel off the beaten path. Always has.

"I got my education by traveling around," he said. "I'm just an adventuresome sort. That's the bottom line."

When he was young he attended various schools, worked summer jobs. "I worked in Wyoming one summer painting the line down the highway as the driver. Another summer I worked in construction in Greenland at Thule Air Base - it was summer and ice finally broke up."

That trip got him "in some trouble. I was taken into custody at the air base in 1960. While I was waiting to leave I started wandering around. I went up into one of the great bombers and made the mistake of taking a picture or two. They tapped me on the shoulder and said you're not supposed to be up here. So the construction-site manager had to come down and vouch for me and get me on the company plane back to the United States. The Air Force, of course, confiscated and exposed all my film. But I still have a lot of pictures of the glaciers in Greenland - icebergs, ice tunnels. It's 950 miles south of the North Pole, and ice on the bay builds up four-feet thick. In summer the permafrost melts back half a mile. But you still need parkas and everything. In the summer it's light 24-hours a day - the sun just circles in the sky.

"One summer, I borrowed some money and took a Pan Am around-the-world trip. I've been to Mexico many times. I've house-sat and boat-sat many times. I ended up in the South Pacific and have returned there during retirement breaks up to the present. Now I'm planning a final trip back to Fiji, New Zealand and Australia before settling down in San Luis Obispo."

"I'm a sort of a will o' the wisp," he said. "I love to travel. I've had a number of great and exciting adventures." Among his many trips:

• "I've done coral photography in New Zealand and Tasmania, Queensland, all that stuff. I'm a snorkeler.

• "I've traveled for three summers with the Episcopal Church to work on the mission grounds of the Navajo Indian Center in Bluff, Utah. We did construction and renovation of the health clinic, church and fellowship hall.

• He sang with the New Zealand Symphony and Choral Society in 2003 under the direction of Sir David Willcocks, renowned English conductor, organist and music educator.

• "I volunteered to work on a primitive village and orphanage in Fiji, doing construction and renovation. Primitive is the word. There are hundreds of islands, and the tourist hotels are on the islands, but the mainland is where the population lives. It's very primitive, no tourism, and I was in the interior, in the wilds, the jungle areas."

• He has been to Europe, but it took him 30 years to get back after his initial venture there. "I visited Athens, Rome, Venice and Paris," he said. "But my greatest thrill was a few reflective moments on the beaches at Normandy where the great human invasion (on June 6, 1944) became the most important event in the 20th century."

So knowing his yen for adventure, it only makes sense that after earning his doctorate that he would pick a brand new college to launch his career.

"I've been here since the opening of the school, in September 1970," he said. "I was hired by then-President Paul Romberg, in what was then the division of education. Since then, I've done the whole nine yards, frankly.

Born in Indiana, Moody grew up in Denver, and served as a hospital man in the U.S. Coast Guard for six months active duty, then five years summer duty in the early 1960s. He earned his bachelor's in social science from Southwestern College in Kansas, his master's degree in history from University of Northern Colorado, and his doctorate from Stanford University.

"I went to San Mateo to teach high school and got a Ph.D. from Stanford in 1969," he quipped.

At one time he toyed with the idea of becoming an Episcopal priest. "I attended Union Theological Seminary in New York for a year and a half. It was across the street from Columbia University. But I decided that public-school education was in a far better position to deal with the social problems I saw in the poor sections of New York and other urban areas."