Phillip Hathaway was a rifle expert in the military where he ran four miles in a speedy twenty-eight minutes every morning while wearing combat boots and fatigues. He says, "Serving in the military is one of the things of which I am most proud. My job, however, was defense of my country and family rather than venturesome foreign expeditions of offense."
Upon his Honorable Discharge, he attended Oklahoma City University and the University of Kent in Canterbury, England and holds a Bachelor's and a Master's Degree in the Social Sciences.
Having completed his university studies, he circumnavi- gated the Earth on a two-year journey. The highlights of his round-the-world-trip were meeting H.R.H., Princess Diana, spending three days photographing the Taj Mahal, seeing the starry belvedere of the Milky Way from Australia, attending the tennis championships at Wimbledon, visiting Red Square in Russia, backpacking in the Himalayan Mountains of Nepal and enjoying the kaleidoscopic culture of ancient Marrakech, Morocco, his absolute favorite place.
It was, however, his sojourn to "not altogether civilized India", as he calls it, that indirectly inspired his writing career. He uses the word "indirectly" for it was not India itself that was the inspiration but what he acquired while visiting there: a side effect of the local diet. He says, "Although paying homage to the village doctor in a mud floor hut and drinking his prescription ominously label- ed, 'Only take this if you are very sick', I was, nonethe- less, very sick for three months. It was during this period of my otherwise uneventful convalescence that I began writing essays about the human predicament, with appropriate and timely inspiration."
He especially considered the notion of reconciling the dichotomy of the need to labor and to use one's talent. Deeply inquiring within himself, using his own experi- ence, he was able to determine unique observations regarding the psychological effects of talent. This led to his creation of Psychosymmetry and its supporting arguments in three essays: The New World of Talent, Talent Revealed in Classic Story-Telling Style and Purpose, Evergreen.
Phillip's articles have been published in The Sunday Oregonian, the largest newspaper in the Northwest United States. He presently has four books in print: The Psychological Elegance of Talent, The Little Odyssey; The Retelling of Homer's Odyssey in Heroic Couplet, The Hathaway Epics; Six Classic Tales Told In Epic Verse and The Romantic Struggle; Ten Short Stories and Two Short Novels.
He has been a guest speaker at Portland State Uni- versity, the United States Army, Hilton Hotels, Charles Schwab & Assoc., Massachusetts Mutual, two divisions of Armor All, the English Speaking Union, and several other organizations.
While not writing he spends time hiking with Blackjack, his very best friend and flatcoat retriever. He says, "Blackjack is guru of the higher virtues and one of the best things that has ever happened to me." Phillip also has adopted two wild Mallards who are mates and have vacationed at his home for the last seven summers. He also paints and sketches occasionally. Some people believe his graphite portrait of Lord Nelson may be one of the better likenesses of Nelson.
Phillip is a member of The Royal Society of St. George and The English Speaking Union. Hand-in-glove with these organizations are his goals to create global understanding through the English language and to preserve English literature and culture; for, as he explains it, "As a bit of a social scientist, I feel a person's unique language and culture are the irreducible infrastructures of their political, societal and personal freedoms and, beyond personal enrichment, should be used for international friendship."
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