HOUSE OF PAYNE INTERNATIONAL
Story of my Life
My name is John David Payne and this is the story of my life. It's not done (no story ever is), but it's a start. I wrote this for all my millions of fans out there who wonder who I am and where I came from. Naturally, it starts with my family...
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My father's name is David Emer Payne. His mother, Sara Harris, was from the Mormon colonies down in Mexico. His father, John "W" Payne, was from the Mormon colonies up in Canada. When they got married, my grandfather was a shepherd, which he decided was not a good enough job to support a family. So he completed high school, moved to Utah, and got a degree in Sociology from BYU.
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My grandmother's half-brother Franklin Harris was president of BYU at the time, and he offered my grandfather a job teaching sociology. He accepted, and settled down with his family in Provo, which is where my dad grew up. However, when my dad was ten, my grandfather took a position teaching in Tabriz, Iran, as part of a US government program called Point 4 (a successor to the Marshall Plan). So the family spent two years in Iran. |
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Since his father worked at BYU, Dad went to BYU. Since his father was a sociology professor, Dad naturally got a degree in Sociology. After getting his BA, he left for Chapel Hill to get his PhD. This, of course, meant immersion in the counterculture movement. Dad went as far as listening to James Taylor. He even grew a beard for a while. Fortunately, by the time he met my mom, he was back to being a square.
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My mother's name is Grettle Owen Payne. Her father, Richard Forsberg Haglund, was the child of Swedish immigrants who met and married in New York. He grew up in Brooklyn and went to Columbia University. My grandmother, Grettle Owen Shaw, was born and raised in Utah. She met my grandfather at a picnic in the mountains when he was on vacation, and after an epistlery romance, they were married.
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My mom, Grettle Owen Haglund, was born in Washington DC and raised in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. She also ended up going to BYU, and graduated with a degree in music. Then she headed out to Boston to teach elementary school music. After a few years, she moved to Salt Lake City, Utah, to take another teaching job. Soon after, her brother Richard introduced her to this old friend of his named David. This was my dad, who was teaching at Iowa, not far from where my mom grew up. So whenever Dad came home to Provo to see his parents, he would go up to Salt Lake to take out Mom. To make a long story short, they got married several months later and Mom moved back to Iowa City with Dad.
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A little more than a year after they were married, they had my older sister, Sara Elizabeth. And when she was still pretty small, they packed up and headed to Reykjavik, Iceland, where Dad was going to teach for a year as part of a faculty exchange program. Shortly after they got back, I was born. Woo-hoo!
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When I was about two, we moved to Grand Forks, North Dakota, where two more brothers, Samuel and Daniel, were born. About all I remember about North Dakota is that it was very, very cold. I seem to recall once sledding down the roof of our church, because it had been snowed over and so church was cancelled. I also remember getting a lot of mosquito bites during the summer, and eating fresh snap peas out of our enormous garden.
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After four years in the frozen North, we headed South to New Orleans, where Dad had a job at UNO (right after being at UND-- confusing, isn't it?). It was quite a change. I kept waiting for the winter to come, and it never did (although one day some of the puddles frosted over). The only thing that was the same was the mosquitos, which were big enough to mistake for birds.
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Other than the heat and the mosquitos, my strongest memories center around Mardis Gras. For my parents, it was a nightmare. They were constantly trying to cover our eyes and all that kind of thing. But for me, it was like a dream come true. Huge floats with people in elaborate costumes, throwing candy and trinkets to the cheering crowd-- it was like Halloween and Christmas rolled into one, and put on parade.
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We only spent a year in New Orleans before moving to Cape Girardeau, Missouri, about 90 miles south of St. Louis. We lived here for about six years, from my eighth birthday until I finished 7th grade. So when I think about my young childhood, Cape Girardeau is usually what I think of. While we were there, we added two more boys, James and David. Then, after five unsuccessful tries for another girl, Mom and Dad decided to call it quits.
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Dad worked at Southeast Missouri State University (SEMO), and so my sister and brothers and I all went to the University lab school. When I was in third grade there, I met Chuck Ricks, who was my best friend for the next several years. And whenever we weren't fighting, we had a great time. In grade school, we spent our afternoons in the woods near Chuck's house, playing around in abandoned treehouse, or rummaging through rubbish heaps. We searched for treasures like spray paint cans with some paint still left in them, bits of wire, smashed-up furniture, broken computers or other gadgets, and all that kind of thing. Once we even found a washer and dryer set. In middle school, we would walk home, after visiting the Asian market to buy Japanese bubble gum with pictures of giant robots on the wrappers, and the comic book shop, where Chuck would see if his Captain America and The Incredible Hulk subscriptions had come in yet.
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In the summer between seventh and eighth grade, my dad got a job at Sangamon State University (now called the University of Illinois - Springfield). So we moved to Springfield, Illinois. There, my brother Sam and I got our first job-- a morning paper route. So I got up every morning before six to fold and deliver the papers with Sam.
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We lived in Springfield for less than a year before moving to Kansas, where the family stayed until the summer of 1997. Emporia is where I went to high school, and so in many senses, it's the place I consider home.
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Upon graduating from Emporia High, I went to Brigham Young University, like Dad, Mom, and my sister Sara. After one year at BYU, I took a couple years off to serve a mission for my church. As it turned out, I got called to go back to Utah, to the Utah Ogden Mission . I spent two years there in northern Utah, Southern Idaho, and southeastern Wyoming. It was great fun, and a lot of work.
I came home and went straight back to college in Provo, where I eventually settled on a major in International Politics. I graduated with my BA in April of 99, and then raced through a one-year MA program in international relations at BYU's David M. Kennedy Center.
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In the fall of 2000, I moved out east to the People's Republic of Cambridge to go to school. The food is good here, but I'm still having trouble with the language.
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Linguistic difficulties aside, the best thing about this place is that they have a really great political science department. This comes as a surprise to many (including most MIT students), who had no idea that MIT had a political science department at all. In any case, I'm here in the PhD program, studying international relations and security studies.
I should be done with by 2005 or so. They tell me it goes pretty fast.
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This page was last updated on Sunday, September 16, 2001. All text and images copyright � 2001 John Payne. All rights reserved.
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