At one point, I did this task, and now I seem to have lost the one I wrote and I also seem to have forgotten what it was that I wrote. So I need to do this again. When I do, I shall try to update the blog.
Update: Something like this:
Colin was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, on September 10th of 1975. He didn't stay there long, however. Soon his family moved to California, where his younger brother Eric was born. Then his family returned to New England, settling in the state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, where Colin spent his formative years, and which state Colin always considered his spiritual home. In adulthood he lived for a time in Massachusetts and settled in Arizona, but he always considered himself a Rhode Island expatriate living abroad in a strange land.
Reading was always Colin's foremost preoccupation. Were it possible for reading to be his occupation, he probably would have found a way to make it so. Anyone who knew Colin knew that his nose was always in a book - often several at once, in several different languages. He was especially enchanted with European and American history, and traveled to Spain and France with a school tour when he was 15 years old. This only increased his love of classical, medieval, and Renaissance history. It was no surprise that he chose a life in academia. His particular field was classical languages - he became a fluent speaker of Latin, had reading competency in Ancient Greek, and dabbled in dozens of other languages, both ancient and modern. He attended the University of Rhode Island from 1993 to 1998, where he completed a double major in History and Classical Studies. The whole time he was at U.R.I. (and for quite a time beyond that) he worked for the Metakos family at Famous Pizza in Charlestown, Rhode Island, who were like a second family to him. During his last years at U.R.I. he met and dated Heather Hewitt, with whom he remained friends for the rest of his life despite the end of their relationship. The two had traveled to Scotland together while dating, and through Ireland (including Northern Ireland) years later when, after finishing his undergraduate work, he proceeded to complete his M.A.T. in Latin and Classical Humanities at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he met and worked with Emily Ellis and T.J. Howell, both good friends. The same year that he graduated, 2000, he also became a citizen of Nova Roma, under the name of Gaius Valerianus Germanicus, later amended to Gaius Tullius Valerianus Germanicus.
Colin entered the Classical profession as a teacher of Latin and Classical Humanities in "America's Hometown" of Plymouth, Massachusetts. There he taught for six years at Plymouth North High School. During that time his room-mate Michael Bastoni became a close friend and collaborator in many of his intellectual explorations. The Bastoni family welcomed Colin as a virtual member of the family, and he was forever grateful for that fact. He felt exceptionally privileged to teach amazing people, some of whom kept contact with him long after graduation. Indeed, he was always exceptionally proud to hear of former students with whom he worked who went into linguistic fields, or who remarked upon the continuing impact of the classics on their lives. Colin also built a large network of correspondents and penpals, many of whom corresponded with Colin in Latin rather than English. It was in his final year at Plymouth North High School that Colin led a student tour of Italy that included Rome, Florence, Pisa, and Assisi. That experience stayed with Colin for the rest of his life.
It was during those years in Plymouth that Colin began working for the now-defunct Borders bookstores. Though he eventually decided to relocate back to Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, he continued to work for Borders, moving from the store in Kingston, Massachusetts to the one in Cranston, Rhode Island. Soon after returning to Rhode Island in 2006, Colin met the woman who was to be his first wife, Danyell Marshall. They moved in together in an apartment on Park Avenue in Cranston in 2007. During that time, Colin worked for both Borders and UPS. Soon after moving to Cranston, however, he left UPS for a job teaching Latin at Saint Mary Academy - Bay View. Around the same time, he (a lifelong pagan of one sort or another) became committed to the cultus deorum Romanorum - the reverence of the gods of ancient Rome. In 2008 he and Danyell married. Their life together began to fail in 2009, and as Colin struggled to support them both in the wake of Danyell's inability to find and keep work and Colin's loss of his job at Borders as the company began its final descent into bankruptcy, they moved to Mawney Street in Providence in 2010.
In 2011, Colin became an augur, a priest of the College of Augurs in Nova Roma. His inauguration as an augur marked a great achievement in his religious life as a cultor deorum. He also decidedly embraced Stoic philosophy around this time.
In 2011 Colin and Danyell chose to accept the help of friends, including Aleksandr Normandy, in moving to Phoenix, Arizona, to start a new life. Despite a number of setback on moving to Phoenix, Colin was able to find work for Amazon.com. However, Colin and Danyell separated by the end of 2011, and soon divorced. But as Colin was building his new life in Phoenix, he met Tanya Bergstein in 2012, and they fell in love. Colin was happier than he had ever been in his life, feeling he had finally met someone who was a true equal and partner in every way. Colin went back to teaching, this time at the BASIS Chandler charter school. Colin and Tanya, together with her two boys Andrew and Eli, traveled extensively in Arizona and the surrounding area, something Colin always loved and appreciated. In 2013, Colin and Tanya were affianced, and married later that year [projection].
{They lived happily ever after . . .} Very few who got to know Colin can say that he did not touch and change their life in some way, and mostly for the better. He was dedicated to his friends and especially to his family. He will be missed, but his legacy and his gifts to the world live on, both directly and indirectly through his students and friends.
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